EU Referendum Tomorrow....

[Sentryduty]

Good question, in my short time the only referendum voting I can recall was with regard to Quebec staying or splitting from Canada as a nation. The vote was concluded to stay, and the separatist movement has become very quiet compared to those days. I am not sure if a rock-paper-scissors, best two out of three policy applies to these sorts of things.

As with any polarizing topic there will always be wringing of the hands and gnashing of the teeth on the part of the the losing camp. I just have no idea how these things actually work with regard to legal obligation to act based on the outcome of a referendum.

[Eaglelord17]

Personally I am a fan of the super majority approach, that being 55 or 60% or more of the vote being required for a significant change. The issue with the vote like this is it is literally divided at almost 50% (with a 70% voter turnout). It will leave scars no matter who won, and depending on what happens, might still leave more (i.e. how everything is decided to turn out, the initial vote to leave is the beginning of a long and potentially very painful process).

As mentioned by Sentryduty Canada doesn't do these types of referendums much (last one as mentioned was the Quebec separation vote in the 90s) and that was voted down so there was no hard choices that had to be made. The next one will likely be to change the voting system (if they choose to do a referendum, unfortunately legally they are not required to) so we will see what happens there as there might be more than one option on the ballot, and it will be hard to figure out a clear winner.

[MikeVee]

Congratulations to you on what some are calling an independence day for Great Britain.
It's curious to read some from Scotland or Ireland call for session(?) I suppose the rebels(?) would raise a militia and coastal navy for protecting their realm. We've seen exactly who is willing to fight when a NATO ally needs help with the Global War on Terror. Thanks for standing with US.
Perhaps we both can get out of the biggest money pit in the world located with NYC headquarters the epitome of corruption called the U.N.
We too will vote in 4 months and maybe a native New Yorker will make US Great again.

[Flying10uk]

I think that the problem here with the E.U. vote is people trying to change the rules after the vote has taken place- it should have been sorted before the vote. The Remain camp were perfectly happy with the rules when they thought they were going to win the vote or at least I didn't hear any-one raise concerns.

[Vincent]

There are no provisions for popular vote referendums at the federal level in US law.

Some States do conduct popular vote referendums. They are called “Propositions, initiatives, ballot measures,…” When one is voted into law it can be legally challenged and some do get overturned. I am not aware of a re-vote on one.

[Peter Laidler]

We call referendums here '.....the wisdom of the crowd theory'. And it has proved correct once again. At the end of all this, it should be SIR Nigel Farage.

[Gil Boyd]

He speaks a lot of sense...............little off the wall sometimes, like yesterday in the EU Parliament, but heyho he is what he is.
He always seemed to drive his campaign to get out of Europe with honesty, and many poor and elderly followed his lead. Sad that he shot himself in the foot over the distribution of the supposedly £350 Million for the NHS, when his main driving force was exactly that.
Even he wouldn't have been able to say if it was available or not until he was in power.

In that alone, I wish he had kept quiet IMHO.

[villiers]

`Nuff sed! Now´s the time to get on with it.

Was at the range yesterday (100m) with my No 5, this time (to mark BREXIT) without the scope, using the original sight. `Twas a great relief and (after shifting the front blade a tad) was just as accurate. A new age dawns ....

[Flying10uk]

Unfortunately, we may yet get cheated out of the result if there is a second vote, as some would like, and it goes the other way. The question of a second vote cropped up again on the radio today on a listener phone in, BBC Radio 2's lunchtime programme with Jeremy Vine. There were a number of people who phoned in to say that they had voted Leave but would like a second chance to vote in a second Referendum Vote so that they could change the way they voted and vote Remain instead. One reason given by one of the persons phoning in was that they wanted the young people to have the U.K.'s relationship with Europe the way that young people in the U.K. wish it to be. In other words the rest of us would have to suffer the consequences for the rest of our lives and if that wasn't enough pay a ridiculous amount of money for the privilege.

In my opinion Nigel Farage deserves an Oscar for his performance in the European Parliament; I loved the the bit about "you're not laughing now".

[Peter Laidler]

But Gill..... One man, one vote referendums are a classic example of the wisdom of the crowd again! Or in this case, the wisdom of the crowd who got off their backsides and turned out to vote. Young or old, poor and elderly (?) doesn't even enter the equation........

The £350 million was a bit of a red herring in my opinion. The fact is that the remain side couldn't - or wouldn't - tell us what their figure was. Or certainly a figure that stood up to close scrutiny. And we can't ask Brussels....... because the accounts haven't been signed off by the auditors for 11 years!