Referendum Day

[Oneeyedvic]

Any thoughts on referendum day - as aset out here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5310288 .stm

Former The Apprentice contestant Saira Khan is launching a campaign to give people a greater say on major issues through the use of referendums.

Her campaign, entitled Our Say, aims to give the public "a direct say over the issues that really matter to them".

A poll would be triggered by a petition supported by 2.5% of voters, which is 1m people nationally or 4,000 locally.

[jno]

the Swiss have a lot of referendums. I'm all in favour of participatory democracy, but I wonder just how well it would function in a country with the population of Britain. The Sun and Mail with their more sheeplike readers could probably whip up a referendum a week on topics involving the stoning of immigrants and the choice of Big Brother winners. If you didn't feel like voting on such matters you might find the motion passed and implemented as law. Not sure I'd like that.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Hmmm. I'm in two minds about this. I would agree there are failures with the political bodies engaging with the electorate (though I'd undoubtedly disagree with some on this site over where those failures are) and would like to see changes to the electoral system.

However, there's a danger that this might create a system in which vast public resources are expended on issues because of the whims of vocal minorities. This might be the Countryside Alliance, Hunt Sabateurs, Christians, Muslims, Environmentalists, Heavy Metal Fans or whatever. HAving just seen jno's answer (posted whilst I was writing this) newspapers would undoubtedly be another.

Surely the electorate would be more open to manipulation. Do we really want government on the basis of who can afford the largest propaganda/PR campaign?

Ultimately, I'm sure people's feeling on this would be determined by whether the general public's voting reflected their own prejudices.

[anotheoldgit]

Our waste of space politicians don't listen to public opinion now. What makes her think that they would allow anything like this to get off the ground, and if they did they would go along their usual route and ignore it? They will only sit up and take note when something happens to put their very well paid positions at risk.

[metagirl]

I agree with it in principle - giving greater voice to the electorate, but you risk getting policy according to the strength of trends and PR.

[Oneeyedvic]

My first major concern would be giving far too much power to the media - rupert et al.

The next major concern I have would be people not understanding the implications of their vote. Lets take an example of where a referendum will probably occur - the Euro. I consider myself to be a relatively intelligent person, and I work in the finance industry - but I do not understand the full implications of joining the euro. I do know that the majority of people who will have a vote are also in the same boat - this means that we will have major policy decided on 'I want to join the euro so that I don't have to change money when going on holiday' - hardly a major economical consideration!

[Loosehead]

The system is far from perfect but we elect a governement for good or bad to run the country, the country chose to retain the current government at their last opportunity to remove. You cannot govern by referendum. For the reasons already outlined above, it just get's ever more riduculous until you end up having a referendum on ever more trivial things. I can be argued that the last election was effectivlely a referendum on the governement and the public, inexplicably suppported it !

[Loosehead]

for the apostrophie anoraks I realise that gets does not have one, can't imagine how that crept in there!

[WoWo]

I think it's a chicken and egg situation. Do people fail to vote because they don't think it will make a difference or do they not vote because they couldn't care less?

As others have said all I could see this doing is pushing minority views on to others, often in this world people with extreme views get a lot more publicity than the majority simply because they are more passionate about it. Give the number of people who didn't vote on the single most important political decision (deciding on the countries government) I'd imagine we would get all sorts of things passed simply because the general population could be bothered to pop round the corner to vote.

[jno]

a referendum on apostrophes would obviously vote to abolish them, Loosehead. Not such a bad idea, really.