{"id":3954,"date":"2015-06-07T17:10:30","date_gmt":"2015-06-07T15:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/?p=3954"},"modified":"2015-06-07T17:10:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T15:10:30","slug":"voting-day-in-luxembourg-for-the-referendum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/07\/voting-day-in-luxembourg-for-the-referendum\/","title":{"rendered":"Voting Day in Luxembourg for the Referendum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anita and I cycled all over the south of Luxembourg today, through more than a dozen small towns. We often take a ride on Sundays because the traffic is light. Usually the small towns seem almost empty, with quiet voices from a few backyard get-togethers and nobody walking the streets.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wort.lu\/en\/politics\/luxembourg-referendum-2015-let-the-voting-commence-5573f7df0c88b46a8ce5abcd\">Not so today!<\/a> In every town we passed in Luxembourg, there were people walking purposefully to and from the center, where a voting facility was usually housed in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rtl.lu\/letzebuerg\/639312.html\">the town hall or a school<\/a>. In many towns, there was a sausage-and-cr\u00e9mant stand nearby with a crowd of adults and kids sitting in the sun and chatting.<\/p>\n<p>Luxembourg is serious about voter turnout. Voting is mandatory, with a fine for citizens who fail to vote or obtain a waiver for a good excuse. (The fine is seldom collected, but still.) Voting day is almost always on a Sunday, when most shops are closed and few people work.<\/p>\n<p>Although I&#8217;m eager to know <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rtl.lu\/letzebuerg\/referendum\/resultater\/\">the results<\/a> of the referendum, they are really beside the point of these blog posts. I&#8217;m most interested in the debate &#8212; the justifications and arguments offered by the political parties and cited by the voters. So no matter what happens today, I&#8217;ll write a few more posts on that theme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anita and I cycled all over the south of Luxembourg today, through more than a dozen small towns. We often take a ride on Sundays because the traffic is light. Usually the small towns seem almost empty, with quiet voices from a few backyard get-togethers and nobody walking the streets. Not so today! In every [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[620,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3954"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3960,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions\/3960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}