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Comment by cisstrd | Hacker News Reader

That's what a democracy is all about, isn't it?

Isn't it insane how close the race between G.W. Bush and Al Gore was in 2000? Consider the consequences of that decision for a moment. And the voter turnout was only 51.2% in that election, not ~70%. Saying that in the end a small amount of voters make all the difference, that's true in so many cases...

At least regarding the Brexit-vote no one can complain that there wasn't a discussion about the issues, everyone spoke out, politicians, musicians, actors, companies, banks, ... and the people were bombarded with information and arguments for months. And the people have spoken.

(Others have pointed out that this is not legally binding, true, but it's certainly going to happen. There is no other viable way at this point)

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If 51% of voters choose to murder all minorities, would that be allowed? The US has constitutionalism which requires supermajorities to effect fundamental changes. It slows down progress on issues like universal health care, but when progress is made, it is rarely rolled back.

This is completely different. This is a nation voting to leave a supranational union

> "If 51% of voters choose to murder all minorities, would that be allowed"

If you feel the need to resort to such hyperbolic examples to make your point, then you should really reevaluate whether or not you actually have a point worth making.

Reductio ad absurdum is a great way to prove or disprove your point is valid.

Let's simply refrain from comparing leaving the EU to ethnic cleansing. Ok?

The point is that majorities are allowed to make some decisions, not all. At the broadest level, there are rights which no majority can take away. Some fundamental changes require super majorities. Then at a geographical level, decision making can also be split. Local councils handle local affairs. Devolution allows some decisions to be made at a regional level. While many Brits bristle at decisions being made in far off Brussels, many Scots bristle at decisions made in London.

There are other axes of comparison besides moral reprehensibility.

If only more people understood this. It's frustrating how often people focus on the moral element of a comparison to the exclusion of the actual point being made.

I don't think there was ever a supermajority for going in (and the EU has gradually crept into something much bigger than it originally was), so it doesn't make much sense to require a supermajority for getting out.

> It slows down progress on issues like universal health care

That's an odd example because somewhere around half the U.S. feels like the ACA was jammed through without a supermajority of popular approval.

Also, there are many who think mandating the purchase of a product (health insurance) is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that they could squint at the law and call it a tax, but the bill was never passed as a 'health insurance tax', which goes back to popular approval.

Anyway, maybe civil rights reforms, the direct election of senators, or lowering the voting age would be better examples.

It actually was a supermajority of 60 senators that passed it. The House concurred, the President signed it, and five supreme court justices repeatedly affirmed it. These all reflect different cross sections of voting behaviour. A majority of Congress now wants to repeal it, but that majority is checked and balanced by the need to get the President on board as well. I generally dislike how the system favors the status quo, but I think in many cases, it has helped avoid extreme outcomes.

> It actually was a supermajority of 60 senators that passed it.

I was talking about popular support. It didn't have 60% approval of the voting public. In fact, that wouldn't have even been possible because it was a monster of a bill they were trying to cram through. It was so haphazard that some Supreme Court decisions were about what to do when the bill itself doesn't make sense.

And you mischaracterized the Supreme Court decision. The legal precedent was that an individual tax on not having healthcare is legal as long as it's not too onerous. That was a very odd decision because that tax was not the plan as presented to the American public. The whole process was convoluted, which brings its legitimacy into question.

Again, big decisions should have clear support from the American people. Deciding people can be taxed for nothing (not having healthcare) is a change in the rules of the game and should have required an amendment, IMO.

I wish I could flag this comment. Unnecessary trolling.

> That's what a democracy is all about, isn't it?

I recently read a point which made a lot of sense to me: that regular, multi-party elections are much less winner-takes-all than referendums. Even if they aren't run under proportional systems, a government can be thrown out and replaced, its policies changed, so there's always a chance for a do-over, it's always worth waiting rather than throwing a fist. A referendum, while it technically can be re-run, tends to burn out the public's willingness to listen, while decisively fixing a choice that can no longer be changed. So it's much more divisive and traumatic.

So there's democracy and democracy, basically. And they aren't the same.

> And the voter turnout was only 51.2% in that election, not ~70%. Saying that in the end a small amount of voters make all the difference, that's true in so many cases...

And the voter turnout in the US only matters for the 18 or so contested states - so it's misleading to talk about really..

Absolutely not. Democracy means decisions made by the people. There's NOTHING about the concept of Democracy that requires using THE WORST possible method of decision-making, i.e. majority rule yes/no.

There's all sorts of other ways to make collective decisions such as score voting, consensus, requiring approval from a combination of stakeholders (such as in a case like this requiring that all parts of the UK all approve), and so on. Majority rule brings tyranny of the majority and is the worst way to run a democracy.

Score voting does not really work with 2 choices.

Requiring all 'parts' of the UK to agree would not work well either. Do you do it by state? County? City? Person? If by state, why?

100% required for change means its tyrany of the minority. So it's really no better.

The problem is we don't know of a better way than FPTP for decisions like these.

In reality, staying in or leaving the EU is a lot more complicated than a simple two-way choice. The two most obvious paths for exit - leaving the free trade area altogether and somehow joining the EFTA and retaining free trade - have less in common with each other than they do with remaining in the EU. Then there's the issue of what to do if we can't meet the Leave campaign's promises, which seems almost certain as they're self-contradictory and beyond optimistic, but couldn't be guaranteed even if they were more reasonable since so much depends on negotiations with the rest of Europe.

Score voting works perfectly fine with 2 choices. There's no basis to say otherwise.

Consider simple realistic hypothetical: what if 10% of the pro-Brexit voters are gung-ho and 90% are only slightly leaning toward it with a lot of hesitation; and 90% of the anti-Brexit voters are strongly opposed to the Brexit? With score voting, the pro-Brexit voters can still be majority but the decision will be voted down because the pro-Brexit voters weren't as sure. Even if the majority of voters decide to vote strategically, it would make a difference. I know I would never vote extreme one side or the other on something I myself actually feel conflicted about.

For clarity, instead of scoring 1-10 on "yes" as an option and 1-10 on "no" as an option, it makes more sense for yes/no votes to be on a standard strongly-disagree/disagree/somewhat-disagree/somewhat-agree etc. scale.

I'm not advocating for unanimous support as a mechanism. Tyranny of the minority is shitty, yes.

We absolutely know better ways that FPTP. Score voting is better, period. And just like FPTP can still put the post at higher than 50% (which is necessary for major systematic changes like this), score voting can put a requirement on what level of average score is needed to pass a measure.

0-5 or 0-9 are preferable.

http://scorevoting.net/Why99.html

Good luck doing this in practice. What looks good on paper and what works in reality is not always the same. And making elections more complicated might not be the best way to go.

I didn't advocate for making elections more complicated. There are lots of stupid ways to get more complicated. Score voting is not complicated at all. It's the same damn thing as rating books on Amazon.com or whatever.

And even a simple vote can (and in most cases DOES already) simply set the post further than 50% mark for decisions of such fundamental significance.

I don't think you should be getting downvoted. I totally agree with this. Plurality voting is awful, and at least in the US, probably the most fundamentally broken part of politics. There's a good organization that is working to promote better voting methods, the Center for Election Science, that people should take a look at if they doubt this: https://electology.org/

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