When were you when the UK was kill?

[grue]

ok i see what youre getting at there and youre right that this situation gets sticky BECAUSE

the vote isnt "pink or green", its "keep the building the same or paint it"- that is, a no vote isn't really a vote for something, its a vote for nothing. this would mean that a "yes" needs to get to 55% but a no would just have to "be sure that yes doesnt hit 55%", which is easier. in this specific example, you do need more guidelines. maybe, you need a 55% on either side to shut everyone up for X years. if nobody gets that, it gets brought up again in a year when arguments are better heard and people, maybe, know more. or it's decided by someone larger (like shagg mentioned, a lot of american politics falls to the legislature if necessary). or, some other solution WHICH IS BETTER THAN THE ONE WE HAVE NOW and just because i cant think of something as i sit here eating peanut butter cups at 1:45 on a sunday doesnt mean our current system is bulletproof

anyway, in the 2016 US election you will be voting, essentially, for "pink or green" but in 2020 you will be voting (likely) for the incumbent candidate vs a new one (keep it plain or paint it). it isn't enough in our politics to "fail to vote for the new guy", the current guy also needs to get a good amount of the vote. if this fails, it goes to congress. you see, something has to give here and theres no "going back" once the vote starts

i mean, imagine if in the US one guy votes for trump and two people vote for hillary. are we really going to bow our heads and go "but alas, this is the process of voting. she got more votes than him, and so we are bound by our duty". no, we would go "hey hey hey now that's a little silly, something went wrong here". this doesnt literally apply because we already account for this in the US, but im just giving another example of where a system thats just "one number vs the other, whoever is bigger wins" fails

I think you're oversimplifying

for example, when Scotland voted to stay in the UK, the Queen came out reinforced in her power. there were questions on the solidity of the UK, and those were solved by a majority "no" ("no, we don't want to leave the uk"). that "no" is as significant as the "yes" and as politically valid. it's so important that it's now being used to attack the eu referendum, because now it's "ok we said 'no', but now you're screwing us over, so we might change our minds"

same with the EU. there was a vast xenophobic campaign against the EU during the referendum. choosing "stay" for a lot of people wasn't just "don't paint the house", it was much more, for example it was "no, we are not xenophobic", or "yes, we believe the EU is good for us". you're putting all the validity on one side of the vote and forgetting that standing for the other side of the vote is equally a political statement. it's not a "vote for nothing", that's where I think you're wrong.

so in the same way that if the uk's decision to leave backfires and they end up in the gutter, people can say "well, you did choose to leave"; if the uk chose to STAY and it backfired, people could say "well, you did choose to stay". they are both conscious decisions. and in any political point, changing or not changing are conscious decisions, always. adding new gun laws or leaving the laws as they are, in america, are a big talking point because both decisions are politically very important. changing the schengen treaty to add border control or leave it as it is, in the eu, are opposite decisions each with huge implications on how things will go in the future.

as for the numbers game: technically a democratic country can elect its own destruction. democracy is based on the iffy belief that people will consciously engage in politics, and participate. when they don't (like in your 'only three people cast a vote example'), you are having bigger structural problems than how valid that election is, imo