zlacker

>>Damien+(OP)
I think this story does not need to be flagged, but could benefit from a very constrained discussion ('self-censoring') to not let personal political opinions take over the discussion. I'll try.

Is this a direction more modern, western democracies seem to be heading? I feel a loss of democratic appeal and subsequent machinations of all kinds by apparatuses of state to keep in power. Democratic in name, but the number of options available to the public limited to what is in line with what public officials think of as good sense.

Examples:

-DNC machinating to get Clinton elected as candidate. The public needed Russia (!) for a fresh dosis of unpopular truths about those machinations. This documents more evidence on machinations.

-The unpopular and undemocratic European Union. Examples abound. The best being the EU-constitution: struck down in popular referendums, flown in as a treaty.

-In my country, the Netherlands, a referendum in which the public voted against an EU-agreement with Ukraine (wholy within law, with very obvious machinations by state and political parties), on which both the government and EU reneged

Counter example:

-Brexit

Disclaimers

-Please, don't hit on the 'red herrings' (if any), like 'undemocratic EU'. I see it as both a fact (imho, populus does not recognize European parliament) and an opinion (mostly in the more populist parties over Europe). Not center to my view of democracies limiting decision power of the populus. -The 'public officials' need not be those paid by the state. But more broadly: those aspiring to have their organisations have a say over public policy.

>>wjnc+O3
Brexit isn't quite a counter example until they invoke Article 50, before then it's unclear whether the will of the people will be respected.

>>fleitz+44
The will of the people is unclear, was unclear, and probably will be unclear for quite some time. A result so close to 50-50 is a coin toss, that's not the will of the people. That's a clear sign that it's a complex issue, more questions (more data) should be in order.

But no, let's divine the will of the people from tealeaves instead.

>>pas+Wc
Well, at 52-48, it's clearly more the will of the people to leave. Not massively so, but a bit more than to remain.

Now, what do you do with that? Britain could have required some level of majority before making that change (60-40? 67-33? 75-25?), but they didn't. On the other hand, they could have made it a binding referendum, and if I understand correctly, they didn't do that, either.

But one of the big reasons people wanted to leave "the unpopular and undemocratic European Union" (as wjnc said), was that when people voted "the wrong way" (as determined by Brussels), that vote got ignored. If this vote gets ignored/sidelined/not implemented somehow, for the 52%, that's going to be pouring gasoline on a fire.

>>Animal+JV
No, that's noise, that's "so close to 50-50", it's ridiculous that we're even talking about it.

Even if most of the voters give their best effort to think this through, for a lot of them that wasn't much, other than what UKIP barfed into the air and into their minds. Now a lot of them are having second thoughts.