The Bavarian Pirate Party win seats in Local Elections | PirateTimes

Posted: March 19, 2014/Under: Andrew Reitemeyer, Creator, News/By: Andrew Reitemeyer

The Bavarian Pirate Party win seats in Local Elections

March 19, 2014 · by Andrew Reitemeyer · in Pirate Party News

This post is also available in: French

The Bavarian Pirates expected a difficult time in the most conservative state in Germany, Bavaria. In the federal elections they could only get 1.9% and similar disappointing results in the state elections.

The hurdles for participating in the municipal elections is very high and many Pirate candidates chose to run on open or shared candidate lists with parties that they shared policy objectives with. There were Pirates running in 38 municipalities on the ballot. That is not many, as a total of nearly 40,000 elected representatives were newly elected in 71 counties and more than 2,000 communities. The results were disappointing in that in the whole of Bavaria only 10 Pirates managed to win a mandate. They are:

Electorate	Pirate
Local council Gauting	Tobias Mc Fadden
City council Fürstenfeldbruck	Andi Ströhle
City council Regensburg	Tina Lorenz
City council Erding	Stefan Lorenz (via Linke / Pirates)
City council Bad Brückenau	Benjamin Wildenauer (via SPD)
City council München	Thomas Ranft
City council Nürnberg	Michael Bengl
City council Aschaffenburg	Johannes Büttner (via Community Initiative)
District council Main-Spessart	Jürgen Neuwirth (via ÖDP / Pirates / Linke)
Local council Burgkunstadt	Marcus Dinglreiter (via Citizens Initiative)

The election turnout was very low in general. In some parts of Augsburg only between 16 and 20 percent went to the ballot boxes. In Munich it was 42%.

This article was based on an article by Michael Renner the acting chief editor of our sister Pirate new site Flaschenpost.

Featured image: CC BY-SA PPDE

About Andrew Reitemeyer

I joined the Pirate Party of Lower Saxony in Germany in April 2012, once I found out that non citizens were welcome to join and become active members of the Party.
I joined the Pirate Times soon after it was started as a proof reader and am now an editor and author. Since then I have returned to my native New Zealand and joined the Pirate Party of New Zealand.
Politically I come from the libertarian left and have, up to now, not regarded any political party as having a solution for the democratic deficit that envelops the world. With the advent of the Pirate Party, which truly embraces grass roots democracy, I have found a political home. The Pirate Times is a way I can contribute to furthering the Pirate Movement around the world.
Skype: frithogar