Talk:2012 Croatian European Union membership referendum

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Good article2012 Croatian European Union membership referendum has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Did You KnowIn the newsOn this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
June 18, 2012Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on January 22, 2012.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the Croatian EU accession referendum is the first referendum held in Croatia (EU and Croatian flags pictured) since its independence?
In the news A news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on January 23, 2012.
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on January 22, 2022, and January 22, 2023.

Infobox[edit]

The election result is not an infobox its the result template, there is a seperate infobox for results that summarise with details in the section.(Lihaas (talk) 21:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)).[reply]

Ballot[edit]

I've uploaded the image of the ballot, it's here. GregorB (talk) 01:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I added it to the results sections provisionally - anyway I'll expand the section once all results are in, probably Monday.--Tomobe03 (talk) 01:42, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Electorate vs. population[edit]

The info box gives the electorate as 4,504,765, whereas the the Croatia article gives the population as 4,290,612. Is this an error or is there no-one in Croatia that is ineligible to vote (e.g. children?) --RA (talk) 18:25, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The data is correct in both articles and the discrepancy is a very talked about issue in Croatia. The electorate figure comes from lists of voters maintained by the electoral commission, which hasn't been updated in years and is thought to contain somewhere between 750,000 to 900,000 people who died since the list was created in the 1990s. In addition, there is around 250,000 Croats living in Bosnia and Herzegovina who hold dual Croatian-Bosnian citizenship and who are also eligible to vote in all elections (although their turnout is traditionally rather low). Although the voters lists obviously contain too many people, past governments simply ignored the issue in past parliamentary elections as only falsely presenting oneself as a dead person at a voting station and voting under the assumed identity would constitute a fraud. But this is a bigger issue with referendums which up until recently had to record a turnout of at least 50%+1 of all "registered" voters (that is, the official electorate figure) for the result to be considered binding by parliament. Precisely because of this problem, the law was recently changed and referendums no longer have a minimum turnout threshold to be considered valid. Hence the EU referendum's turnout is in reality significantly bigger than the officially stated 44 percent - but until the official electorate numbers get updated we can only speculate by how much. Timbouctou (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
None of the above. Croatian diaspora has right to vote in Croatian elections, i.e. they form a part of the electorate, but not a part of the population of Croatia. That part of the electorate exceeds 400,000. Furthermore, during the last few years there were allegations that the voter registers are not maintained properly (deceased persons not removed from the register). That was indirectly confirmed by 2011 census which led to estimates of up to several hundred thousand voters who died and were never removed from the registry. Decreasing turnout in Croatian elections and referndums is in part attributed to increasing number of such voters.--Tomobe03 (talk) 19:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On a further note, if one were to reduce the electorate by 900,000 excess voters, and ignore the diaspora 400,000 electorate, turnout would be about 61%, exactly as predicted by most opinion polls (which also took into account Croatia without diaspora).--Tomobe03 (talk) 19:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'd say that is a good estimate of the real turnout figure. To clarify - everyone holding Croatian citizenship gets listed automatically in the electorate once they reach 18 years of age. They are also supposed to be struck from the registry once they die. However, since data is supplied by local administration, the system can break down in cases when people move away from their place of birth or change residence multiple times without registering the change with the police (their death certificates are then sent to the voting registry but since the data does not match the data from their birth certificates (or the data from their last registered residence) they remain listed regardless). So in essence a certain percentage of dead persons never get struck from the registry and over the years their number grew, which then results in distorted electorate figures. Timbouctou (talk) 20:07, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, definitely a good question, so perhaps a note that explains all this might be useful... GregorB (talk) 20:21, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea, but finding proper sources is another thing. Otherwise this is a very compelling OR... I'll do it ASAP :) --Tomobe03 (talk) 20:30, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This just out: Stvarno stanje: U Hrvatskoj je glasalo 61, a ne 43,5 posto građana. GregorB (talk) 09:13, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Now, how cool is that to have Večernji list run an article on a topic we discussed yesterday and to have arrived at the same percentage (61%) as well?--Tomobe03 (talk) 11:36, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Almost like on-demand sourcing... And no, I don't work for Večernji list... :-) GregorB (talk) 12:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Percentages[edit]

The percentages in the lead and in the results section are different. I understand that in the lead is accounted as percentage of the valid votes, and in the result section is out of total. Since the number of invalid votes is relatively minute, the differences are not enormous. However, there might be need to clarify that in the leading template with some sort of a note. 66.67% out of the valid votes, or 66.27% out of the total. Otherwise, the reader will be distrusted. BloodIce (talk) 13:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good observation. It's fixed now, using a custom template, but the article really benefited in clarity and the map got a scale with a key in the process. Thanks for the feedback!--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, Zagreb County is marked on the map belonging to 60-65% group rather than 65-70% group even though its result is indicated as 65.00% in favour because the actual result is 64.996% in favour, and 65.00% is simply the figure rounded off to two decimal points.--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:24, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Very good job on the map! Now it has a range, which is even more informative, than simple "yes" and "no" answer :-). Well done. BloodIce (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifications (copyediting)[edit]

  • The constitution requires that a referendum is held on any political union involving surrendering any part of national sovereignty. Since the EU has a parliament which enacts legislation to which the national legislation must conform this particular case falls into those criteria for a referendum. Conversely joining NATO did not require a referendum. The constitution does not cite any specific cases for which a referendum is required.
  • Leading/mainstream parties are those having more than a single seat in the national parliament. Perhaps a more specific phrase would be appropriate instead.
  • I think leading works for the first instance; I have replaced "mainstream" with a fuller description. Allens (talk | contribs) 23:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The current phraseology will need changing slightly on 9 March, then. Allens (talk | contribs) 23:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suppose far-right political groups oppose the accession, however the parties concerned here are not generally viewed neither as far-right (in sense of extremist views regarding xenophobia, territorial claims towards neighbouring countries etc) nor center-right (mostly because of opposition to the EU and the ICTY). Since political programmes of the largest political parties in Croatia (in terms of parliamentary seats won) were largely the same during the last parliamentary elections (2011) and I think they would all be grouped as centre-left or centre-right. Still this all is far too long an explanation for the matter at hand, so perhaps there would be a better way to phrase this more neutrally.--Tomobe03 (talk) 20:28, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've altered it to "some" right-wing politicians, since no source seems to claim that every right-wing politician in the country oppose/opposed it... With that, the alteration on "perceived" (which tends to imply appearance as opposed to reality), and the modification on "mainstream", I think it's a reasonably neutral description. Look good to you? Allens (talk | contribs) 23:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Flag of Croatia & Council of Europe[edit]

The image captioned "Flag of Croatia flown in front of the Council of Europe building in Strasbourg" appears to be a picture mainly of the Japanese flag flying at half-mast surrounded by the European flags doing the same. Allens (talk | contribs) 02:20, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. I'll see if there's a more appropriate image available.--Tomobe03 (talk) 10:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Further clarifications[edit]

  • Voter register used for the referendum is the same one used for general elections. Additional registration ahead of the referendum was necessary only if one had moved since the last vote.--Tomobe03 (talk) 11:03, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The six HDSSB and six Labour MPs did not in fact suggest voting against the referendum proposal, but they did not support the parliamentary decision to hold the referendum because they wanted the referendum to be held at a later date (a month or two later than proposed).--Tomobe03 (talk) 11:09, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The most coherent objection and reason for postponement of the referendum stated by the trade unions (and supported by GONG) was that the trade unions had an agreement with the previous government to hold a referendum on conditions for calling of a referendum - number of voter endorsements required to make a referendum legally required and period allowed to collect the endorsements - colloquially known in Croatia as "referendum on referendum". This referendum on referendum was allegedly agreed to be held on the same day as the EU membership referendum, and subsequent dropping of the second referendum from agenda caused the trade unions to demand the postponement. source --Tomobe03 (talk) 11:17, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • IIRC, the conditions for citizens proposing a referendum are currently rather high - something like 10% of the voters with signatures gathered within 15 days? Some mention possibly should be made of the unions' reason for objection - perhaps in a footnote? BTW, I have recently discovered the {{efn}} template - it's very nice for things like this, since it allows one to put a reference inside the footnote. I was thinking about it as a possibility for the Parliament of Croatia article, since one of the footnotes has a reference inside of it. Allens (talk | contribs) 00:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Voting in hospitals etc. is not possible (source) - interestingly voting is organized in prisons though. Persons traveling on the day of the voting may register and vote in whichever other city they want (including abroad) and vote.--Tomobe03 (talk) 11:25, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm surprised the Pensioners' parties weren't protesting loudly about the absentee ballots thing... Allens (talk | contribs) 00:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The ballot question translation in the image caption is more literal than the one in the body text i.e. essentially the translation in the caption follows the original more closely.--Tomobe03 (talk) 11:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first instance of the question "Do you support..." is an accurate translation of the prime minister's announcement what the question shall be. The later one "Are you for..." is an accurate translation of the question as it appeared on the ballots.--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:24, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cited legal issues warranting postponing of the referendum were (source) specified as pertaining to undefined procedure for voter registration outside their residence and unclear directions for voting abroad (note: these were resolved later on as described in the text), no provisions defining specifically composition of electoral commissions, no provisions for monitoring of the referendum by partisan, non-partisan and foreign monitors, no legal provisions regarding funding of the referendum since the 2011 state budget did not provide for the referendum expenses, no provisions on funding of the campaign or campaign itself (its contents), and absence of "election silence" - i.e. campaigning was not restricted on the day of the referendum and the preceding day. These six issues were highlighted by GONG, and some of them were resolved or remedied before the referendum, but some were left as-is (e.g. election silence). --Tomobe03 (talk) 12:04, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've gone over these, and did have a query regarding these electoral commissions. Allens (talk | contribs) 00:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Promotional vs informational campaigns[edit]

The governmental "campaign" is stated to have been informational in nature, or at least as stating itself to be so (in which case "campaign" may be the wrong word to use - it tends to imply a political campaign, not an informational one). There also seems to have been a promotional campaign by the political parties supporting the referendum. To what degree can these be said to be separate, or alternatively to what degree were they interlinked? Allens (talk | contribs) 00:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, no individual political party supporting a yes vote had a pro-referendum campaign beyond the position made public in press interviews and reported elsewhere in media. Opponents of joining the EU held rallies attended by few people, printed leaflets, advertised a little bit and their position was reported regularly by media. Government funded "campaign" consisted of TV advertisements featuring government officials and opposition leaders saying they support the EU membership, advertisements pointing out several benefits of the membership, advertisements featuring farmers, businesspeople etc from countries which recently acceded to the EU saying how their lives benefited (from Hungary, Slovakia and Poland if I recollect correctly), printing and distributing a brochure outlining changes brought by the membership and hosting roundtable discussions attended by government ministers, as well as setting up a telephone information service where it was possible to ask questions and presumably get some answers on the topic. Overall, none of the above really had any significant impact on public opinion as may be observed in opinion poll results during past few months or even years. The government funded campaign was indeed designed to be informative in sense that the materials/ads tried to communicate consequences of the membership instead of simply urging voters to support the referendum. Whether all consequences - benefits and shortcomings (if any) were presented entirely, proportionally, and without any bias is quite hard to say: Even though benefits were made very prominent by the campaign, few drawbacks or obligations towards the union were communicated, although to be fair that may well be the result of most of those coming into effect during the accession negotiations and harmonization of national legislation with the acquis. Besides, those opposing the membership failed to point out any specific drawback or obligation not covered by the government campaign, concentrating instead on loss of sovereignty, membership cost (actual money paid towards membership), EU support to the ICTY, and fear that foreigners will rush to buy anything of value in Croatia - so I think the governmental campaign was likely a fair presentation of the matter, but there's no way to reference this until a newspaper runs an analysis of the campaign some day.
The draft treaty text appeared in media (online) on the eve of the signing in 2011, and as official government document days after the treaty was prepared to be signed (source) in September 2011. The summary was made and published in addition presumably because the treaty is about 200 pages long and unfortunately few people can be bothered to read 20 let alone 200 pages of text.--Tomobe03 (talk) 01:25, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the text of the treaty is 360 pages long (at least as a PDF).--Tomobe03 (talk) 01:33, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

International reaction: Bosnia?[edit]

What was Bosnia/Herzegovina's reaction to the referendum's outcome? Allens (talk | contribs) 13:31, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ha! Interesting point. I had to google that a bit because its reaction did not receive that much coverage. Interestingly though, Vjekoslav Bevanda, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina (prime minister) at the time of the referendum (still in office), said that he voted for the Croatian EU membership (being a Croatian citizen as well) and subsequently stated that he hopes Bosnia and Herzegovina will become an EU candidate in 2012.--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:53, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In addition, Milorad Dodik, president of the Republika Srpska - one of political entities comprising Bosnia and Herzegovina - urged Croats to vote yes days ahead of the referendum saying that Croatian accession to the EU is important for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.--Tomobe03 (talk) 14:11, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, there it is: The referendum result was welcomed by leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina at a trilateral meeting near Sarajevo on 3 February.--Tomobe03 (talk) 14:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Daniel Srb - pronunciation?[edit]

This is not a part of the copyediting, but due to my curiosity - how in the world is his last name pronounced? I tagged his Wikipedia entry as needing a pronunciation guide... Allens (talk | contribs) 20:50, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That surname is near-homophone with word "Serb" matching pronunciation of the latter exactly, except the "r" is pronounced short: /srb/ instead of /səːb/. As far as lack of any vowels is concerned, r may be syllabic in Croatian.--Tomobe03 (talk) 21:30, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much! Fascinating - I had read about syllabic non-vowels previously but had no real idea how they would work, but putting together the Serbo-Croatian language page with my (minimal) knowledge of Spanish tells me something of how the "r" is pronounced. Allens (talk | contribs) 22:17, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Close to being done with copyedit[edit]

It looks like I'm close to being done with the copyedit. The only real remaining question is whether to move some material into the Notes section; your thoughts? GONG's reasons (beside the two mentioned earlier, namely voting away from one's legal residence and absentee ballots) for asking for a delay might be among the material to move (or might not; I am unsure). It's material that needs to be in there someplace, but maybe not in the main text? Allens (talk | contribs) 21:04, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the piece of information is required in the article, and that it may safely be moved to the notes section. If there were not the notes section already present in the article I'd prefer not to add it specially for this part of material. On the other hand, the information presented as it is now does seem to fit nicely with the surrounding text, and there seems to be no obvious upside from a move - so I'm inclined to say if it ain't broke, don't fix it and keeping things as they are now.--Tomobe03 (talk) 10:51, 11 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good thought... I've gone over it about three more times, the first two finding a few things and fixing almost all of them, the third time not spotting anything else. The only thing remaining that I can see is a need for a translation of "Vijeće za Hrvatsku – NE U EU". (I'm guessing the last part means something like "NO ON EU" and the first part is something about "Croatia" or "Croatian" or "Croatians"?) Allens (talk | contribs) 15:15, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The first part is "Council for Croatia", while "NE U EU" is a short way to say "NO TO JOINING EU", (ne [ići] u EU - don't go to EU) - literally that would translate as "NOT IN EU" and perhaps that would be best translated as "NO TO EU" after all.--Tomobe03 (talk) 17:10, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, and looks like I'm done - good to work with you again! I may take a crack at the Geography of Croatia one in a bit, although geography isn't my strong point. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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