Tag: election

Vertical badge

I was writing the next version of my badge counting the number of days without Belgian government when Laurent added his comment requesting for a vertical version. You can see it on the right.

Since the original release, I also added translation of the sentence in Dutch and German (after all, Belgians are speaking 3 official languages). And I approximately centered the text on the vertical version (I personally prefer the text on the right for the horizontal version but you can easily modify this by yourself).

As usual, here is the HTML code to include this vertical version in your page, blog, etc.:

<img src= "http://www.epot.org/belgov/belgovv.php" alt="belgov counter on epot.org" />

And here is the source code (for both version): belgov-0.3.tar.gz (20kb).

How many days without governement?

Now it’s not a secret anymore: more than 148 days passed since we, Belgians, went to vote (it was on the 10th of June 2007) and we still don’t have any government!

If you want to count the numbers of days without Belgian government, it’s easy: just have a look at Belgian newspapers. Or … have a look at the counter below (in French, Vlaams or German) 😉

And if you want the same on your website or blog, it’s very easy, just copy/paste the HTML code below:

<img src="http://www.epot.org/belgov/belgov.php" alt="belgov counter on epot.org" />

Enjoy!

P.S. For those who could be interested, here is the source code: belgov-0.2.tar.gz (6kb). It’s written in PHP and under the GNU GPL (so it’s free!). Each small animal (Lion of Flanders or Rooster of Wallonia) represents 2 days without government. On the last line, there is a small gradation of transparency.

P.P.S. If you want to specifically support the unity of Belgium (because quite a number of politicians and citizens want to split Belgium), Pilok has a “I love Belgium” banner. Here I just wrote a counter of days without government, whatever your opinion is about Belgium.

Edit on Nov. 7th: I added translations in Vlaams and German for the line on the bottom.

A voté !

As every Belgian citizen, I voted today for our legislative bodies (Chambre et Sénat). As always, I was confronted to the same problem: electronic voting. Technically, I’ve no problem to understand and use the system: it’s an ethical problem. I don’t know if my vote is correctly written on the card, even with all the given guarantees and technical details (you can test such a voting machine here or watch a demo of the Belgian system, both in French). Personally, I saw two problems:

Source code is not available to any citizen, even if they promised to release it on the day of the polling (see the official website and screenshot below). I don’t think I have enough computer security knowledge to review those sources in detail but I think they have to make them available because 1) it allows a democratic control and 2) they promised it. I usually do not believe in conspiracy theories but … 😉 See update below
The old lady in the voting booth next to mine was “helped” by someone she doesn’t know from the polling station. I clearly was able to hear technical instructions but one doesn’t know the exact meaning when the person told her “to point there“. Don’t be mistaken: hopefully this person was there to help her, otherwise the old lady wouldn’t have been able to vote. What I’m criticizing is the fact that all Belgians are not equal in front of the voting machine (although they are all supposed to be equal in front of the law).

I was very happy to see that all the French-speaking political parties presidents were against electronic voting (with some nuances for the MR party). Let’s see how they will act during the next legislature …

(bigger version here)

Update: at 17.00 (5.00pm) files were finally online (here and here, personal copies here and here). I guess they were not able before 15.00 (end of voting time) to avoid code substitution on some machines by hackers, like it happens with the Nedap machines in the Netherlands.