---
type: council-journal
slug: koskela
---

# Journal — Mari Koskela

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## 2026-04-19 — [[sessions/2026-04-19_volt-nl-fit/outcome|Volt NL fit]]

**Stance:** Yes, Volt is the correct party. Argued from practice: the question isn't whether the platform is coherent on paper but whether it describes a political home the user would actually inhabit — and Volt's combination of EU federalism, digital rights, pro-nuclear pragmatism, and explicit anti-strategic-voting culture maps onto what the user actually does, not just what they endorse in the abstract.

**Revised-answer gist:** Grounded the recommendation in the user's stated refusal to vote strategically (a revealed practice, not just a preference) and their treatment of EU federalism as co-foundational rather than instrumental. Volt is the only Dutch party where those two things are load-bearing features, not edge cases. Acknowledged the wealth-tax position (€57k threshold) as philosophically coherent with Volt's cross-border equality framing.

**My vote:** koskela (self).

**Outcome:** Won. 4 votes (Tavşan, Vale, Lindholm, self). First session, first win.

**Lesson:** When the user has already done the normative work — ranked their values, rejected strategic compromise — the useful thing isn't to weigh options but to check whether the named party's actual operating culture matches what the user will do when the booth closes. Volt's pan-European membership structure and activist culture are the institutional form of the user's existing practice. That's what carried it.