Daniel Pocock on Good Performance in His EU Election Campaign: Thanking the voters of Midlands-North-West, Ireland
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
Saturday's blog about the European election predicted that after the character attacks on my family and I, especially the attacks in the week of the election, I would probably get the lowest number of votes.
The returning officer announced the counts for the first preference votes at approximately 10:30pm tonight and confirmed that my prediction was correct and I am no longer in contention for a seat.
I want to thank the 524 voters who gave me their first preference and all those people who gave me their second or subsequent preferences.
I want to thank the other candidates and especially emphasize that while we have some differences, we also found numerous things in common, including a passion for Ireland on par with a passion for politics.
Senator Chambers and I have both suffered the problem of stalkers coming to our homes. In my case, I resigned from mentoring in Google Summer of Code in August 2018 and some of the Debian people developed a pathological obsession with denouncing my family and I to employers, clients and now the voters of Ireland.
I want to thank the journalists who have had to work extra hard to remember the names and faces of 27 candidates, a record for this constituency.
I want to thank the election officials who have to carry those massive ballot papers around in the count center. Candidates and our supporters have been looking on in amazement and hoping nobody gets a paper-cut at our expense.
Lessons and achievements from the election campaign
As a consequence of my run for the parliament, various people tried to inquire why these rogue elements of Debian began denouncing my family and I in 2018. Nobody has ever been able to point to any document from that era to prove how and why this gangstalking phenomena was born out of the Debian cult. Rather, the people around that group keep trying to create documents and secret victim drama retrospectively to avoid the inconvenient truth: attacking the family of a volunteer at a time of grief.
Before my nomination, these cowards had been slinking around behind my back telling potential employers, past employers, clients, personal friends and business partners that I have committed some secret crime that nobody can clearly define. By putting myself through the public election process, I drew these cowards out into the open where they repeated their character attacks in public.
Other people are now leaving that group. Nobody wants to be their next victim. By helping people to avoid this group, I am helping people to avoid going further down a path that leads into the Debian suicide cluster.
At the same time, their financial disclosures have revealed the legal fees of over $120,000 to retrospectively make up reasons why they attacked my family at the time my father died. Yet a volunteer drowned at the annual conference because there were insufficient funds to fully cover the cost of the kayak excursion and he couldn't contribute his own money.
Election regulations in Ireland set a maximum limit of EUR 230,000 for a campaign budget. The sum of money spent by rogue elements of Debian on this anti-campaign, $120,000, is approximately half the authorised amount for a real campaign.
Moreover, this $120,000 was laundered through a bank account operated by Software in the Public Interest, Inc in the United States. Therefore, it is foreign influence against an Irish election candidate.
Most voluntary groups only want to give thanks to contributors who have given decades of service. Voluntary groups that intrude into every other part of our lives and seek to sabotage our ability to pursue social and career opportunities outside the group are incredibly unhealthy and can only be thought of as cults.
Most significantly, more people have started coming forward to give me information about their bad experiences with the Debian harassment culture and similar groups in the world of free, open source software development.
General notes about the elections in Europe and Ireland's local elections
Before the elections, the media had predicted resentment of the current Irish government would benefit rival parties and independents.
In reality, many voters who traditionally voted for the main parties Fine Gael and Fianna Fail simply voted the same as before. Therefore, apart from some extra votes for the far right, those predictions were largely wrong.
People have subsequently tried to explain this vote as an expression of enthusiasm for the current coalition government.
I don't feel this is a correct interpretation of the results. I feel that the behavior of the voters could be explained in terms of war-time voting, whereby voters are choosing the status quo. Choosing the status quo does not imply an enormous enthusiasm for the status quo, it implies voters do not want to risk trying other alternatives at that particular point in time. Similar results occurred in the past, for example Roosevelt's victory in 1944 and George W Bush's victory in 2004 during the Iraq crisis. While the actual wars are not on Irish territory, the presence of refugees and constant news coverage of both Ukraine and Middle East conflict have contributed to the mindset of a war-time election.
Final remarks
The real result of this election won't be known until 2029 when we look back and see what the elected candidates actually achieved for Ireland. Although nobody has achieved a quota so far, I wish the winners well from the moment their identities are confirmed.
I want to emphasize how thrilled I am for the 524 people who chose to go down to the polling station and put a 1 next to my name. Voting is not mandatory in Ireland so each and every one of you could have simply stayed at home. I understand that many of you are following my blogs or you liked something that I said in one of the public meetings or radio broadcasts.
Many people have approached me in person or by email and confided in me about the challenges in your lives and your hopes for the future. The confidence that you had in me to listen and potentially help is a greater honor than holding any political office. █