When were you when the UK was kill?

[Ben]

then you agree with me- in any case, no matter which side of the issue, when it comes down to a vote and the difference is sufficiently small

there should be a contingency plan

[Ben]

im not saying it as some sore loser of the brexit vote because, like i said, i have no investment in the decision and only a mild curiosity. i am only talking about the result of a voting procedure

[grue]

well yeah it's silly but what are you going to do? you can't do anything other than 50/50 if what i said is true, and if you implement safeguard mechanisms to counter the referendum then there's no point in having it in the first place, right?

[Ben]

if the referendum results came in and it was an exact 50/50 split, what would they have announced? is there a formality for this? would they just keep revoting until it leaned one way or the other? if more "leave" people were in car accidents that day and didnt get to vote so that it went toward "stay" would you say nothing or would you at least mention how weird it was and ask if there was another way?

[Ben]

why is this such a hard concept? what happens in the event of ANY tie? what defines a tie? do you really think a tie should mean precisely one number to another number, with numbers this large? that is, statistically, absurd

[Ben]

if we play a series of sixty trillion tennis matches and we are even until you win the thirty trillion and first, that doesnt make you better until i can prove that i lose the next one as well, and a few more until i am outside of a reasonable doubt that i am the worse player

in practicality, a vote is harder to orchestrate but that never defeats the point im making in theory and it shouldnt invalidate our ability to try to fix things that are wonky

if you were the better player, nobody would say that was certain until you had 40 trillion and i was still lagging behind at 30 trillion

[Ben]

in any case i think the intensity my initial curiosity and borderline-rhetorical "huh, i wonder if this is the best way to do this" query has been overtaken by how long ive let myself defend it so you guys can go back to talking about the liberation of france or w/e this was about

[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

[Ben]

i just tried to say it was weird y'all

[Ben]

"huh, what a close vote" this is what i will say when i am able to go back in time

[Delirious Biznasty]

500,000 is a big number to divide the choices

[CharlieH]

You have no idea how long it took me to muster up the energy to even write the paltry offerings I give you here. Honestly, my life for the past x amount of weeks has just been facebook post after news bulletin after "vote leave" sign (i live in a town that had a reasonably strong leave vote (62.6/37.4)) it's gotton to the point that i'm simply sick of it.

Frankly, I skipped over the bits where there was arguing over standard deviations

The biggest argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. - Winston Churchill

It felt right to use that quote here for no reason, not sure why.

IF YOU WANT MORE, ASK DIRECT QUESTIONS.

i think the most interesting aspect is the loss of the PM

is there any actual UK spamers still around to discuss this

Apparently only me so far. 

Something that has come up today actually is a theory in which the person who has to triggers article 50 (the peice of legislation that kickstarts a countrys path to leaving) will be comming career suicide. The only person who CAN trigger it is, surprise surprise, the Prime Minister. So David Cameron thinks "well fuck that" and decides he's outta there. Now, the position is a poison chalice. Do you become PM, trigger the exit and have one half of the country hate you, or become PM, NOT trigger it, and have even more people hate you for going against the will of the people.

Demographic breakdown of the vote.

Kinda surprised that the oldest choose to leave, tbh. Historically the brits usually side with europe, I guess all the muslims made them think .

Edit: better poll link http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how...d-and-why/

The older people chose to leave because a very similar thing happened when we joined the EU/single market/whatever else back in '75. A lot of misinformation, lots of people disillusioned when we voted in. I don't know the specifics of that though, but it's because they remember a time BEFORE the EU, and hey, it wasn't so bad back then. If you're going to look at that as, for want of a better phrase, "case study", then everything worked out when we voted in, didn't it? 

I had a wild thought that this might in fact be some sort of bounce back. All the people who voted in back in '75 having the opportunity to reverse their decision. 

That being said, this has become a macabre joke already. TOP LINE: Vote to "Leave" [meme image] BOTTOM LINE: Doesn't live long enough to see consequenses.

Immigration IS a huge factor in this though. 

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016...ns-website

People are asking for a re-run because it feels like the brits had no idea of what they were getting themselves into. Scotland and Northern Ireland make a point of staying in the EU and since the UK is leaving, they will leave the UK so they can apply to the EU. Meanwhile, Nigel "Crazypants" Farage has pretty much admitted that he doesn't care about the meaning of the words coming out of his mouth (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pol...99906.html). The rest of the EU is regrouping so the brits get out as soon as possible, and the backlash so far seems to affect the UK much more than it does the EU (as I assumed it would).

"We lost so we want another poll because we need to keep doing it until MY side wins

Talk about a bunch of sore losers

This has devolved into meme level already. Stupid polls have appeared online saying "Redraw the Lottery from last saturday because the number were not what I wanted". har har comedy.

The only place this might hold even a thimble-full of water is London, which has a lot of clout due to the number of people and its diversity. There were big storms and some floods making it hard for some people to get to polling sations, but not enough to make a difference.

That's a moot point. The referendum has been done under fake promises and false premises. It's obviously legitimate to ask the parliament to reconsider, though they most likely won't.

What's iffy about this poll is that it asks for the referendum rules to change into something that makes more sense (like @ben was talking about). I don't see how this applies to this result, though. I mean, new rules shouldn't apply retroactively.

Just an FYI, we in the EU don't give a fuck about referendums so if the UK government decides to ignore it, there's precedent there to just keep the UK in the EU. Seeing as the Brexiters aren't too sure about Brexiting themselves (lol) it may turn out that this is much a dude about nothing.

Which is, imo, the scarier turnout.

Yeah. Have you heard the one about how the "The UK gives £45442157454147154 to the EU every twenty minutes"? That one is a real hoot. 

We DO give a large sum of money to the EU, but we get a lot of it BACK. The brexiters *shudder* (i hate that word now and all of its derivatives) weren't telling people this, and they kinda did or did not get in a bit of trouble for it depending on who you ask.

[Ben]

at least you guys didnt have to name it britgate, brexitgate, eugate, etc

[Ben]

in any case thanks for the actual perspective

[Gorilla Tits]

what would the watergate scandal be called today? Watergategate?