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> Some elections right here in the US are decided by as few as a dozen votes This is a basic "false equivalence" logical fallacy.
by abalone 8y ago
> Some elections right here in the US are decided by as few as a dozen votes
This is a basic "false equivalence" logical fallacy.
- m0zg 8y agoI don't see any fallacy. I'm sure some elections in the UK are decided by a few votes as well, and they too are accepted. Why should a referendum be any different. The definition of a majority is 50% + 1 vote all over the world. The definition of majority vote is that majority decides the vote. And in this case nearly 1.3 _million_ more people voted to leave than to stay, not a few dozen.
- abalone 8y agoYou're saying the opposite though: you said some referendums are in fact "different", specifically "re-dos" are "bullshit". That is inconsistent with democratic principles that regularly subject major decisions to some additional levels of verification that it's what the people really want in the long run. Democratic procedures often build in some protections against short-term passions, fraud, poor turnouts, etc. and these verifications are scaled to match the magnitude of the decision. As others have noted, the kinds of "few dozen vote" contests you're talking about in the U.S. are themselves re-voted upon every few years. Follow-up referendums are perfectly consistent with democratic principles and happen all the time in the U.S. and elsewhere. Bypassing these kinds of verifications of the public will usually require supermajorities -- a direct contradiction of your claim that "the size of the voting margin is somewhat irrelevant in a properly functioning democracy." Also, nobody put words in your mouth. They are your direct quotes.