UK Election

[Strange]

Your post opens the whole "people aren't competent and thus have to be taken care of / thought for," and I object to that very strongly. The whole "paternal government" thing is a huge negative in my opinion. Worse, it's a self-fulfilling thing - when you impose a paternal government on people they start to forget how to be truly free. Give them the freedom, and after a while you'll have a population worthy of it.

 

 

It isn't (just) that people are not competent. It is also the fact they don't have the time, resources, skills, or inclination to look into the issues in enough detail to determine what course of action might be best. And the best course probably isn't representable as a simple, binary "in or out" decision.

 

And, as far as I can tell, most people voted on issues like immigration (where nearly all economists agree that being out of the EU will make no real difference) or "making our own laws" (when the UK will still have to adhere to the same same "EU Laws", which are mainly about trade issues, safety standards, etc, without the ability to influence those laws and so will be worse off in terms of "democratic control").

 

Politicians, on the other hand, have a full time job which is (should be) understanding the issues plus teams of experts they can call on to help them in that process. They will also be involved in the fine details of what being in or out of the EU means, rather than just looking at the binary choice.

 

So, I would agree that representative democracy is a far better system.

 

Also, if you are going to have a referendum on a major constitutional issue then it is crazy to make it a straight majority vote. For something as important as this, it should have required a 60% or 75% majority. Apparently, UKIP were all geared up to take that point to court if the vote had gone the other way.

People only perceive a problem with democracy when the vote doesn't go their way.

 

 

Nope. I have always objected to referendums, whatever the issue and whatever the result. I have always supported proportional representation, not just when "the other side" has won an election.

But there's no way to realistically half-secede from a larger body, or half join one, or half do quite a lot of things like this.

 

 

I'm not sure. For example Norway and Switzerland are sort-of half in the EU. To the extent that many people on the Leave side don't want that sort of arrangement because it isn't really "leaving".

[MigL]

Canada has a 'first-past-the-post system, but I'm familiar with the Italian proportional representation system.

Italy has about 10 parties with 5% vote and about 30 if you use 1% as the cut off point.

They have never had a majority government since WW2, and most of the governments are dysfunctional, lasting barely 6 months at a time.

But maybe it has nothing to do with the proportional representation system.

( just Italian corruption and incompetence )

 

I'm of the opinion that first-past-the-post is more workable, but with just two parties there is too much polarization as the Americans prove.

I would think about 4 parties would be ideal.

[Delta1212]

I mean, ideally, people would, instead of voting for candidates, input their preferences on a wide range of issues and then a government would be formed from a candidate pool that best reflected the balance of views of the electorate, but I genuinely have no idea how to set up a system that would do that accurately and consistently without a strong opportunity for corruption.

[KipIngram]

Canada has a 'first-past-the-post system, but I'm familiar with the Italian proportional representation system.

Italy has about 10 parties with 5% vote and about 30 if you use 1% as the cut off point.

They have never had a majority government since WW2, and most of the governments are dysfunctional, lasting barely 6 months at a time.

But maybe it has nothing to do with the proportional representation system.

( just Italian corruption and incompetence )

 

I'm of the opinion that first-past-the-post is more workable, but with just two parties there is too much polarization as the Americans prove.

I would think about 4 parties would be ideal.

 

Yes, I tend to agree. I used to be very proud of the American 2-party system when I'd read news stories about the collapse of this or that coalition government in various countries across the pond. But these days that 2-party system is really just not working very well.

 

I mean, ideally, people would, instead of voting for candidates, input their preferences on a wide range of issues and then a government would be formed from a candidate pool that best reflected the balance of views of the electorate, but I genuinely have no idea how to set up a system that would do that accurately and consistently without a strong opportunity for corruption.

 

That's a pretty neat idea. I don't have any idea how to make it work either, but one of the problems we have is that we only get to choose between two "packages." And neither package has all the right stuff in it.