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Brexit has definitely changed my mind on one thing - majority vote in a referendum is bad. Or rather, the percentage vote required should be proportional to the

Brexit has definitely changed my mind on one thing - majority vote in a referendum is bad. Or rather, the percentage vote required should be proportional to the gravity of the question. Referendums are rare, so most votes should require well over 50%. I did not used to think this. In 2007 British Columbia had a referendum on switching to proportional representation from FPTP. The result was like 52% in favour, but the government had set a minimum of 55%,so it did not pass. I thought it was a a terrible idea at the time (the people had spoken! Democracy!), but I don't think so anymore. Another example is the 1995 Quebec independence referendum, which "stay" narrowly won, but afterwards the federal government passed an act making it much harder to pass a referendum. Basically, the bigger the question, the longer and larger implications it has, the more it has to be thought through, the more consensus there should be. The US constitution has features like this when it requires large majorities to pass amendments etc. As an engineering metaphor, having a fast-response system without any dampening can lead to out of control oscillations, which ultimately destroy your system.

Kalium 8y ago
California is a good example of what happens when pretty much any policy can be set by simple majority vote. The result is, to be kind about it, a lot of room for improvement.
- isoskeles 8y ago
  It feels like the people here don't know that the state issuing "bonds" means it's taking on debt. I lived in San Francisco for a while, and I don't remember the numbers and I know you can look this up, but it felt like I was voting No on up to dozen different bond proposals every two years. Doesn't matter, they always pass. (To clarify, I also don't remember if these were always up to a majority vote, but they almost always pass unless it's for something Californians don't like for whatever reason.)
  - InitialLastName 8y ago
    > It feels like the people here don't know that the state issuing "bonds" means it's taking on debt. It more than feels like it; most people don't know that. As with other things, we can blame the total lack of financial education in our education system.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- greeneggs 8y ago
  It isn't. Since Proposition 13 passed in 1978 (by a simple majority), California has required 2/3 majority votes in the legislature to increase taxes, and 2/3 majority votes for local elections to increase taxes.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    If memory serves, there are still vast areas of policy that can be voted on by a simple majority.
arethuza 8y ago
Scotland had a develution referendum in 1979 that failed even though a majority voted for devolution - for some reason it was decided that 40% of the registered electorate had to vote Yes and as turnout was 64% a 51.6% Yes vote wasn't enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum,_1979 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum...
- moomin 8y ago
  Yeah, Brexit is pretty much a case study on why there’s a code of good practice on referendums and what happens if you don’t follow it.
koops 8y ago
"...a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but a two-thirds majority in case of more major..."
- switch007 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bqQ-C1PSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bqQ-C1PSE In case anyone missed the reference I love Palin's delivery of this: "Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. If I went round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away" :D
songshu 8y ago
The problem with Brexit is that "leave the European Union" is not a policy, it's an outcome. All of the thinking about how to do it should have taken place before the vote, and then we could have voted on that (this is actually the way legislation is typically developed in the UK, and the job of our sometime venerated civil service). Compare it to the recent Irish referendum on abortion, where there was a clear plan for what would actually happen following a vote for change.
- keithpeter 8y ago
  Cameron did the 'either / or' thing three times, once on House of Lords reform, once on Scots independence and latterly on Brexit. Won the first two, came a-cropper on the third. Personally, I'm against referendums of any kind.
  - DonaldFisk 8y ago
    It was for Alternative Vote, not House of Lords reform.
    - keithpeter 8y ago
      Thanks, memory fails... a condition of the coalition was having the vote of course.
- zimablue 8y ago
  I think you're kind of splitting hairs, all policies can be viewed as outcomes. "Bring back grammar schools" is both a policy and an outcome. "Improve education" is only an outcome because it doesn't discuss how to achieve it. "Leave the EU" is 100% achievable and has an obvious way to achieve it, it's policy just not detailed policy. Realistically they should have planned more, but planning is limited when you're going into negotiations with an unpredictable third party. If other countries had voted to leave the EU, or the German or French elections had been different then the negotiation would be very different. Even the UK election after the vote could have wildly changed our brexit policy.
dev_dull 8y ago
The same 51% will just vote for a populist candidate to push their agenda. You can’t escape it by playing games with required thresholds. Brexit happened because people wanted it to happen.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  That's not enough. You can vote for a populist, your 51% can get the populist elected, but they have to work through the regular system to get anything done, and the regular system has (very deliberate) checks and balances to keep one office holder from doing too much damage.
  - dev_dull 8y ago
    At that point you’re intentionally going against the will of the people and calling it a virtue.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      Yes, I am, following the explicitly stated intent of the authors of the United States Constitution. They deliberately did not want direct democracy, fearing mob rule.
      - dev_dull 8y ago
        Then you must be in favor of institutions such as the electorate college.
        AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        First, I deplore the rhetorical trick you just used. You put words in someone else's mouth that are tangentially related to what they have said. It's a cheap and dishonest way of arguing. What I said was that I was not in favor of direct democracy. In context, what that means is "rule by referendum". I'm against it, and so were the authors of the Constitution. And they had good historical reasons - they saw what happened to democracy in ancient Greece. That position is not directly related to the electoral [not electorate] college. I could be against the electoral college without that invalidating my position on referendums. As it happens, I am in favor of the electoral college, but on different grounds - limiting the ability of the large states to run over the small ones. It's the same reason we have a Senate, not just a House of Representatives.
dalore 8y ago
The Brexiteers who keep complaining about having a second (third?) referendum doesn't stop because people will just keep having referendums until they get the answer they want fail to see that's the point of referendums. A referendum should be held on major political stuff (like leaving the EU or Scotland leaving the UK) if national polls have pinged the opinion at least 60%, and then it should also require a higher majority (like 60%) to change. This ensures a big major change happens if it's really wanted, but for very divisive issues it will take time. So yes we should keep having a Brexit referendum if the national polls start getting 60% support, until then it's not worth it. And it should require more than 60% otherwise if you go 50% like now, you have half the country hating the other half. If we kept the status quo, then the brexit people would have had to keep up and slowly change peoples opinion so the majority of the country agree.
slacka 8y ago
I disagree with your conclusion because you are not considering external factors. The issue isn't majority vote. The problem is many of the voters were not properly informed about the consequences of their decision. More importantly, many voters were misinformed by an external disinfo campaign.[1] [2] A better informed electorate would have prevented Brexit. We don't allow foreign countries to air political ads. It's time social media policies caught up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... [2] https://www.euronews.com/2018/02/12/new-report-concludes-russian-social-media-interfered-in-uk-s-eu-referendum https://www.euronews.com/2018/02/12/new-report-concludes-rus...
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  It's not either/or, it's both/and. Yes, foreign interference was a problem, and we need to do better to prevent it. And simple majority rule on referendums leads to hotheaded spur-of-the-moment decisions, even without foreign interference.
ben_w 8y ago
Perhaps oddly, despite being on the losing side of this referendum, I have not change my mind about the value and importance of even simple majority referendums (referenda?) like the one I just lost. Rather, I think it is absolutely important to inform the electorate and to make sure that propaganda is effectively prevented. I have literally no idea how to do any of that. If “the people” cannot be convinced of your arguments, then the arguments suck — and one thing I’ve been amazed at since the referendum is how severely all of the talking heads in the UK, Remain and Leave both, have persistently failed to connect with any issue of importance to the other side.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  It's not just Leave vs. Remain, and it's not just the UK. In the US, the two sides can't talk to each other at all either. Something broke in our ability to have a national conversation. Personally, I think the problem is that social media means that too much of the conversation is in echo chambers, and echo chambers are terrible at fairly considering the other side's view.
zhengwang 8y ago
This of course just sets up a scenario where those in charge can make it impossible for any change to occur that they don't like which defeats the purpose doesn't it?
mig39 8y ago
I think you may be confusing BC and another jurisdiction (Ontario?) BC held a referendum in 2005 which was on Single Transferrable Vote. 57% voted in favour, but the threshold was set at 60%, with a majority needed in at least 60% of the electoral districts. BC held a second referendum in 2009, and the vote swung in the other direction. Only 39% voted in favour of STV.
wmil 8y ago
That would have created a legitimacy problem for the EU. Brussels is hard set on pushing for "an ever closer union" and London has had a policy of ratifying new EU treaties without a referendum. So a majority vote for Brexit that fell short of a prescribed threshold would create huge problems for future EU treaties.
lostmsu 8y ago
I am not trying to insinuate anything, but could you please introspect for me if your mind only changed because the vote did not match what you wanted both times, but this time you feel its more important, so your reasoning flipped to justify? Again, not attacking, genuinely curious.
tzs 8y ago
> Brexit has definitely changed my mind on one thing - majority vote in a referendum is bad. Or rather, the percentage vote required should be proportional to the gravity of the question. Referendums are rare, so most votes should require well over 50%. For this kind of referendum it also might be worth considering changing the "one person, one vote" rule. By "this kind" I mean referendums that (1) have a much bigger long term impact on some large groups than they do on other large groups, and (2) there is good reason to believe that within some reasonable time frame that those groups who are the most impacted will be able to win a referendum to try to reverse this referendum, and (3) it will be very difficult and take a long time implement such a reversal. It just doesn't seem fair that, say, someone who is 95 years old and who has a very good chance of being dead before Brexit can be implemented and a 25 year old whose entire life has been built around a world where Britain is part of the EU have an equal say in this.
jamie_ca 8y ago
BC Native, here. We're now staring down our 3rd referendum on switching to Proportional Representation. 2005 Referendum was 57.7% Yes, 61% turnout, required 60% to pass. 2009 Referendum was 39% Yes, 55% turnout, required 60% to pass. This year, we get to vote on both Yes/No, as well as rank three possible systems - current polls are 32% no, 33% yes, 33% undecided, and MMP with 49% support. To pass, we require only 50% Yes votes, but there's a clause that will have us do a followup in 8 years (2 election cycles) as to whether to keep the PR system or go back to FPTP. I'm very happy with the "50% but built-in allowance for takebacks" setup this time around.

Kalium 8y ago

California is a good example of what happens when pretty much any policy can be set by simple majority vote. The result is, to be kind about it, a lot of room for improvement.

isoskeles 8y ago
It feels like the people here don't know that the state issuing "bonds" means it's taking on debt. I lived in San Francisco for a while, and I don't remember the numbers and I know you can look this up, but it felt like I was voting No on up to dozen different bond proposals every two years. Doesn't matter, they always pass. (To clarify, I also don't remember if these were always up to a majority vote, but they almost always pass unless it's for something Californians don't like for whatever reason.)
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  > It feels like the people here don't know that the state issuing "bonds" means it's taking on debt. It more than feels like it; most people don't know that. As with other things, we can blame the total lack of financial education in our education system.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
greeneggs 8y ago
It isn't. Since Proposition 13 passed in 1978 (by a simple majority), California has required 2/3 majority votes in the legislature to increase taxes, and 2/3 majority votes for local elections to increase taxes.
- Kalium 8y ago
  If memory serves, there are still vast areas of policy that can be voted on by a simple majority.

arethuza 8y ago

Scotland had a develution referendum in 1979 that failed even though a majority voted for devolution - for some reason it was decided that 40% of the registered electorate had to vote Yes and as turnout was 64% a 51.6% Yes vote wasn't enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum,_1979 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum...

moomin 8y ago
Yeah, Brexit is pretty much a case study on why there’s a code of good practice on referendums and what happens if you don’t follow it.

koops 8y ago

"...a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but a two-thirds majority in case of more major..."

switch007 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bqQ-C1PSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bqQ-C1PSE In case anyone missed the reference I love Palin's delivery of this: "Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. If I went round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away" :D

songshu 8y ago

The problem with Brexit is that "leave the European Union" is not a policy, it's an outcome. All of the thinking about how to do it should have taken place before the vote, and then we could have voted on that (this is actually the way legislation is typically developed in the UK, and the job of our sometime venerated civil service). Compare it to the recent Irish referendum on abortion, where there was a clear plan for what would actually happen following a vote for change.

keithpeter 8y ago
Cameron did the 'either / or' thing three times, once on House of Lords reform, once on Scots independence and latterly on Brexit. Won the first two, came a-cropper on the third. Personally, I'm against referendums of any kind.
- DonaldFisk 8y ago
  It was for Alternative Vote, not House of Lords reform.
  - keithpeter 8y ago
    Thanks, memory fails... a condition of the coalition was having the vote of course.
zimablue 8y ago
I think you're kind of splitting hairs, all policies can be viewed as outcomes. "Bring back grammar schools" is both a policy and an outcome. "Improve education" is only an outcome because it doesn't discuss how to achieve it. "Leave the EU" is 100% achievable and has an obvious way to achieve it, it's policy just not detailed policy. Realistically they should have planned more, but planning is limited when you're going into negotiations with an unpredictable third party. If other countries had voted to leave the EU, or the German or French elections had been different then the negotiation would be very different. Even the UK election after the vote could have wildly changed our brexit policy.

dev_dull 8y ago

The same 51% will just vote for a populist candidate to push their agenda. You can’t escape it by playing games with required thresholds. Brexit happened because people wanted it to happen.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
That's not enough. You can vote for a populist, your 51% can get the populist elected, but they have to work through the regular system to get anything done, and the regular system has (very deliberate) checks and balances to keep one office holder from doing too much damage.
- dev_dull 8y ago
  At that point you’re intentionally going against the will of the people and calling it a virtue.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Yes, I am, following the explicitly stated intent of the authors of the United States Constitution. They deliberately did not want direct democracy, fearing mob rule.
    - dev_dull 8y ago
      Then you must be in favor of institutions such as the electorate college.
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        First, I deplore the rhetorical trick you just used. You put words in someone else's mouth that are tangentially related to what they have said. It's a cheap and dishonest way of arguing. What I said was that I was not in favor of direct democracy. In context, what that means is "rule by referendum". I'm against it, and so were the authors of the Constitution. And they had good historical reasons - they saw what happened to democracy in ancient Greece. That position is not directly related to the electoral [not electorate] college. I could be against the electoral college without that invalidating my position on referendums. As it happens, I am in favor of the electoral college, but on different grounds - limiting the ability of the large states to run over the small ones. It's the same reason we have a Senate, not just a House of Representatives.

dalore 8y ago

The Brexiteers who keep complaining about having a second (third?) referendum doesn't stop because people will just keep having referendums until they get the answer they want fail to see that's the point of referendums. A referendum should be held on major political stuff (like leaving the EU or Scotland leaving the UK) if national polls have pinged the opinion at least 60%, and then it should also require a higher majority (like 60%) to change. This ensures a big major change happens if it's really wanted, but for very divisive issues it will take time. So yes we should keep having a Brexit referendum if the national polls start getting 60% support, until then it's not worth it. And it should require more than 60% otherwise if you go 50% like now, you have half the country hating the other half. If we kept the status quo, then the brexit people would have had to keep up and slowly change peoples opinion so the majority of the country agree.

slacka 8y ago

I disagree with your conclusion because you are not considering external factors. The issue isn't majority vote. The problem is many of the voters were not properly informed about the consequences of their decision. More importantly, many voters were misinformed by an external disinfo campaign.[1] [2] A better informed electorate would have prevented Brexit. We don't allow foreign countries to air political ads. It's time social media policies caught up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... [2] https://www.euronews.com/2018/02/12/new-report-concludes-russian-social-media-interfered-in-uk-s-eu-referendum https://www.euronews.com/2018/02/12/new-report-concludes-rus...

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
It's not either/or, it's both/and. Yes, foreign interference was a problem, and we need to do better to prevent it. And simple majority rule on referendums leads to hotheaded spur-of-the-moment decisions, even without foreign interference.

ben_w 8y ago

Perhaps oddly, despite being on the losing side of this referendum, I have not change my mind about the value and importance of even simple majority referendums (referenda?) like the one I just lost. Rather, I think it is absolutely important to inform the electorate and to make sure that propaganda is effectively prevented. I have literally no idea how to do any of that. If “the people” cannot be convinced of your arguments, then the arguments suck — and one thing I’ve been amazed at since the referendum is how severely all of the talking heads in the UK, Remain and Leave both, have persistently failed to connect with any issue of importance to the other side.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
It's not just Leave vs. Remain, and it's not just the UK. In the US, the two sides can't talk to each other at all either. Something broke in our ability to have a national conversation. Personally, I think the problem is that social media means that too much of the conversation is in echo chambers, and echo chambers are terrible at fairly considering the other side's view.

zhengwang 8y ago

This of course just sets up a scenario where those in charge can make it impossible for any change to occur that they don't like which defeats the purpose doesn't it?

mig39 8y ago

I think you may be confusing BC and another jurisdiction (Ontario?) BC held a referendum in 2005 which was on Single Transferrable Vote. 57% voted in favour, but the threshold was set at 60%, with a majority needed in at least 60% of the electoral districts. BC held a second referendum in 2009, and the vote swung in the other direction. Only 39% voted in favour of STV.

wmil 8y ago

That would have created a legitimacy problem for the EU. Brussels is hard set on pushing for "an ever closer union" and London has had a policy of ratifying new EU treaties without a referendum. So a majority vote for Brexit that fell short of a prescribed threshold would create huge problems for future EU treaties.

lostmsu 8y ago

I am not trying to insinuate anything, but could you please introspect for me if your mind only changed because the vote did not match what you wanted both times, but this time you feel its more important, so your reasoning flipped to justify? Again, not attacking, genuinely curious.

tzs 8y ago

> Brexit has definitely changed my mind on one thing - majority vote in a referendum is bad. Or rather, the percentage vote required should be proportional to the gravity of the question. Referendums are rare, so most votes should require well over 50%. For this kind of referendum it also might be worth considering changing the "one person, one vote" rule. By "this kind" I mean referendums that (1) have a much bigger long term impact on some large groups than they do on other large groups, and (2) there is good reason to believe that within some reasonable time frame that those groups who are the most impacted will be able to win a referendum to try to reverse this referendum, and (3) it will be very difficult and take a long time implement such a reversal. It just doesn't seem fair that, say, someone who is 95 years old and who has a very good chance of being dead before Brexit can be implemented and a 25 year old whose entire life has been built around a world where Britain is part of the EU have an equal say in this.

jamie_ca 8y ago

BC Native, here. We're now staring down our 3rd referendum on switching to Proportional Representation. 2005 Referendum was 57.7% Yes, 61% turnout, required 60% to pass. 2009 Referendum was 39% Yes, 55% turnout, required 60% to pass. This year, we get to vote on both Yes/No, as well as rank three possible systems - current polls are 32% no, 33% yes, 33% undecided, and MMP with 49% support. To pass, we require only 50% Yes votes, but there's a clause that will have us do a followup in 8 years (2 election cycles) as to whether to keep the PR system or go back to FPTP. I'm very happy with the "50% but built-in allowance for takebacks" setup this time around.