Colin's Journal

Apparently EU voters are not “mature” enough for an EU wide referendum to be held. The evidence for this: that given an undisclosed list of people to vote for, a sample of French voters picked the only Frenchman on the list, the rather famous Valery Giscard d’Estaing.

As Europunditry points out, in what way does this research show that an EU wide vote on adopting the constitution would be invalid? Even if we accept the hypothesis that people will generally vote for someone from their own country, how does this invalidate an EU wide vote for adopting or rejecting a constitution?

If an EU president was elected by vote (not something that’s being considered at the moment) this research might be of some interest. The major point that is raised for me however is not that the European public is not mature enough to vote in an election of a president, rather that the voting method used is of critical importance. If a single transferable vote method was used, or multiple rounds of voting (probably impractical), you could very quickly get the electorate interested in candidates that aren’t from their own country.

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