Should national referendums be counted centrally?

BobQ

Alan_Brown wrote: »

I agree. Make them legally binding and also have a rule that the same question (or similar variant) can only be asked once every 20 years.

All of which is possible if the Parliament ordering the referendum state that they should be in the Act.

The reason for not doing the latter is that it seeks to bind a future Parliament which is unconstitutional.

The only argument I can think of for not doing the former is to avoid a decision being made in perverse circumstances. For example, the way the US election was potentially influenced by a public servant making a statement that was subsequently overturned.

elantan

I certainly don't think postal votes should be kept for weeks and looked at in country that the vote doesn't take place in

zagubov

Alan_Brown wrote: »

Due to the divisive impact that binary referendums have on the various countries, regions and cities within the United Kingdom, should votes be counted centrally rather than on a constituency by constituency basis?

In the EU referendum, we voted as an United Kingdom on the question of whether to remain in the EU or not. The votes were counted on a constituency basis, which has led to politicians and VIs in London, NI and Scotland, etc. stating that they are being 'dragged out of the EU against their will'

Apart from making the count more rapid, giving us great overnight TV as the count takes place and providing statisticians with data on how the vote was broken down on a regional basis, there seems to be no benefits from counting the vote in constituencies.

Referendums are not constituency based, they are a pure headcount. In the EU referendum, if we just had the base figures of 52% Leave, 48% remain, then I believe we would now have much less bitterness, especially in the regions/countries I listed above.

Thoughts?

You mean a parallel non-constituency based voting apparatus that merged the results into an easily-fudged final answer without showing their working. Yep. That'll impress whoever loses and has to be convinced to accept the result. Sorry I missed out the word "Surely" from the start of that sentence.

steampowered

It would just make the whole process slower and more expensive. There is existing machinery for councils to arrange votes to be counted on a borough-wide basis, so we might as well use it.

By the way, you don't tend to have separate counts for each constituency. You tend to find several constituencies counted in the same town hall (although you do get a separate figure for each constituency at the end of it).

vivatifosi

My thoughts are the same as steam powered. You would be adding a tier of recruitment and training costs that you don't need to. Additionally, would the votes get counted in Carlisle, or Sunderland, or somewhere else that would appreciate the work? Not a chance, it would lead to more centralisation in London.

HornetSaver

Alan_Brown wrote: »

In the EU referendum, we voted as an United Kingdom on the question of whether to remain in the EU or not. The votes were counted on a constituency basis, which has led to politicians and VIs in London, NI and Scotland, etc. stating that they are being 'dragged out of the EU against their will'

Factually correct. They are being dragged out of the EU due to the will of the overall majority.

Apart from making the count more rapid, giving us great overnight TV as the count takes place and providing statisticians with data on how the vote was broken down on a regional basis, there seems to be no benefits from counting the vote in constituencies.

Those all strike me as good things. I also think counting by constituency makes electoral fraud or error easier to identify.

My mind goes back to Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, where one of the tallies had Gore with a negative number of votes, hence why the networks put it in the Bush column rather than keeping it at too close to call and going with the final tally. If they had access to the breakdown below state level, this error would have been spotted and they would never have declared that night.

BobQ

Alan_Brown wrote: »

Due to the divisive impact that binary referendums have on the various countries, regions and cities within the United Kingdom, should votes be counted centrally rather than on a constituency by constituency basis? .........................................

Thoughts?

Close vote, a recount becomes very complicated. Only a million votes in it - call a recount or two.

MPs will not know how their constituents voted, so they could reasonably say that their constituents support their view. So we may see referendums overturned more easily by Parliament.

If fraud is uncovered, it will be difficult to investigate the more hands that the ballots have passed through

zagubov

The ballot needs to be secret at a personal level otherwise we'd be like one of those countries with fake elections like the old eastern bloc communist countries or the (hopefully fewer) pretend democracies in the west that used computerised systems to produce fraudulent outcomes.

Above the personal level (borough and county councils, national assemblies/parliaments, UK parliament) we need complete transparency at every level or it beats me how trust could ever arise.

Which reminds me, why can't we have an English parliament and a democratic upper chamber? Just asking.

CLAPTON

zagubov wrote: »

The ballot needs to be secret at a personal level otherwise we'd be like one of those countries with fake elections like the old eastern bloc communist countries or the (hopefully fewer) pretend democracies in the west that used computerised systems to produce fraudulent outcomes.

Above the personal level (borough and county councils, national assemblies/parliaments, UK parliament) we need complete transparency at every level or it beats me how trust could ever arise.

Which reminds me, why can't we have an English parliament and a democratic upper chamber? Just asking.

seems to me that we should have a referendum to decide whether the voters in England should have their own parliament