What difference the Scottish independence question makes | The Spectator
February 3, 2012
What difference the Scottish independence question makes | The Spectator.
Rest of Britain will campaign in the Scottish Independence referendum
January 13, 2012
The Independence referendum will see a novel feature introduced to referendums in Britain. While voting will be restricted to residents in Scotland, interested parties from all over the UK will be legitimate campaigners for either side. These RoB campaigns are what the Americans, who have a word for everything, call “out of State” campaigns. There may be resistance at first as SNP try to nationalise the campaign. But the US and Switzerland it would be absolutely routine for Federal, national business or civic groups to campaign in State/Cantonal referendums that they see have wider implications for them. I have one Swiss friend who has fought 40 such campaigns on behalf of Swiss business organisations. Anyway expect groups from the rest of Britain to make their voices heard in the Independence debate.
Cameron gets his history wrong on referendum thresholds say FULL FACT – are they right?
February 18, 2011
Cameron gets his history wrong on referendum thresholds | Full Fact.
A useful “factcheck” but it doesn’t make absolutely clear the difference between a threshold based on REGISTERED voters and one based on votes actually CAST. Cameron is right in the particulars – his type of threshold based on CAST votes hasn’t been used before in referendums in the UK
The difference is very material. The first is beguilingly democratic yet encourages abstention campaigns designed to discourage people from voting because an abstainer counts as a NO vote. Neither is it at all transparent as to how it works. In Scotland in 1979, on the 60% turnout if my memory serves, Yes needed 83% of the CAST votes to scrape a win over the 40% REGISTERED threshold.
While I would reluctantly accept a threshold based on cast votes, I would be totally opposed to one based on registered votes. Such thresholds have rendered referendums a discredited device in Italy and several other European countries.
Any turnout threshold should be set at a level to avoid ridicule in a very low poll than as a democratic hurdle. And a fixed threshold like 40% would represent a variable hurdle in practice – easily met if you proposed to abolish the army as Switerzerland proposed in a referendum in the 1980s and harder as in a low interest issue like the AV referendum.
Hague expects No to AV campaign to reveal donors
February 18, 2011
Today, the opening day of the offical campaign, William Hague Foreign Secretary and Patron of the NO campaign, asked on R4′s Today programme about the anonymity of the NO donorssaid that he fully expected these to be revealed. His statement follows a week during which NO were put on the back foot over this issue by jounalists questions. It will be a hot day in the NO office today.
Campaign finance is always a matter of public interest and an issue journalists are bound to ask detailed questions. Sometimes the facts revealed give a cue to voters as to who how they should vote. Such as in the US when big tobacco companies or industrial farmers pour millions of dollars into campaigns to protect their interests. More often especially in the UK, at least so far, it is still more a matter of mild and proper interest and an easy story for journalists. But all campaigns should be aware this is bound to come up at some point.
California Marijuana Initiative Lead Narrows, Poll Finds
September 4, 2010
We visited the HQ of the Yes campaign as part of our pre-conference tour before attending the Global Forum on IR in San Francisco this summer
California Marijuana Initiative Lead Narrows, Poll Finds | StoptheDrugWar.org.
“True Wales” wants the 40% quota discredited in Scotland
February 12, 2010
True Wales also believes that, in order to achieve a democratic result, there should be a requirement that at least 40% of all registered voters consent in the 2011 referendum to the transfer of primary lawmaking powers from Westminster to the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff. The catch is registered. On the turnout of the last election it would mean that YES has to win over 80% of the cast votes something that rarely happens in referendums – in the free world at least. This reasonable sounding proposal is an attempt to rig the referendum just as was done in the Scottish referendum of 1979. It simply makes NON voters into NO voters. Ban the proposal in the name of good referendum practice.
Swiss referendum shows Gordon Brown the way
February 12, 2009
In the week that Gordon Brown found his injudiciuos phrase ” British jobs for British workers” come back to haunt him, the Swiss were quietly using a referendum to deal with same problem in a much more constructive way. They held a referendum on an economic treaty with the EU. The clause about free access for foreign workers was controversial but patient argument about its necessity won the day. A sequence of opinion polls show public opinion coming round to support the treaty and this clause.
