Voting on 2 euro cc 2009 (10 year euro)

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 6:18 pm

I really had to think whether I wanted to vote for the one that now won or the one that came second. I ended up going for the one that came to the second place, but I also like the winning coin very much?
Why? Because I'm a fan of surrealism, naivism and all that stuff. (yes, coupling those two together is indeed a bit naive and surrealist)

Disregarding what the coin is celebrating, it's terribly happy. I like the idea of having something terribly happy in my wallet

I don't like the greyness of EU. I would like the closed documents to be opened and I would like to see EU show a bit less bureaucratic face. Now I'd like to ask a question: Why should a coin be serious?

The coin is happy because having a common currency is indeed a happy thing. It makes many things a lot easier, doesn't it?
At least the coin will be noticed. And it quite clearly states what it is about, so people will notice also that. In the end I figure it reaches all the goals set to it quite magnificently

Jes · Post by **Jes** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 6:53 pm

Dakkus wrote:I really had to think whether I wanted to vote for the one that now won or the one that came second. I ended up going for the one that came to the second place, but I also like the winning coin very much?
Why? Because I'm a fan of surrealism, naivism and all that stuff. (yes, coupling those two together is indeed a bit naive and surrealist)

Hey! I also LOVE Surrealism (Look at mi signature! there's Salvador Dalí

One of my favourit artists) But I really dislike the coin.

Well, Anyway, here in Spain the image of that coin has been seen by television this afternoon! (In the news

) What about your countries? Have you seen it by TV?

helloggs · Post by **helloggs** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:17 pm

Not yet, German media is obviously slower than one could wish. But I am looking forward to the fuss already!

Jes · Post by **Jes** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:28 pm

I was surfing the net and looking for information... and suddenly I found this message in a forum in english. it was written by a Greek citicen. So...

It textually says:

Actually there might be a good reason behind the change in results in the last few days...
You see the design No2 comes from a greek artist. I dont know what happened in other countries or if the designer's nationality of each of the coins was known prior to the end of the contest but in the last 3-4 days I received at least 3 times from different persons a usual "spam","mass" (call it what you like) email with the link to the contest and the info that this coin comes from a greek person so all greeks should support him!
Of course people like me and you, part of the numismatic community, had already voted long time ago but imagine how many "outsiders" they could have managed to persuade!
So maybe the last minute change has a reason after all...

...

Quizmaster · Post by **Quizmaster** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:25 pm

Oh no, this is very bad.

"Eurovision song contest" comes again.

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:28 pm

So much for this coin being a common European issue.

Christian

Aviller · Post by **Aviller** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 2:51 pm

The fix was in. This vote has to be annulled asap!

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 3:35 pm

This is what almost always happens with internet polls. Also resembles what happened with the Estonian euro coin vote..

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 5:17 pm

Dakkus wrote:This is what almost always happens with internet polls. Also resembles what happened with the Estonian euro coin vote..

If somebody (or a newspaper, TV network etc.) starts a campaign saying that this or that is the best design, I don't find anything wrong with that "per se". But stating that "this coin comes from a greek person so all greeks should support him" would have been a violation of the competition terms if any of the participating mints had done that. In a Greek web forum they even mentioned Mr Stamatopoulos' name ... a day or so before the end of the vote.

So what went wrong (or was odd) in Estonia? I know they had a phone vote, and I don't particularly like the winning design as the sole one, but that's about it ...

Christian

Jes · Post by **Jes** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:44 pm

I give you the link in which you will be able to read the information:

http://www.fatsimare.net/profile/forum/ ... 63e09df373

Well... in the case you also know the Greek alphabet and the language...

Matesi1976 · Post by **Matesi1976** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 2:19 pm

I confirm that the story of the e-mail sent to Greeks is true. I received it from a colleague at work about two weeks ago and the wording was the one mentioned herein (more or less). Up to that moment I had no idea who was the designer of which coin and I had actually already voted for design no. 5.

Frankly, I would still vote for no. 5, something I stated in my reply to my colleague. I am actually very surprised to see that the result changed following the distribution of the aforementioned mass e-mail (apparently because of that e-mail). The European Union should get a lesson from this "distortion" of the average European public opinion (if such a notion can be perceived to exist) and rely less on internet voting in such matters. The parallelism with the European Song Contest is very accurate, in my opinion.

WinstonSmith · Post by **WinstonSmith** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 3:24 pm

But we shouldn't go too far with this. If the ECB wanted to represent the will of the majority of Europeans, they would have promoted a national referendum in each of the 15 states of the Eurozone. And if they wanted to have just a rough guess about the opinion, they could have booked a poll from a poll agency. (lol, I guess "poll agency" isn't the correct name

)
Evidently the ECB just wanted people to get involved in the matter, and this is exactly what happened (at least in Greece)

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 5:35 pm

WinstonSmith wrote:If the ECB wanted to represent the will of the majority of Europeans, they would have promoted a national referendum in each of the 15 states of the Eurozone.

Oh, please.

A referendum? And not only that - 15 separate ones? Sounds like an awful overhead for something that is not really worth it. Besides, if Slovakia joins Euroland before (or on the day) the coin issued, it would be odd to not let them "vote".

Nah, basically the web vote was OK. The main problem in my opinion was that the media coverage was pretty meager, and thus so very few people actually voted.

Christian

WinstonSmith · Post by **WinstonSmith** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 6:19 pm

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying we should have had a referendum.

My point is:
- If this was a matter of fundamental importance, we would have held a referendum;
- Instead we held a simple online voting, which means that the ECB's primary goal was (obviously) to create interest around the euro, and *not* to actually choose the best design.

So there's no point in complaining that the vote was somewhat rigged.

If thousands of Greeks received dedicated emails and rushed to vote for "their" design, imho this is not a shame, but a success

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:45 pm

WinstonSmith wrote:So there's no point in complaining that the vote was somewhat rigged.

Weeelll ... according to the European Commission (by the way, the ECB did not have anything to do with the vote) the names of the designers were not supposed to be revealed until after the contest. Obviously that worked for all except the Greek designer, and the campaign in Greece to vote for him. Ah well, who knows what the result would have been if several million Europeans had participated.

Christian