When were you when the UK was kill?

[grue]

usually when there's a tie, you redo the thing.

referendums are costly and time-consuming. you can't just restart one if someone gets in a car crash or whatever. there are concessions being made

and yeah that happens a lot in tennis actually, that's why the games go for long and often the wins are very marginal. still count as wins, though.

the bigger picture you're ignoring is that decisions have to be made. states are clunky complex and big things, and 99% of what happens all the times is compromise. you have to reach a decision by day x, andd at that day a decision has been made. there's no point in circling over the minutia of "what ifs" that will exist no matter what.

if a referendum is to be done, it must reach a decision. it can't stall forever, it's just not something that can happen. 50/50 is the fairest way to set the divide. it's not that it's a hard concept, it's that you're holding it to impossible scrutiny. how would anything that you say be feasible? safeguard mechanisms on a referendum? defeats the purpose. nullifying unless certain criteria are met? either unfair or time/resource consuming.

it's the system that it is. it's important enough for politicians to use it respectfully but not so important that they can't do the opposite if the need is too big. a referendum is just a referendum, and you're overthinking the whole thing