A vote should end up showing that to be the case at least.

matthewdgreen 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's what they said about Brexit. 52% of the population voted yes in a single election, and the rest got dragged along for a multi-year ride. Current polls put support for the decision at 31%, but it's too late.

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Aachen 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 52% of the population voted yes

Huh? 37% of the eligible voters, much less the population, voted yes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...

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BadBadJellyBean 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Everyone who didn't vote and had the ability, voted yes as well. If you don't vote you go along what the majority wants. So for me 52% is correct.

You have to vote for what you want or at least against what you don't want. Otherwise you are an enabler.

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Aachen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That makes no sense to me. They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!

We can't know what they want if they don't or can't vote. Putting "they voted yes" in their mouth sounds insulting to me, but I'm an outsider to the UK so maybe it's wrong for me to say that

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ryandrake 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you choose not to vote, then you are implicitly voting for "whatever ends up winning."

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Marsymars 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It's conceptually pretty weird to have a mental model where the single vote that brings one side to 50%+1 implicitly flips millions of other votes.

	▲	array_key_first 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It makes sense when you consider those millions of other voters are apathetic by definition. They can be implicitly flipped like that because they, supposedly, don't care at all. If they did care then they would vote and then wouldn't be subject to that. And that is why it is vital to be extremely careful with apathy, in all aspects of life. Because apathy is a choice.

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u_fucking_dork 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?!

Yes, of course, they didn’t give a shit. They couldn’t be bothered. Outcome was whatever for them.

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BadBadJellyBean 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You summed up my point. If someone doesn't vote if they can they support what ever the majority of the votes wanted. They were fine with it. So in they end they wanted what the majority wanted because that is the result. Everything else is fudging the numbers to feel better.

You could also just say they didn't exist if it makes you feel better. But calculating the percentage from the eligible voters gets you no where. They didn't vote. It just makes the number smaller. Whatever. It doesn't change anything. It's not first to 50% of eligible votes. It's the majority of voters.

But I am angry at everyone who doesn't vote if they can. Especially if they complain that this isn't what they wanted.

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iso1631 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

About a quarter voted yes, about a quarter voted no, about a quarter didn't vote and a quarter couldn't vote

	▲	bonesss 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Rationally, and unlike what that dirty old lady in The Holy Grail suggests, binding votes impacting foreign relations should happen on a single 50.01% vote and never ratified or verified. More rationally, if some 25% of the country can’t express themselves and another 25% are unsure/uncommitted one should assume their interests are best represented by the most invigorated and unified minority. I wish I could drop an ‘/s’, but, uh, ‘/no-really-thats-this-timeline’.

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Broken_Hippo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unless you make sure that most, if not all adults can vote, it won't show it.

If you only have 45% of your population votes, regardless of reason, you aren't actually getting the public opinion.

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babypuncher 3 hours ago | parent [-]

If people choose not to vote, then clearly their opinion on the issue wasn't very strong to begin with.

	▲	Broken_Hippo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That still means you do not get actual public opinion. Public opinion doesn't consist of only strong opinions. You seem to think that voting is a simple choice of "do it or don't" and it really isn't that simple. You need little restrictions. For example, not every country takes away voting rights from prisoners or folks previously convicted as a felon. Some places are pretty lenient to pregnant folks, sick people, etc. When my mother was pregnant with my sister, due around voting day, they nearly didn't let her vote absentee. She argued and got to vote but how many people were just denied in this situation? It would be a non-issue in some places. It wasn't that she didn't have an opinion - she was just nearing the time for freaking birth. When I moved to Norway from the US, I no longer had to deal with voter registration. Once I lived here 3 years, I could vote in local elections. They just send me a voting card. Voting is easy, can be done in multiple locations over a period of a few weeks. So long as I had the card, no ID needed. (most folks keep their address updated for multiple reasons, so getting it isn't a big issue for me, anyway). Any barriers you have to voting - like the registration system in the US, inflexible voting times, or very strict voter id laws - means that some folks won't be able to vote even if they want to. Barriers that make it difficult for groups of folks to vote is just a way for the state to control the election instead of the people voting with their conscience. 21 countries have compulsory voting laws, on the other hand. And you can't say that a voter's opinion is a strong one, just that they vote. So many folks vote by just voting with the party they chose. That's not a strong opinion. That's just voting, and no one is checking motivations to see.

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jpalawaga 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

maybe in the same way that we have to keep voting on awful privacy legislation