The hope is, of course, that the people we elect to govern us have the time and the intellect to scrutinize the data, and the arguments, and take the right decision when the vote arrives. And also that there are checks and balances by going through parliamentary procedure.
The concern is, of course, that the parliamentary process can be corrupted in many ways, from gerrymandering constituencies, coalitions with their deviation of promises given before the ballot, to general politicking gamesmanship, to cash-for-questions (and, in my opinion, by the whip too). Politicians are susceptible to putting party, political dogma or even personal interests before those of the people they’re representing.
Take the three recent UK referenda…
The referendum on voting reform got torpedoed by the question posed.
As for the two independence votes; one might have thought that millions of votes would give a more nuanced, more accurate outcome. It turned out that at ~50:50, the people were really saying “we don’t know”. An honest statement, actually. So were the referenda a huge waste of time and money? idk.
The hope is, of course, that the people we elect to govern us have the time and the intellect to scrutinize the data, and the arguments, and take the right decision when the vote arrives. And also that there are checks and balances by going through parliamentary procedure.
The concern is, of course, that the parliamentary process can be corrupted in many ways, from gerrymandering constituencies, coalitions with their deviation of promises given before the ballot, to general politicking gamesmanship, to cash-for-questions (and, in my opinion, by the whip too). Politicians are susceptible to putting party, political dogma or even personal interests before those of the people they’re representing.
Take the three recent UK referenda… The referendum on voting reform got torpedoed by the question posed. As for the two independence votes; one might have thought that millions of votes would give a more nuanced, more accurate outcome. It turned out that at ~50:50, the people were really saying “we don’t know”. An honest statement, actually. So were the referenda a huge waste of time and money? idk.