{"id":16441,"date":"2014-03-17T09:43:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T13:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=16441"},"modified":"2014-03-17T09:44:08","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T13:44:08","slug":"crimea-ballot-paper-no-option-to-keep-things-as-they-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/03\/17\/crimea-ballot-paper-no-option-to-keep-things-as-they-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Crimea ballot paper: No option to keep things as they are"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC<\/em> has this article Crimea ballot paper: No option to keep things as they are<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

James Reynolds shows us round a polling station in Simferopol, takes a closer look at one of the ballot papers, and explains the voting process.<\/p>\n

“There’s no option on this ballot paper for people to keep things as they are,” he notes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What follows is my best attempt to quote the understanding of the two questions on the ballot as explained by the reporter in the video.<\/p>\n

Do you want crimea to become part of the Russian Federation?<\/p>\n

Do you want Crimea to get greater autonomy under the 1992 constitution<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks for Cedric Flower’s comment on my Facebook post<\/strong><\/a> about\u00a0 my previous post, Crimea result makes \u201ca mockery\u201d of democracy says Hague<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 The actual wording doesn’t seem to be quite as stark as Cedric said.\u00a0 You can judge for yourself as to what you think of the voting procedure and the ballot wording.<\/p>\n

It’s one thing to have an opinion as to whether or not you think this was the fairest way to vote on the subject, but deciding what we ought to do about that judgment is a wholly different matter.\u00a0 At the very least, before taking any action on our judgment, we ought to know how this type of ballot wording would compare to other ballot wordings that have been used to get the Ukraine to the current political situation it is in. For instance what was the ballot wording for\u00a0 the acceptance of the 1992 constitution?<\/p>\n

There would still be the irony of taking action against a country based on what we thought of someone else’s democratic procedures.\u00a0 Might we not be best served by letting the people themselves figure out what they want to do about the situation? (I can’t even figure out if the wording of the previous sentence makes any sense even though I invented that wording myself and it sounds kind of literary.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The BBC has this article Crimea ballot paper: No option to keep things as they are. James Reynolds shows us round a polling station in Simferopol, takes a closer look at one of the ballot papers, and explains the voting process. “There’s no option on this ballot paper for people to keep things as they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16443,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16441\/revisions\/16443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}