3 ms·
I live in a country where 91.78% of the population voted for a referendum that bought back hard labour in prisons. As one of the few who voted against it I hav
by Lerc 1y ago
I live in a country where 91.78% of the population voted for a referendum that bought back hard labour in prisons.
As one of the few who voted against it I have yet to encounter a single person who voted for it who both supports hard labour and realised that was in the question being asked.
- lazide 1y agoLet me guess - ‘do you support violent prisoners being given work in proportion to their crimes’ or something similar?
- Lerc 1y agoOh far more deceptive than that. "Should there be a reform of our justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them and imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offenses?" Now let's play tldr with the law! Luckily it was non binding and stands forever as an argument against binding referendums.
- bcrosby95 1y agoIf a new law mentions victims I assume they're trying to appeal to my emotions. The joke is on them because I am a robot in skin form.
- lazide 1y agoYeah, there are many terrible legal abortions in California with the referendum setup too.
- anigbrowl 1y agoI'm not really seeing the deception here since it specifies hard labour and says it would apply to all serious violent offenses. How could you vote for this and not know you were voting for hard labour?
- Lerc 1y agoI don't know how you could vote for it, I didn't and was astonished that people did. On the other hand. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870087
- anigbrowl 1y agoI would probably not vote for it on principle, but my specific question was how the text as quoted could be considered deceptive.
- Lerc 1y agoIn many respects I agree with you there, I almost went with softer language. The fact remains that it appears people were deceived. All of the advocacy pushing the referendum only focused on the first part. To this day I find people who are amazed that it mentioned hard labour and and that they voted for it. [edit] I guess think of it in terms of a vote that you had discussed and decided upon before you voted. Could you honestly say that you would read every word of the question or would you just look at the start of it to establish that it was the question under discussion and then trust that the discussion accurately represented what the question on the form would say. The length of the question, was I believe specifically designed to be long to prevent the frequency of its full publication.
- anigbrowl 1y agoCould you honestly say that you would read every word of the question Yes?? It's not like a school exam where the questions are secret until you see it in the voting booth, and even if it were, you should still read the question carefully. I'm all for things being written as clearly as possible but at some point you have to acknowledge that voters have a responsibility to think about what they're voting for.
- jacobolus 1y agoPeople read "greater emphasis on the needs of victims" and stop processing afterwards.
- tiltowait 1y ago"Hard labour for all serious violent offenses" seems almost refreshingly straightforward. Was there more in the actual referendum that was hidden? I grant that "serious violent offenses" is somewhat vague; was it overly broad?
- sczi 1y agoThat question clearly says hard labour. I'm sure some people didn't read it, but I think there also may be another effect there, where when talking to people in person, they realize you are morally opposed to forced hard labour, and don't want to seem like a bad person, so they pretend they didn't know. Sort of similar to the recent effect in the US where trump significantly underpolled as many voted for him but don't want to admit it.
- account42 1y agoSounds more like an argument for requiring referendums to be about a single issue rather than bundling multiple ones into a single question.
- pnw 1y agoWhy do you claim the 1999 referendum reintroduced hard labor in NZ prisons? I've never seen anything to that effect. The reforms were related to bail, victims rights and parole.
- Lerc 1y agoIt did not reintroduce hard labour. People voted to reintroduce hard labour. The referendum was non binding,