2019-2 Brexit: if it ain't binary, don't binary vote
Thursday, February 21, 2019 Letter in the Irish News. See 2019-1, 2018-17, etc.
Dear Editor,
The British political establishment seems to be mesmerised by "the mystique of the majority,” to use Sir Michael Dummett’s phrase. Nearly all of them act as if a complex problem like the UK’s relationship with the EU was, and still can be, resolved in a simplistic, divisive binary vote.
But consider the theory. Apart from many forms of multi-option voting, there are two types of binary question: the basic “A or B?” and the even more primitive, “A, yes or no?”
As Donald Tusk might imply, there’s a “hell" of a difference between the two. The June 2016 referendum was not really an “A or B?” choice. 52% didn’t like A. But option B — the supposed "will of the people” (or 52% of them) — was, and is still, unknown. The question was much more like, “A, yes or no?” So we know only what they don’t want. Perhaps the question should have been a multi-option vote, e.g., “A or B or C?” — "in the EU, EEA or WTO?" (as this Institute suggested in February 2016) — a choice of, say, three definite options.
In 1992 in New Zealand, an independent commission chose five options for their electoral system referendum: first-past-the-post, FPTP; PR-STV; and three in the middle. They now have the German form of PR.
Unfortunately, in 2011, our Electoral Commission decided that an “A or B?” question was enough for our Westminster electoral system: "FPTP or the alternative vote, AV?” neither of which is PR. For many voters, therefore, it was like asking a Muslim, “Are you Protestant or Catholic?”
Worse was to come: in 2016, the Commission chose the most inaccurate of all questions, “A, yes or no?” (“remain or leave?”). Was it wise to use such a blunt instrument? And is it wise, now, either in parliament and/or in any second referendum? Sadly, the Commission and all but a handful of politicos refuse to consider a more inclusive preferential methodology, yet the latter offers the possibility of a fair and accurate resolution of what is definitely not a binary problem.
Yours
