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It's amazing that such deep constitutional change will be achieved with such a slim majority. 48% of British people will be ejected out of the EU essentially ag

• nerfhammer 10y ago
  FPTP makes no difference when there are only two possible options.
  • gnoway 10y ago
    It's surprising that the referendum will pass with a simple majority, though. This seems like a 2/3 or 3/4 kind of decision to me.
    • ghayes 10y ago
      Just for comparison: to pass a US Constitutional Amendment, it requires consent of 2/3 of both houses of Congress and ratification by 3/4 of all US states. Treaties require consent of the President and 2/3 of the Senate.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        And none of those -- even if you assume every representative in every body involved is elected solely based on their position on the issue in question and votes in accordance with the position on which they got elected -- requires even a majority (much less a 2/3 or 3/4 supermajority) in the electorate.
      • reillyse 10y ago
        and the US has the absolute worst recording on changing their constitution. The last amendment (the 27th) was ratified in 1992 and took nearly 203 years to become law. I think they should lower the barriers to getting stuff done.
        • ams6110 10y ago
          Absolutely not. Changing the structural framwork of the nation is not something to be done based on an issue's short term popularity. If the issue can maintain consistent support for a decade or more that's a lot better signal that it might be a good long-term idea.
          • reillyse 10y ago
            Sure, but 2 centuries is a little long.
            • peyton 10y ago
              Is there another current government that's older than 2 centuries? I think we made a tradeoff for stability. Arguably that worked out well.
              • lmm 10y ago
                The UK government is continuous from at least 1688 and arguably earlier.
        • tboettch 10y ago
          What an incredibly misleading statement. Even a minimal review of the history[1] shows that the 27th amendment was not under consideration for 203 years; rather, it was originally proposed in 1789, and interest in it was not revived for roughly 200 years. As to the other amendments[2], 203 years is an extreme and unrepresentative outlier. The original bill of rights took a little over 2 years to ratify, and nearly all of the rest have taken under 1.5 years. The only one to take longer than 3 years was the highly controversial 16th amendment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Ratification_by_the_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Ratified_amendments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unit...
          • 10y ago
      • mhuffman 10y ago
        You do under stand that those 3/4 and 2/3 representatives can all be elected with 51% of the vote right? So if a hot upstart party filled both houses of the Congress with 51% win margins per representative, they can then easily pass a constitutional amendment.
• Yhippa 10y ago
  This is the most shocking thing to me. It's almost non-negliible. It makes me feel slightly better about living in a republic like the US as opposed to a direct democracy.
  • unethical_ban 10y ago
    It's technically a non binding referendum, and the UK is not a direct democracy. And you can't have something other than FPTP for a two choice decision. Unless you raise the barrier for change.
  • Someone 10y ago
    This is not direct democracy. This referendum is not legally binding. In theory, the government could ignore this result. However, all major parties have stated they would follow the result. There will be discussion about how soon to file the request to leave, though (actually, that is being discussed on the BBC right now. Problem is that the rules say that, after the request is made, a country must leave within two years. It may be smarter to make sure one can comply with that schedule before formally applying for an exit. Also, they were talking about timing the formal request w.r.t. upcoming elections in France and Germany)
  • hkjgkjy 10y ago
    It's not direct democracy though. If the people were to vote War/no war it would have been a different thing.
• jeffwass 10y ago
  I've heard yesterday that the referendum itself is non-binding, and that Parliament is still in charge of the final decision. Further Parliamentary lawmakers are supposedly mostly pro-Remain, so given the slim margin of victory it's not clear what will ultimately happen.
  • Raticide 10y ago
    While it's not legally binding it would be political suicide for the government to go against the referendum. There's zero chance of them doing that.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • jeffwass 10y ago
    Backing up my response with a snippet from the BBC's referendum FAQ : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887 Could MPs block an EU exit if Britain votes for it? Michael, from East Sussex asks an intriguing question - could the necessary legislation pass the Commons if all SNP and Lib Dems, nearly all Labour and many Conservative MPs were in favour of staying? The answer is that technically MPs could block an EU exit - but it would be seen as political suicide to go against the will of the people as expressed in a referendum. The referendum result is not legally binding - Parliament still has to pass the laws that will get Britain out of the 28 nation bloc, starting with the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act. The withdrawal agreement would also have to be ratified by Parliament - the House of Lords and/or the Commons could vote against ratification, according to a House of Commons library report. It adds: "If the Commons resolves against ratification, the treaty can still be ratified if the Government lays a statement explaining why the treaty should nonetheless be ratified and the House of Commons does not resolve against ratification a second time within 21 days (this process can be repeated ad infinitum)." In practice, Conservative MPs who voted to remain in the EU would be whipped to vote with the government. Any who defied the whip would have to face the wrath of voters at the next general election. One scenario that could see the referendum result overturned, is if MPs forced a general election and a party campaigned on a promise to keep Britain in the EU, got elected and then claimed that the election mandate topped the referendum one. Two thirds of MPs would have to vote for a general election to be held before the next scheduled one in 2020.
• ap3 10y ago
  What about those that were joined against their will? Politics is violence: 51% vs 49%
  • dangjc 10y ago
    No, politics is a process to resolve disputes without violence. There should be a supermajority required to decide something so fundamental, and absent that, there should be a compromise found that satisfies people 70/30 rather than splitting the country 51/49.
    • icebraining 10y ago
      Thing is, you can't require a supermajority from both sides; if you say that 70% is needed to validate a "Leave" vote, you're essentially saying that 31% is enough for a "Remain" vote. Requiring a supermajority is just privileging the side that prefers the status quo.
      • leot 10y ago
        > "Requiring a supermajority is just privileging the side that prefers the status quo." Rather, requiring a supermajority is to privilege the status quo, period. There are benefits to stability, no matter how it's constituted. These benefits are codified through mechanisms like supermajority votes. A more rational referendum would have been a far more serious endeavor, perhaps one in which the population voted multiple times. Big changes should, in general, not be easy to make.
        • Kequc 10y ago
          It's going to take 2-3 years before the UK is out of the EU, that is in no way simple. The referendum was only called after decades of political squabbling over the issue and Cameron was extremely confident in putting the question to rest. You are zooming in on one night and ignoring everything that has happened before and what is to happen after.
      • peyton 10y ago
• cisstrd 10y ago
  That's what a democracy is all about, isn't it? Isn't it insane how close the race between G.W. Bush and Al Gore was in 2000? Consider the consequences of that decision for a moment. And the voter turnout was only 51.2% in that election, not ~70%. Saying that in the end a small amount of voters make all the difference, that's true in so many cases... At least regarding the Brexit-vote no one can complain that there wasn't a discussion about the issues, everyone spoke out, politicians, musicians, actors, companies, banks, ... and the people were bombarded with information and arguments for months. And the people have spoken. (Others have pointed out that this is not legally binding, true, but it's certainly going to happen. There is no other viable way at this point)
  • quadrangle 10y ago
    Absolutely not. Democracy means decisions made by the people. There's NOTHING about the concept of Democracy that requires using THE WORST possible method of decision-making, i.e. majority rule yes/no. There's all sorts of other ways to make collective decisions such as score voting, consensus, requiring approval from a combination of stakeholders (such as in a case like this requiring that all parts of the UK all approve), and so on. Majority rule brings tyranny of the majority and is the worst way to run a democracy.
    • randyrand 10y ago
      Score voting does not really work with 2 choices. Requiring all 'parts' of the UK to agree would not work well either. Do you do it by state? County? City? Person? If by state, why? 100% required for change means its tyrany of the minority. So it's really no better. The problem is we don't know of a better way than FPTP for decisions like these.
      • makomk 10y ago
        In reality, staying in or leaving the EU is a lot more complicated than a simple two-way choice. The two most obvious paths for exit - leaving the free trade area altogether and somehow joining the EFTA and retaining free trade - have less in common with each other than they do with remaining in the EU. Then there's the issue of what to do if we can't meet the Leave campaign's promises, which seems almost certain as they're self-contradictory and beyond optimistic, but couldn't be guaranteed even if they were more reasonable since so much depends on negotiations with the rest of Europe.
• verroq 10y ago
  That's not true, the turnout is 76%. So the remaining 24% don't care. 0.51 * 0.76 + 0.24 = 0.62 So the majority of the population 62% are happy with decision.
  • dangjc 10y ago
    You can't add non voters like that because you could also say 0.49 * 0.76 + 0.34 = 71.2% do not support change.
    • verroq 10y ago
      Yeah but UK has voted to leave. If they voted remain then certainly we can say that. The non-voters don't care, so they are happy either way.
      • peyton 10y ago
        Saying all non-voters are happy is a stretch. There are a lot of reasons somebody might not vote. Health, money, time, negligence, etc.
    • zfcgch 10y ago
      It'd actually be 0.24. (Or 24%.)
    • timv 10y ago
      > You can't add non voters like that ... because 0.76 + 0.34 = 1.1
      • verroq 10y ago
        I derped on the math. But the point remains.
• WillPostForFood 10y ago
  I agree, but it would have been the same either way. ~50% ejected against their will, or ~50% trapped against their will.
• icebraining 10y ago
  Well, 35% will be ejected against their will. The other 28% didn't choose to show what their will was.
• cylinder 10y ago
  Remains to be seen what "leave" really means. All these things must still be voted on and negotiated in Parliament and with EU. My feeling is that it won't be as drastic once the dust settles. The elites in UK don't give up that easily.
• runholm 10y ago
  Everyone in a country will not agree upon anything. This is how democracy works, and to me it seems to be working well. 52% got what they wanted while 48% did not.
• kdamken 10y ago
  1.3 million more people voted to leave. It's funny - if the vote had gone to remain, you wouldn't be complaining about the "slim majority" that voted for them to stay.
• elementalest 10y ago
  It amazes me that such a vote was not compulsory. About 28% (~13m voters) didn't care enough to vote. I suspect that a large majority would have voted to stay if they had to choose. This would likely have resulted in the UK staying in the EU. IMHO, a change from the norm should require a greater majority (60% majority) if the vote is not compulsory.
• eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
  Exactly. I feel like a decision like this should need 60 or 70%.