Brexit

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It would be interesting to see what the result might have been under compulsory voting.
 
Sometimes I really like the idea of compulsory voting. Then I remember only 36% of Americans can name our three branches of government...


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it's really unclear - it's a question of executive/legislative power re. UK constitutional obligations - some are saying that in Britain it has to go thru parliament so as to become law, although i am also now hearing that it is a government decision which can be submitted to parliament for a vote - guess we will have to wait and see!

apparently parliament could still ignore Brexit though, if the majority are Remain as the referendum isn't legally binding - although there would be a huge political backlash if parliament were to do so

basically, we have no leaders and no answers right now, and bloody Boris is still seemingly vying for power while retracting his promises and making mutually incompatible claims (access to single market + points-system immigration)
Thanks.
Hooooo, boy!. :huh:

:der: I thot you were a USA'r? Or did you move there?
 
Sometimes I really like the idea of compulsory voting. Then I remember only 36% of Americans can name our three branches of government...


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Compulsory or not, it shouldn't be on a regular Tuesday when people -- except for the olds -- have to work. Make it a federal holiday.
 
Compulsory or not, it shouldn't be on a regular Tuesday when people -- except for the olds -- have to work. Make it a federal holiday.

Or just put it on the weekend. Saturday works well in Australia and New Zealand, and we now also have an extensive system of postal and pre-polling with very high uptake.

What time do US polls close? I notice the UK at least tries to ameliorate problems for working people with their Thursday elections by running the polls until 10pm. Down here polls close at 6pm and we usually know the result by 10.
 
Depends on the state. I think as early as 6 pm for a federal election. As late as 8 pm. Don't quote me on that, but I would say 7 pm is probably the most common time.

If the state spans multiple time zones, the whole state might be open later. Or the polls might close in certain districts later on a UTC scale.
 
I shouldn't be surprised that it's not consistent. :lol:

Is there any restriction on broadcasting results while the polls are still open in some states? I feel like I remember something about this. In Australia, the close of polls at 6pm is based on local time, so those in the west close two hours after the eastern states, but counting and coverage starts straight away. In 2007 that meant Kevin Rudd's landslide victory had already been called before Western Australia even finished voting.
 
Exit polls and official vote counts can't be released until the last polls have shut in that particular state. So yes, we can see results before all polls are closed nationwide. But per state, only.

In the US we have a pretty good distribution of population among swing states. Sometimes an election can be called before everyone is done in like Hawaii and Alaska I imagine... but very rarely. Usually counting on Florida, Ohio, Colorado, and all of the swing states tends to go past midnight EST. I honestly don't recall when prior elections have wrapped up. 2009 probably was fast and might've been done before a few states.
 
On the matter of calling polls, I've always thought that in any nation large enough to have multiple timezones, anything of this sort should be flat out prohibited until after the latest polling area has closed. The purpose of voting is, what do you want, not what winning horse can you see already ahead.
 
Thanks.
Hooooo, boy!. :huh:

:der: I thot you were a USA'r? Or did you move there?

no no, i'm a British resident in France - currently feeling like a child whose parents have just announced their divorce and i have no clue who will have custody of me (or my family)
 
On the matter of calling polls, I've always thought that in any nation large enough to have multiple timezones, anything of this sort should be flat out prohibited until after the latest polling area has closed. The purpose of voting is, what do you want, not what winning horse can you see already ahead.


Well, in the US, we are very much so broken into our states. What your saying is true... for the states. Thing is, each state is winner take all. So, what you're describing... for most Americans their vote "doesn't mean anything" already. I mean, not that it's not important for them all to vote, but for example... the race definitely won't be called before Texas is done voting. But before the polls even open, Texas is a red state. So why does anyone in Texas vote at all? Every single delegate in Texas will be winner take all awarded to the republicans. Why should excess republicans bother to vote, or democrats vote at all?

While that's a downfall, it paints a more important picture to why I don't necessarily agree with what you're saying. The electoral college allows for votes to be important in any swing state, and it has little or nothing to do with where you're located in terms of time zones. This would only be a big deal were Hawaii or Alaska swing states. But they're not, they're solid blue and red respectively.
 
By immediately resigning and not triggering article 50 Cameron has put Boris Johnson in deep trouble. Whatever he does, it looks like political suicide.
 
By immediately resigning and not triggering article 50 Cameron has put Boris Johnson in deep trouble. Whatever he does, it looks like political suicide.

not just political suicide - we have no leader and no opposition party - no one knows what the fuck to do - end of party politics as we know it
 
Well as far as I understand it, Cameron promised that he would trigger that article, which is needed to leave the EU, if the Leave side won. But now he's said that he will not do that himself and that his successors should, so basically the pro-Leave wing of the conservatives led by Boris Johnson. And now that everyone has seen what a mess the country is in immediately after the vote and how many people are regretting the result, it's not exactly easy to be the person to start the whole process. They wanted and expected Cameron to do the dirty work for them.

So that's why Johnson is already backtracking and saying stuff like "the vote wasn't overwhelmingly in our favor". But for obvious reasons, he can't say it's all a mess and ignore the referendum. He's in big trouble.
 

this is an interesting commentary on it


People are really, really hoping this theory about David Cameron and Brexit is true

"If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.

Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.

With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.

How?

Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.

And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legislation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.

The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.

The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?

Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?

Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-manoeuvred and check-mated.

If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.

When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never". When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.

All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign."
 
I get that the US is a special case as it has no national election commission.

For most Australians, their vote doesn't mean anything already, since most of us live in a 'safe' parliamentary seat. It still doesn't help matters to be influenced by kinda-knowing the outcome ahead of time.
 
For most Australians, their vote doesn't mean anything already, since most of us live in a 'safe' parliamentary seat.

We say this, forgetting the Senate - and rarely cognisant that even if our first preference is elected, our vote remains in the count at reduced value.
 
Compulsory or not, it shouldn't be on a regular Tuesday when people -- except for the olds -- have to work. Make it a federal holiday.
A national holiday and move it to Wednesdays... cause let's be honest, a national holiday on a Tuesday will just make people take vacation days on Monday so that they can go away on a long vacation.

We're lazy.

We need to have digital voting with two step verification, perhaps a finger print and a social security number, and give people more places to vote. Make it more convenient and don't make it so that people have to hunting down their place to vote.

We're a society that is so dependant on city living now, where people often move locations between presidential elections without submitting a change of address, and/or work an hour away from where they live. Why can't I just go to any voting station and submit my vote?

I get districts and all that... but if we had a two step verification process, with address, all or hear things can be done digitally.
 
i was right in my first post - the referendum is not binding and the exit clause can only be triggered after a vote in the British parliament

"It is being said that the government can trigger Brexit under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, merely by sending a note to Brussels. This is wrong. Article 50 says: “Any member state may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.” The UK’s most fundamental constitutional requirement is that there must first be the approval of its parliament.

Britain, absurdly, is the only significant country (other than Saudi Arabia) without a written constitution. We have what are termed “constitutional conventions”, along with a lot of history and traditions. Nothing in these precedents allots any place to the results of referendums or requires our sovereign parliament to take a blind bit of notice of them.

It was parliament that voted to enter the European Economic Community in 1972, and only three years later was a referendum held to settle the split in Harold Wilson’s Labour party over the value of membership. Had a narrow majority of the public voted out in 1975, Wilson would still have had to persuade parliament to vote accordingly – and it is far from certain that he would have succeeded.

Our democracy does not allow, much less require, decision-making by referendum. That role belongs to the representatives of the people and not to the people themselves. Democracy has never meant the tyranny of the simple majority, much less the tyranny of the mob (otherwise, we might still have capital punishment). Democracy entails an elected government, subject to certain checks and balances such as the common law and the courts, and an executive ultimately responsible to parliament, whose members are entitled to vote according to conscience and common sense."

hallelujah - there is hope



https://www.theguardian.com/comment...vote-referendum-members-parliament-act-europe
 
i was right in my first post - the referendum is not binding and the exit clause can only be triggered after a vote in the British parliament

"It is being said that the government can trigger Brexit under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, merely by sending a note to Brussels. This is wrong. Article 50 says: “Any member state may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.” The UK’s most fundamental constitutional requirement is that there must first be the approval of its parliament.

Britain, absurdly, is the only significant country (other than Saudi Arabia) without a written constitution. We have what are termed “constitutional conventions”, along with a lot of history and traditions. Nothing in these precedents allots any place to the results of referendums or requires our sovereign parliament to take a blind bit of notice of them.

It was parliament that voted to enter the European Economic Community in 1972, and only three years later was a referendum held to settle the split in Harold Wilson’s Labour party over the value of membership. Had a narrow majority of the public voted out in 1975, Wilson would still have had to persuade parliament to vote accordingly – and it is far from certain that he would have succeeded.

Our democracy does not allow, much less require, decision-making by referendum. That role belongs to the representatives of the people and not to the people themselves. Democracy has never meant the tyranny of the simple majority, much less the tyranny of the mob (otherwise, we might still have capital punishment). Democracy entails an elected government, subject to certain checks and balances such as the common law and the courts, and an executive ultimately responsible to parliament, whose members are entitled to vote according to conscience and common sense."

hallelujah - there is hope



https://www.theguardian.com/comment...vote-referendum-members-parliament-act-europe


Question: I know that the UK has a fairly new Supreme Court. Is this the sort of issue that they may eventually intervene in?

I ask because it seems like some people think withdrawing will require a parliamentary vote, while others think that this can be done unilaterally by the PM. I ask because even if Boris Johnson wins the Tory leadership contest and the government isn't dissolved, it sounds like he might have a hard time keeping the Tories together enough to actually get parliament to approve activating Article 50. If he can do it unilaterally, that's another story. So I have to wonder if there will be some sort of constitutional crisis if he tries to activate Article 50 unilaterally.


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