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September 23rd, 2009

Election Committee gives okay for referendum on gender equality in voting

By MTI

Hungary’s National Election Committee (OVB) on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for the collection of signatures for a referendum initiative which seeks to ensure that election lists are composed of an equal number of men and women.

Under the initiative, all party lists compiled for the European, general and local elections should contain names of men and women alternately.

For a binding referendum to be called, at least 200,000 valid signatures should be collected by the initiators. A referendum is valid if a majority of all registered voters but at least 25 percent vote for either the one or the other alternative.

OVB rejected the other initiative on its agenda, namely that Parliament should ban abortion, citing ambiguity. The committee found it unclear whether the question referred to all forms of abortion or only to induced abortions.

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4 Comments

  1. mc says:
    September 23, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    IMHO this is bullshit because the setting of
    “targets” only ever results in mediocrity. Instead
    the best candidates should be put forward on merit
    and merit only. If that results in an all woman
    list, then so be it. However if we have to have a
    “token this or a token that” in the name of equality
    there is practically no logical conclusion to this
    matter because every part of social spectrum will
    want inclusion. This type of mindset has caused
    untold destruction to Britain for example and I
    would never like to see it anywhere ever again: it
    is social engineering at its worst.

  2. david says:
    September 23, 2009 at 7:23 pm

    Crazy idea that it must be 50|50. What next? Every third person should be Roma? Every sixth be disabled? Every tenth person must be a wine maker with at least one glass eye and a limp on Sundays.:-):)

  3. Viking says:
    September 23, 2009 at 7:54 pm

    Norway introduced a law 2004 prescribing a fixed allocation of board members according to sex.
    Translated to Hungary the law would be valid on all State owned companies and all ZRTs.
    At least 40% of each sex needs to be represented in the board.
    We all know what happened to Norway and its big companies after that.

  4. david says:
    September 23, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    To make it really fair it should be 52% woman and 48% men to reflect the population split. Unless we have a new sports day to even up the numbers. Lady Cull Day. 200000 of these surplus women can be removed. Just think of them as seals in heals and grab your club.