Countdown to the EU Elections – 1 Week to Go!

And just like that, the elections are upon us. One week from now, people in the UK and Holland will finally begin casting their votes in these bloody elections we’ve all been desperately “th!nking” about for the past few months with such vigorous, sweaty and unconstrained excitement. Alternatively (and anticlimactically) perhaps all of Europe will, in record numbers, not bother to vote.

Either way, the TH!NK ABOUT IT competition must soon come to an end, winners must be announced and prizes must be parcelled out. So congratulations to you all. I mean it. I’ve really enjoyed the ride.

You’ve come a long way since the early days of the project when Frank wondered if TH!NK might be dying. Since then, you’ve conducted interviews with professional journalists, senior members of government and MEPs. You’ve experimented with the medium to produce videos and “docudramas.” You’ve created a nascent little online community of bloggers and commenters, pondering European politics and thinking hard about this great, big intergovernmental/quasi-federal experiment that is being constructed all around us.

I hope you’ve all got a taste for EU blogging and that you’re no longer just doing it just for the sake of the competition prizes (well deserved as they may be). Surely the measure of success for TH!NK will be how many of you continue writing after the incentives have all been taken away. The point of the project is not (or at least, it shouldn’t be) to increase voter turn-out in the upcoming elections. That is far too ambitious a goal for a group of amateur bloggers.

So what good is TH!NK?

Well, I’m not absolutely sure… but perhaps we have a community now. We’ve been talking, communicating, arguing, thinking and listening to one another’s lunatic opinions for the last few months. True, the active community is not enormous (although it does include outsiders, such as me!) but in almost any online community there will be more people lurking than there will be actually posting or commenting. In any case, we at least have the beginnings of a little blogosphere.

So let’s use it. Let’s take it for a test-drive. Let’s do something original and exciting with it. Let’s do something the mainstream media would neither be willing nor able to do.

Think of it this way: there is, right now, a TH!NK blogger in every country of the EU. We have complete coverage. We have bloggers in the big cities and bloggers in the little towns. In the cities, in the towns and in the countryside. Now the elections are upon us. So how are we going to cover them?

Here’s my suggestion: I’m going to devote my guest blogging slot to helping to plan and organise some sort of co-ordinated effort to cover the elections next week. Something that will take advantage of all the strengths we have as bloggers. This could be live-blogging and translating the results as they come in, or holding a simultaneous party in all 27 member-states, or interviewing friends, relatives and members of the public to gather reactions to the results.

June 4th, when the UK and the Netherlands vote, will be our warm-up performance. June 7th, when most countries go to the polls, will be the headline event. I’d love to see some sort of blogging effort from across the entire EU blogosphere, not just from TH!NK bloggers. A blogging event covering the results as they come in live from across the Union, finding out people’s reactions in the street (where they will surely be gathering in great crowds to defy the low turn-out predictions) and celebrating or commiserating together.

So what I want you to think about is this: does my idea appeal to you? Would you support it? Do you have any suggestions?

This is a bit of an experiment on my part, and if nobody supports it then it will fall apart completely. But if enough of you agree and we can get a group of volunteers together, then we can hopefully organise something exciting and interesting over the next few days, just in time for the elections.

So what do you TH!NK?

Latest posts by JoeLitobarski

• What Future for the EU Blogosphere?
• The EU Elections are Something to Celebrate – Even if You Hate The EU
• A Joint Party to Celebrate the Elections? 6 Days to Go!

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