British Indy: What Happens Now?

It doesn't help. Soz : o )

People who choose not to vote choose not to play a part in the decision-making process. They have effectively excluded themselves from "the electorate" for the purposes of that vote. They are content for others to decide the matter.

Any other logical construct of our current voting laws renders them unfit for purpose.

Obviously, if the government of the day had felt that a qualified majority was required for the Brexit Ref, they would have run the Referendum on that basis, but they knew full well that no qualified majority, Leave or Remain, was possible. The Referendum, with a simple majority, can be viewed as an attempt to settle the matter once and for all (which an inconclusive result in a QM referendum would not have achieved). You can argue that the Government was gambling on Remain and that Leave was an unintended consequence (for them) but the electorate walked into the booths with their eyes open - ie Majority wins, Leave or Remain. (cue blather over misleading propaganda on both sides)

I *know* this helps : o )

 

You're using a dictionary definition of a word to challenge the validity of a referendum result. How very Remainer of you!

Argh: I can't believe you are using those colours.

 

I cannot believe I am having to walk you through this.

Referenda can be QM, Qualified Majority, or they can be SM, Simple Majority, broadly speaking.

A QM Ref would normally require a two-thirds majority.

An SM Ref is a case of "most votes wins". If you start to argue that a combination of the losing minority of voters plus non-voters renders the majority vote invalid, you are logically stating that the Ref in question is, in effect, a form of QM Ref and that the QM target was not reached. In other words, there is no such thing as a SM referendum, they are all, in fact, QM Referenda.

In the case of an SM referendum, non-voters represent …. nothing. They aren't voting for, they aren't voting against. There are four ways of interpreting this fact:

1. They voted in favour of the majority-voters
   
2. The voted in favour of the minority-voters
   
3. They didn't vote and therefore they don't count
   
4. They didn't vote therefore the SM Ref, if it did not achieve the requisite numbers, is inconclusive ie it was QM.
   

Now, you can by all means argue that the 2016 ref was inconclusive but … here's the thing. It wasn’t. It was an SM Referendum that the government had run and the government had acted upon – ie, the 2017 GE was run by both major parties on the mandate to honour the 2016 result and Parliament voted to trigger Art50.

Logically, non-voting members of the electorate can and should be ignored when considering the result of a ballot. The opposite view, they should not be ignored, means that an alternative to voting must be found, or I suppose, you could institute that monstrous compulsory voting system Switzerland and Australia insist upon using. Feel free to get something like that in place in future but in the meantime, we are stuck with using the system we have got now.

TL;DR: In SM referendum, non-voters voted with whichever side garnered the most votes. Thus the electorate voted in favour of whichever side won.

 

Dude I am trying to help you and you're stuck over dictionary definitions : o D

 

I thought that we’d already established that the majority of the population didn’t vote, so how can they possibly have been right?

 

Antiyeeee, have you found your first post yet you cry baby

 

Oooh ooh! I know this one!

Is the answer, "Voting is Wrong!" aka "Keep voting, fools"?

 

You mustn't be cross, Ant. Everyone likes you here.


Except for Exige, of course. He has his head screwed on right, unlike the rest of us loons.