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‘Seismic night in Scotland’: Labour crushes SNP in Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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UK Politics
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Unless you have 100% of the population voting in a referendum, then you never know for sure that a minority hasn't won with 50%+1. The general assumption is that people that don't vote support the status quo, because if they supported a change, they'd vote for it. That's why 60% is a good minimum to aim for, because it means support is overwhelming, not just slightly halfway over the total that cared enough to vote. It indicates a strength of feeling that 50%+1 on a 75% turnout does not.
I know what you mean, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume every non-voter is a vote for the status quo. There will be lots of sick, incapacitated, and (most of all) apathetic people out there.
To count those as the status quo is plain wrong IMO. It also gives motivation to those in power to make it difficult to vote for certain demographics, like we’ve seen recently with voter ID.
You can't count those who don't vote as being a vote for a massive change, though. If they were strongly in favour of it, they would have gone out and voted. If they're apathetic on the issue, by definition that means they don't support a change.
I have the same opinion about Brexit, by the way. When you factor in all the people who didn't vote at all, only about 25% of the population voted for Brexit, and making such a massive constitutional change based on literally a vocal minority is a terrible idea. I believe you said you were opposed to the will of a minority being imposed on everyone else? An independence referendum with a sub-100% turnout is, by definition, not a majority vote in favour of independence unless substantially more than 50%+1 vote in favour. As soon as one person doesn't vote, that 50%+1 is no longer guaranteed to represent the will of the majority, and the more people don't vote, the more you need to go above 50% to prove that it is the will of the majority.
Yeah I would never count non-voters as for, or against, something. But I disagree that apathy (or ignorance) equals a vote for the status quo.
I didn’t vote at all until I was about 28. Not because I was happy with the incumbent party, but because I knew I hadn’t researched any of the options well enough to vote for them.
On making sure it is the will of the majority by requiring >50% of the population, it makes it remarkably easy to prevent change. If the media are on your side, they can simply downplay any vote. Or, like I mentioned previously, make voter registration difficult/biased.
I do get what you say about ideally being >50% of the population. But I think it’s far too easy to subvert such a rule, leaving us stuck with >50% of votes registered as the most practical (if not ideal) option. Even though I also hate to see outcomes from really low turnouts. (Local election turnouts are embarrassing.) I’d love to see a minimum turnout requirement but I do just think it would be abused.
At this point, btw, I’m not even sure how we got to discussing turnout. :) It does seem like we fundamentally disagree on what’s acceptable though.
Yeah, a fundamental disagreement on what's acceptable seems to be the issue here. I think there's enough people with extreme, minority views that no massive change should be decided unless it's absolutely clear that it's supported by a majority. For every "good" change you can theoretically get 30-40% of the population to vote in favour of, you could also very easily get bad changes that 30-40% would vote in favour of.
For example, if a referendum was offered on whether trans people should forcibly detransitioned, there are enough apathetic people and enough vocally anti-trans people that such a referendum would likely result in a "yes" result. Doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, or that it would represent the will of the majority of the population. Referendums on issues only a vocal minority care about are a recipe for changes being imposed against the will of the majority.