photo credit: daklebtwasTomorrow, June 7, 2009, the people of Europe elect the next European Parliament. Perhaps less well-known, this date also coincides with the local elections in the state of Baden-Württemberg, so besides the European ballot, I will also get to vote for

• the local town council
• the city council of the city my home town belongs to
• and the district council.

While possibly not the most influential councils of all, the number of elections at once is quite impressive. What makes these elections the most fun of all though, are the concepts of “Kumulieren” and “Panaschieren” that I’ll shortly explain to you here.

Let’s assume there are three active parties in this election: A light blue one, a pink one, and an orange one. For each of these, you’ll receive a ballot containing their designated votees, along with the instructions telling you that you have, for example, 10 votes at your disposal.

Imagine you like the pink party the most. The easiest way to handle this is to take the pink ballot, fold it, and drop it into the ballot box. You’ll automatically have given each of the people on the ballot 1 vote. But we are in Germany, and we find “simple” boring, so let’s spice that up a bit.

It just happens that you like one guy in the Pink party, Paul Olitician, more than the others. After all, whenever you meet him at the bars, he buys you a beer, and to return the favor, you listen to him explain his political visions in detail. The perfect symbiosis, if you will.

In that case, you can go ahead and “accumulate” up to three votes on Paul, and then spread the remaining seven votes across the other candidates on the ballot. You may end up not having enough votes for each of the party members on there, but that’s fine, as one of them is your former high school teacher whom you didn’t like very much anyway. The process of giving a person on the ballot more than one vote is called “Kumulieren” in German.

But then, just before and you are done giving away all your votes, you realize there are empty lines left on each of the ballots. Also, you notice your neighbor John is a candidate for the light blue party. You don’t want to vote for them as a whole, because you still like the pink party better, but you would like to vote for John. After all, you are still grateful for that one time when he heroically kept you from falling off the ladder when he caught you stealing from his cherry tree.

Luckily, the second concept called “Panaschieren” comes in handy. You manually write John’s name onto the pink ballot, allowing you to give your remaining votes to him.

After you’re done, you fold the ballot, stuff it into the envelope and drop it into the ballot box. With a strong feeling of accomplishment, you head to the bars. To discuss your successful voting with Paul, and to get rid of that horrific taste the envelope glue left in your mouth. You secretly promise yourself, next time you’ll vote for the party to introduce self-adhesive envelopes to the German election system.

We all know, getting into your university of choice can be quite hard. But, who knew getting out of one (properly) is almost equally as complicated?

I am telling you, the university wants to see how much I can suffer, one last time. By sending me across campus multiple times to acquire signatures and pick up forms. And stand in line (first to pick up the form, then to fill it out, then to hand it in, then to pick up the signature). And by telling me that they decided to close their office on Mondays. And Fridays. And to open it between 10 and 12 only, the rest of the week. By-appointment-only, naturally.

Oh, and by closing my favorite on-campus coffee place, of course.

Now, it’s not all that bad, really. There are also interesting new discoveries to be made. Like, that the computing center (Rechenzentrum) apparently has a women-only computer pool. In an imaginary press release, they might say: “The new, three-desk facility was established to give all women studying computer science in Karlsruhe room to work at once.” Of course, I am exaggerating. The actual student statistics for 2008 reveal a whopping 10 % of students in computer science are women here. And at any rate, the computing services are used by students in other departments as well. But, more seriously, what’s wrong with the other computers? Guess I’ll never know.

(The picture shows the department of business/economics at the university of Karlsruhe in 1967. The buildings still look quite the same today. In the background, the Karlsruhe residence castle. CC by-sa licensed by the Germany Federal Archives on Wikipedia Commons.)

In last Friday’s edition of Oregon State University‘s daily newspaper, The Barometer, I found an article criticizing Barack Obama’s tax policies. The writer, Peter Druckenmiller, a junior in new media communication, basically argues that Obama is opening a can of worms by raising taxes for the rich and will as a second step raise everybody’s taxes as well. Therefore, the author opposes any type of financial support for people who haven’t paid many taxes in their lives, for example students.

So far, so good. Druckenmiller finishes, however, with a curious Third Reich comparison:

Martin Niemöller once said, “When they came for me, there were none left to speak out.” He was referring to the Nazi’s ideology of selecting one group to persecute, and laid out the Nazi progression from Communists to Jews and finally to himself. The same logic should be employed when examining the class warfare of Obama and Biden: if we allow any to be exploited (wealthy or not), then we are allowing all to be exploited.

Unlike many of my fellow Germans, I am usually not sensitive to nazi comparisons (I must confess: I am a fan of Seinfeld’s soup nazi). However, this one struck me as so inappropriate that I decided to write a letter to the editor. Comparing the systematic extermination of political and ideological opponents with any type of tax policy is going too far.

Here is the short comment I wrote to the paper:

Congratulations, Peter. By making a grotesque nazi comparison in the last paragraph, you managed to lose every ounce of credibility you tried to build up in the entire article before. That, my friend, takes serious skills only few will ever master.

Quite ironically, your apparent, kafkaesque fear of “communism” was much more a property of national socialism than financial support for society’s most needy members, that you choose to compare so inappropriately with it.

It doesn’t even matter if people follow your–admittedly weak–arguments or not (you may have missed that “richer people pay more” is not an unknown concept even in the US, with a progressive income tax like most countries), if you want to convince, not deceive, people, you first need to get your research straight.

Maybe you shouldn’t have stopped reading that history book of yours after the first page after all.

Writers, please learn a lesson from Peter: Arguing with extremes is hardly ever convincing, in particular if you mess up the comparison. If you have a nazi reference readily available for your next submission to your school’s newspaper, I suggest you leave it in your pocket and consider arguing differently. Chances are people may read, maybe even agree with you, and above all, you avoid making a complete fool of yourself.

Update: Jean Pierre points me to Godwin’s Law, which, in turn, led me to the logical fallacy named “Reductio ad Hitlerum”. Druckenmiller abuses a Nazi comparison in an apparent attempt to avoid rational discussion of the issue at hand.

Update: Tara mentioned an article in today’s edition of the Barometer, entitled “Don’t fall to trappings of Godwin’s law”. Columnist Bill Bradford writes:

“I dislike criticizing fellow Barometer columnists, but Wozich and Druckenmiller deserve it. In fact, I’m not just calling them out, but demanding they have their GOP American flag lapel pins removed and placed in safekeeping until they can prove they are capable of avoiding Godwin’s Law.”

Thanks, Bill, for reminding me that student journalism isn’t completely out of its mind quite yet.

Surfing around on kayak.com for affordable destinations for my planned, hopefully then-deserved post-master’s-thesis vacation, I browsed through the list of travel destinations, glancing over Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, ….

Wait a minute. Cuba?

Sure enough I was curious, so I clicked it and got the following message.

Ah. Everything’s still in order, the trade embargo hasn’t been lifted without my knowledge, Pennsylvania liquor stores are still safe from the invasion of evil Cuban rum, cigar stores can still sell Dominican cigars with the slogan “taste almost like Cubans” with only mildly ridiculing themselves, and kayak.com saved itself from committing treason at the last minute. Phew, time to dry the sweat off my face.