Florian accepts the award
By now, Florian has accepted the EV50 “European Campaigner of the Year” award. In his Slashdot journal, he comments on why he didn’t first accept it:
If Microsoft sponsors a series of political awards and two of the ten prizes go to vocal opponents of software patents, then one would usually think that it’s an amazingly positive outcome. That’s just what happened with this year’s edition of the EV50 Europeans of the Year. Michel Rocard, one of our key allies among the members of the European Parliament (MEPs), became MEP of the Year. I received the Campaigner of the Year award for my NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign.
However, what the organizers proclaimed as the result of the poll is extremely difficult to comprehend.
There are strong indications that our audience represented a solid majority of all people who participated in that EV50 poll.
Florian goes on to describe various Internet campaigns. The common denominator of these campaigns was to recommended people to make their opinion against Software Patents heard through voting for Florian. Over 100.000 emails were sent. Many prominent websites, including Slashdot, promoted Florian.
In theory, it’s still possible that our supporters didn’t represent a majority of the electorate.
It beats me how I could have won over Bono, the frontman of U2, in a category of six candidates, while allegedly having lost to Luxembourg’s prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker in a field of fifty for the main award.
All in all, one would be hard-pressed to find a plausible explanation for the outcome of the EV50 vote. There are some theoretical answers, but they aren’t too likely. The organizers decided that total intransparency is in their best interest, so we’re left in the dark as to what exactly happened.
Since the European Voice continued to list me as the Campaigner of the Year, I decided to accept that award anyway, and I’ve meanwhile asked them to donate the prize money to the FFII on my behalf.
For German readers, heise.de has an item on the same topic.
December 16th, 2005 at 5:02
Plausible explanation:
The FFII voting guide may have suggested voting for Jean-Claude Juncker in his category and most people accepted that. Net result: those following that voting guide would not have favored Florian over Jean-Claude Juncker but would have voted for them in equal numbers.
I don’t know what the FFII voting guide said. The page is no longer available.
The argument that Florian was in a field of 6 while Jean-Claude Juncker was in a field of 50 is meritless. Both were in similar field sizes for their category and the overall winner and the voting forms required selecting a winner in every category. Each was in a field of 50 for the competition for overall winner.
December 17th, 2005 at 5:39
Florian explains that the votes in the categories and overall were not linked and that the FFII suggested voting for MR. Zapatero in Mr. Juncker’s category. It also suggested not voting for Mr. Juncker.
This eliminates what I suggested as a viable theory, since it required an FFII suggestion to vote for Mr. Juncker.