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ICELANDERS HAVE VOTED in favour of proposals for a new basic law, preliminary results showed today, after a referendum on what has been dubbed the world’s first “crowd-sourced constitution”.
Turnout was estimated at less than 50 per cent amid voter fears that the results of the non-binding referendum would be ignored by the small Nordic country’s politicians.
The proposed new basic law for the island nation was drafted by 25 ordinary citizens with the help of hundreds of others who weighed in on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
On Saturday, that committee put six constitution-related questions to voters in a referendum, each to be answered by a simple Yes or No.
Voters were asked whether they want the committee’s proposals to form the basis of a draft constitution.
After ballots in half the constituencies were counted on Sunday, two thirds of voters had answered that question in the affirmative, data from the country’s election committees compiled by public broadcaster RUV showed.
Other questions included topics such as the country’s natural resources and the role of its national church.
Results on Sunday indicated that voters want to keep the country’s national church, and that they think natural resources that aren’t privately owned should be considered public property.
“Those of us who have hoped for a better society woke up happy this morning,” said Gudmundur Gunnarsson, a member of the constitutional council who is also the father of singer Björk.
Iceland’s population is just over 300,000 but the complexity of the ballots means they are being counted manually and official results are not expected to be announced until late Sunday.
Iceland’s financial collapse in 2008 during the global economic crisis provoked huge social movements and the demand that any new constitution be drawn up by ordinary citizens became irresistible.
Voter turnout is reported to have been around 49 per cent, which is less than the 72.9 per cent who voted last year, when Icelanders for the second time decided whether to approve a deal to compensate Britain and The Netherlands for the 2008 collapse of Icesave bank.
Still, the results were hailed on Sunday by the mayor of Reykjavik, who is also the deputy leader of the Social Democratic Alliance party (Samfylkingin).
“Congratulation Iceland. It seem to me that a cross-section of the people voted yesterday and that the results coincide very well with opinion polls,” Dagur B. Eggertsson said on social networking site Facebook.
The opposition Independence party, which was in power for much of the last century, has said it thinks the plan needs more detailed examination.
Any changes to Iceland’s constitution must be approved twice by parliament, with a general election held between the votes.
The country’s constitution dates back to its independence from Denmark in 1944 and it has long been accepted that it needs revision.
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Excellent article Conor and great to see science and astronomy topics being given space on The Journal
Pun intended
*Badum tss*
Good write up, very interesting, helped me to understand why Pluto is nolonger a planet.
Will check Astronomy Ireland now :)
Get your wallet out, that’s all Astronomy Ireland is interested in.
Pluto is the Tony Cascarino of the planets. For years we got used to Tony being an irish legend only to later find out that he didn’t meet the ‘irish’ critera. However we didn’t cast him out, We accepted him for what we always said he was, Irish! Likewise Pluto, while not meeting all the guidelines, should be given a break just like Cas. Pluto may be a little different to the other planets and it doesn’t always play by all the right rules but we can’t just abandon the little fella now just because he’s ‘special’. Its these far-right astromoners who want to push the agendas of the ‘real’ planets that is causing all these problems. Next thing you know they’ll be trying to limit the number of comets that can enter our solar system and start blaming the new comets for any satelitte damage that occurs rather than looking at all the debris we’ve left floating about in space.
For a lot of us Pluto will always enjoy the status of ‘Planet’. I think we should call it ‘Pluto king of the planets’ so as to show it some love.
How about no?
Re name Pluto to Tony.
Fun fact. The surface area of Texas is larger than the surface area of Pluto.
‘Fraid not….
Texas has an area of 696 thousand sq km, whereas Pluto has a surface area of 16.7 milion sq km. Pluto’s area is a shade less than Russia’s…
Good exchange and both of yous have mad faces.
But Johnny five could survive on Pluto with his book of makey uppy fun facts from his father 1977 readrs book of digest of makey uppy facts.
His father was a Texan. Everything is bigger in Texas.
Great article, Conor. Love to see more like this on the journal.
“Why is Pluto not a planet?” because he’s Mickey’s dog.
Excellent article,more of the same please.
Why isn’t Minnie Mouse a lesbian? Because she loves Mickey.
I think one of the most interesting thing about Pluto is that because its moon Charon, is quite close in size to Pluto, the center of mass between Pluto and Sharon is outside of Pluto. As in Pluto not only orbits around the Sun, it also obits around a point in space between it and Charon.
Like so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto-Charon_System.gif
Earth does something similar, but because the difference in mass between the moon and Earth is so much greater, the centre of that mass lies within the Earth itself (but closer to the crust than the centre of the Earth).
Like so: http://scijinks.jpl.nasa.gov/_media/en/site/tides/tides3.jpg
A1 Charon!
Great post, John. Great reply, David.
There will be a pub fight on ‘how many moons the Earth really has’ at 7pm in The Stag’s Head. Please bring a copy of Cosmos by Carl Sagan, preferably hardback, and a well padded bicycle helmet.
Some of the reasons for taking away the little guy’s status are almost a form of bullying.
Justice for Pluto
“One of the first photographs I saw of Pluto was simply a blob with another blob stuck to the side of it.”
First image that sprung to mind on reading that was Gilmore standing next to Pat Rabbitte. From now on I’ll refer to them as the pluto brothers.
Sorry about the political referencing, but sometimes a fella can’t help himself.
Politics in a science article, joke shop, there’s plenty of other pages to spew that nonsense
Living on Pluto is not as bad as living under Enda Kenny.
(That was the compulsory Fine Gael comment of the day. Now back to our normal programming).
My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Puddings was how I learnt it in school, guess now it’d have to be My Very Evil Mother Just Served Us Nothing!!!
Dibs on calling Pluto’s unnamed moons Batman and Robin. You heard it here first! Now time to give up work, lay back and watch them royalties come pouring in!
They’ve only done this because The Galactic Federations cup is coming up and apparently Pluto’s youth system has been the envy of the rest of the galaxy and were heavy favourites when the monopoly of Earth voted them out of contention by bringing their Planetary status into question and whilst holding the undemocratic vote they went ahead and demoted them to ‘dwarf’ status, thus with holding any chance for Pluto have of gaining any foothold in the galaxy.. But you see, the conspiracy goes much deeper, they have been building up a vast arsenal of galactic nuclear weapons and by keeping them down they will never build up allies because they are a ‘Dwarf’ and should treated as such. Journal readers fight back against discrimination.. On the upside they’re a shoe in for the ‘Galactic Dwarf planets confederations cup’
Because it’s not as big as your anus.
At school we were taught the phrase My Very Easy Method just Speeds Up Naming Planets to remember all 9 of them. How is it done now with only 8?
I don’t recall any teacher ever mentioning space to us in school.
But we did learn mind expanding useful subjects like Irish.
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming.
You’re welcome.
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Nothing.
it’s because Pluto couldn’t service it’s debts to unsecured bondholders.
shut up.
Yeah hindsight is great isn’t it?
Good article, very old news though. More up to date articles like this in the future please
Very interesting indeed!
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