It’s Germany’s biggest union

Land of the free

There are many more examples than just Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan comes to mind but also many other Muslim countries use Islam and Shari’a law to control the population or use religious laws as an excuse for their authoritarianism. No religion is free of that.

The Chinese approach is far more effective I fear. The Soviet way worked only with mixed results and was more ideology driven than logical. In Poland, the Catholic Church became a huge factor in the opposition because of that. If religion is deeply rooted in society, controlling and steering religion makes for a powerful tool to control the masses while fighting it automatically makes it a strong opposition force.

Lol, sure it does

Two choices is not complete control

What? Not all positions are elected, in no system. Or when did you vote for secretary of state in the US?

The prime minister of France is not an elected position but appointed by the president. This has nothing to do with multiparty democracy.

Counter examples exist. Willy Brandt was social-democratic German chancellor in a coalition with the liberals while the conservatives were the biggest party in parliament. The conservatives could only watch.

Also recent state elections in Thuringia, the fascist AfD is the biggest party but nobody wants to work with them, so they don’t get a chance to form a government.

What’s important in both cases: the majority of voters want it that way. They wanted a social-democratic+liberal government under Willy Brandt and there is a clear majority in Thuringia that don’t want the AfD to govern. In both cases it’s more democratic to not let the biggest party govern.

In a two party system the power balance within the coalition is decided behind closed doors and the voters have no say in it

As long as the coalition represents the majority, I don’t see why the largest party needs to be part of the government. The largest party doesn’t represent the will of the people by itself, otherwise they would have a majority.

still taking Russian oil

That’s a lie

Also: Germany’s coal power production drops to lowest level in 60 years in 2023

Stop with that bullshit

Because most people have their phone on vibrate 100% of the time. I had a OnePlus and my slider got stuck. Couldn’t change the setting for 2 years but as it was stuck in vibrate, it didn’t matter anyway.

The article is pretty well done and shows exactly why this discussion is moot. There’s simply no merit to the accusation, plain and simple.

If an accusation comes from Russia and only from Russia, it’s part of their misinformation warfare. That’s not ad-hominem, that’s paying some fucking attention.

Okay, then it’s exactly what I thought. Thanks!

other people’s voting paperwork

Same way as they would for the ID, They don’t. That’s not a common problem. Only people in the same household could possibly access the paperwork and as there are only 250-ish people voting at the same polling station, risk is high that someone voting twice with paperwork of a family member would immediately be found. That there are enough cases of this to sway election results is highly unlikely.

voting several times

Check list. Everyone that is registered at that polling station is ticked off on the list.

I mean, I like Elon

Honest question, why?

IDs are not routinely checked when voting in Germany at least. But there’s no voter registration necessary because everyone is registered with their municipality and automatically gets their voting paperwork sent home. You just need that paperwork to vote, no ID. I wouldn’t change that setup because giving poll workers ways to refuse voters is not a good thing.

Btw. I’ve never had to wait in line for more than a minute to vote. Voting booths are usually in walking distance (might be different in very rural areas) and each accommodates maybe 250 people for the day.

Also, there are polling stations in prison. The right to vote can’t be taken away.

True, Breezy is just one example. But that’s not the ones they were discussing with.