Brexit Vote Was Unrepresentative

[barryqwalsh]

• • OPINION
    
  • Jul 3 2016
    
  
  
  The Scottish Devolution Referendum of 1979 failed after falling short of the required 40 per cent vote of the total electorate. Reuters
  
  Brexit vote was unrepresentative
  I was surprised, during the run-up and subsequent fallout to the recent UK referendum on EU membership, that there was no reference made in the media or by anyone else to the requirement of the Scottish Devolution Referendum of 1979, that a minimum threshold of 40 per cent of the total electorate (those that can and do vote, plus those that can vote but don't) had to be met for a vote to carry.
  
  In the event in the 1979 referendum, although 52 per cent of those that voted said "Yes", the vote was not enacted due to the 64 per cent turnout, which meant that only 33 per cent of the total potential electorate actually did say Yes, thereby falling short of the 40 per cent as was then required.
  
  Had this same threshold been in place in last Thursday's referendum, the vote would again have not carried, due to the 52 per cent vote to leave being reduced relative to the total electorate to 38 per cent based on the 72 per cent turnout, and thus falling short of a 40 per cent threshold had that been in place. The UK government, in my view as a UK resident citizen, has been grossly negligent in their setting up of the conditions for the referendum. Ideally, there should be a swift new referendum based solely on the question of whether Article 50 of the EU Constitution should be activated. And, further, there should be a minimum threshold in regard to total electorate set, as was the case in 1979, thereby removing the unreliable indicator of a very close result, such as we have just experienced, but upon which the future of our country and our relationship with the wider world now hangs.
  
  
  On the other hand, will it be the case that, in less than a month's time, the dust will have settled, the markets will have recovered, and our focus will be on our own political leadership machinations to the exclusion of all else?
  
  Suggesting in other words that our future membership of the EU is actually of little consequence both to ourselves and the wider world, and that not only ourselves but, individually and collectively, Europe these past 40 years has lived nothing other than a political delusion that has had no bearing on the real world we live in.
  
  David Anderson
  
  Dundee, Scotland
  
  
  
  Read more: Letters: Democracy and the election debacle
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[DGS49]

What a pathetic moron. How many elections are won by a side getting more than 50% of the total of people entitled to vote?

Not many.

 

[saveliberty]

The vote represented the majority of those that made an effort to show up and cast a vote. Don't be a bunch of whiners.