Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[HAND]

There appears to be a run on the pound at this very moment... 6% down since the Sunderland result..

 

[Arakhor]

A good Leave result for a traditionally working-class area is not too unexpected, I suppose.

 

[HAND]

Quite possible.. I might stay up for a couple more results though.

 

[Martin Alvito]

There appears to be a run on the pound at this very moment... 6% down since the Sunderland result..

So a brief after-market bubble collapsing back to trading-day prices can be considered 'a run on the pound'? Interesting.

EDIT: Nevermind, took a few minutes for it to drop off the cliff on what I'm seeing. I wouldn't consider it 'a run' but it's precipitous as currency shifts go.

 

[Bootstoots]

Why do the British take so long to count votes? It seems they don't expect a definitive result for quite a while, although the first couple of places that traditionally count their votes quickly have just done so. I remember this from the UK general election last year, too: results were slowly trickling in all the way until mid-morning UK time. The voting system is literally as simple as it gets, so I'd think they'd be as fast as the US or Canada.

If I were British, I'd probably end up voting Remain but wouldn't be happy about it. The EU revealed itself to be a rather monstrous institution during the 2010-14 (and ongoing for Greece) crises, and it seems that it is so badly designed that another financial crisis could destroy it. And I would love to watch the people rise up and do something substantial that their masters don't want them to do: it would help to restore my faith in the democratic process to see the elite be totally united in their desire to have something happen, and then have the proles reject it.

The Eurozone crisis is the fault of the Euro and the Eurogroup leaders rather than the EU as a whole, so the UK gets its own currency and doesn't have to worry about sovereign debt crises. On balance, the rest of being part of the EU seems slightly beneficial - leaving probably wouldn't have enormous negative effects as the Remain camp is claiming, but there would still be a substantial drop in UK trade with Europe. Migration doesn't seem like anywhere near the concern it's being made out to be, either: most Eastern European migrants who would want to come to the UK have already done so, and the EU has no power to force its members to accept more refugees than they wish to, so it's hard to imagine that leaving would have much effect that way.

I'd love to see the EU's structures get dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up, but nobody thinks that would happen if countries just started voting to leave it. Instead there'd just be no coherent organization of the European states and little will to try again.

It seems that Western elections and referendums nowadays are taking on the character of a decision between our neoliberal establishment and right-wing populism, with the left wing largely content to stay folded within the establishment and try to get it to smooth out some of the rougher edges. If the modern-day populists were less racist and otherwise xenophobic, and if they had a coherent strategy for changing the political system in a way that would actually deliver benefits to the people who have been left behind by neoliberalism, I'd be all for them. Some sort of fusion of the left and right wing anti-establishment types, with both racism and Chavismo left behind and coherent plans to make large but not completely revolutionary changes to the status quo, is my ideal party.

But of course most of the people who are providing the most effective opposition to the ongoing march of neoliberalism are bigoted with borderline-fascist elements, with few good or interesting plans. So the establishment it is then, wherever my vote really matters.

 

[HAND]

I'm just quoting BBC commentators amongst others. Nearly 1am in the UK and I'm not that up for a pedantic terminology debate thanks!

 

[Martin Alvito]

Why do the British take so long to count votes? It seems they don't expect a definitive result for quite a while, although the first couple of places that traditionally count their votes quickly have just done so. I remember this from the UK general election last year, too: results were slowly trickling in all the way until mid-morning UK time. The voting system is literally as simple as it gets, so I'd think they'd be as fast as the US or Canada.

The short answer has to be paper ballots.

Think about it this way - if you have paper ballots, you at least have physical evidence to support the result. (Unless LBJ has them buried, anyway.) The advantage of computerizing voting is that you can count things a whole lot faster; the disadvantage is that you have to trust the integrity of the computer system.

 

[sophie]

The short answer has to be paper ballots.

Think about it this way - if you have paper ballots, you at least have physical evidence to support the result. (Unless LBJ has them buried, anyway.) The advantage of computerizing voting is that you can count things a whole lot faster; the disadvantage is that you have to trust the integrity of the computer system.

I have never cast a ballot on a computerized system.

 

[bathsheba666]

Perhaps the poor people thought they couldn't get poorer. Poor people.
Looks like they still don't realise.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I have never cast a ballot on a computerized system.

Berkeley voting on paper has to be the most hilarious bit of irony that I've heard in a while.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I disagree, I think it's sensible to judge political stuff (like referendum issues or candidates) based on their supporters. None of this stuff exists in a vacuum - 'the merits' of something can definitely include the, like, process of it. One of the major reasons I started out strongly supporting Bernie Sanders but became much more half-hearted about him over time, is that I realized lots of his supporters are about as odious as a lot of Trump supporters.

I can't quite put into words why I thought that mattered, but it did matter to me. An English guy I know recently said that he inclines toward Remain, but even had he inclined toward Leave he would not have been able to bring himself to vote for it due to how horrible he thought the Leave campaign was, with all the lies, racism, xenophobia and so forth.

But she WAS one of the supporters, should she be hating herself now? If she was going to vote Leave then she must (surely) have had some reason or reasons to do so. Something she actually believed that would achieve for the better. A poster campaign by a political party who aren't going to have any say in anything either way isn't going to change those reasons and so if she's going to be swayed by it then that can only mean she's not put any thought into it at all and is voting emotionally. At that point she should realise she shouldn't be advising anyone as that is no kind of reasoning to base a vote like this on.

 

[Bootstoots]

The short answer has to be paper ballots.

Think about it this way - if you have paper ballots, you at least have physical evidence to support the result. (Unless LBJ has them buried, anyway.) The advantage of computerizing voting is that you can count things a whole lot faster; the disadvantage is that you have to trust the integrity of the computer system.

We have paper ballots of some form (including punch cards) in many if not the majority of jurisdictions, but most are optically readable and are fed into a machine to be recorded electronically. What I've looked up, the standard in Illinois is that 5% of precincts are randomly selected to also have a hand count performed to ensure there are no systematic issues, along with hand counts of obvious anomalies. We also have many small precincts rather than more large ones, and each precinct is usually only a few hundred votes, so even where hand counts are done, they're quick in most precincts. But yeah, if the Brits are doing it entirely old school and if they have a small number of large counting stations rather than a large number of small ones, I could see why it would take them longer.

I like our approach of having a paper ballot with optical scan, with a random sample hand-counted. It's the perfect combination of modern and quick reporting with a paper trail to ensure no irregularities. I won't say much else positive about Illinois politics, but that one thing is good.

 

[Dachs]

if the Home Islands vote Leave but the imperial possessions vote Remain does that mean that Britain secedes from the Empire

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Why do the British take so long to count votes? It seems they don't expect a definitive result for quite a while, although the first couple of places that traditionally count their votes quickly have just done so. I remember this from the UK general election last year, too: results were slowly trickling in all the way until mid-morning UK time. The voting system is literally as simple as it gets, so I'd think they'd be as fast as the US or Canada.

On the flip side, we don't have election campaigns that run for literally years in the run up to general elections. I know which I prefer

 

[Dachs]

On the flip side, we don't have election campaigns that run for literally years in the run up to general elections. I know which I prefer

that is not an either/or proposition

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It wasn't a proposition at all.

 

[innonimatu]

Why do the British take so long to count votes?

Counting by hand and leaving the job to local people who are not professionals of this kind of thing? I'm happy to wait hours or even a day if that is what it takes to prevent the possibility of fraud and any suspicions of it.

I'd love to see the EU's structures get dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up, but nobody thinks that would happen if countries just started voting to leave it. Instead there'd just be no coherent organization of the European states and little will to try again.

I don't see "further union" happening in this EU. I don't see the Euro lasting much longer, because by now it is obvious that the one-size-fits all creates "structural" losers and winners among the countries that joined that currency: they'll start leaving, probably Finland first. But I also don't see Europe going back to border controls and high tariffs separating trade and movement between its closer countries. Something will succeed this EU, I don't believe it will be an European federation, but it won't be a collection of autarky either.

We had the left vs. right thing, and then someone added an authoritarian vs. libertarian axis to produce a 2D graphic and called it the "political compass". But we can fit at least one other axis orthogonal to these two: populism vs. elitism.
Left or right, libertarian or authoritarian, ideologies have also split between the idea of a few leading (or pushing...) the masses (elitism) and the idea of moving only with the support of the masses.

You're definitely talking about me. Good to see that I've made an impression, at least.

I may be stubborn, but I listen to other people

if the Home Islands vote Leave but the imperial possessions vote Remain does that mean that Britain secedes from the Empire

Imperial possession's votes should get ignored, that's what an empire is about

 

[Dachs]

It wasn't a proposition at all.

oh you tease

 

[Kyriakos]

Let's hope the vote counting will not have 'honest mistakes'

 

[Bootstoots]

Counting by hand and leaving the job to local people who are not professionals of this kind of thing? I'm happy to wait hours or even a day if that is what it takes to prevent the possibility of fraud and any suspicions of it.

When our votes are counted by hand, we usually do have locals in thousands of small precincts of a few hundred voters each who do the tallying. That's both pretty fast - even one person can tally up a few hundred votes in an hour or so, although there should of course be multiple people to verify the totals - and involves total hand counting of ballots.

The paper ballots with optical scan plus 5% hand counting is even faster, and still involves paper ballots for verification or recount, so I'm fine with it too. I wouldn't be fine with either totally electronic elections or optical counting with no hand verification.

I don't see "further union" happening in this EU. I don't see the Euro lasting much longer, because by now it is obvious that the one-size-fits all creates "structural" losers and winners among the countries that joined that currency: they'll start leaving, probably Finland first. But I also don't see Europe going back to border controls and high tariffs separating trade and movement between its closer countries. Something will succeed this EU, I don't believe it will be an European federation, but it won't be a collection of autarky either.

Hopefully that's correct - a series of looser international agreements could be instituted that would preserve national sovereignty while avoiding a total collapse in intra-European trade and excessive restrictions on travel. Then again though, large political movements develop momentum of their own and it's virtually impossible to predict what will happen if the dam breaks and the Euro or the whole EU collapses. A return to nationalism and protectionism is quite possible, although I doubt there will be any invasions of Belgium or Poland this time around.

We had the left vs. right thing, and then someone added an authoritarian vs. libertarian axis to produce a 2D graphic and called it the "political compass". But we can fit at least one other axis orthogonal to these two: populism vs. elitism.
Left or right, libertarian or authoritarian, ideologies have also split between the idea of a few leading (or pushing...) the masses (elitism) and the idea of moving only with the support of the masses.

I definitely agree about that axis - differentiation of politicians along that dimension seems to be the biggest recent trend in the Western world, with the populists currently ascendant. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, there weren't many populists to speak of, but now the discontent with the policies enacted by the politicians of that period is reaching critical mass. But the majority of that mass seems to be coming from the populist right, and that's a group with some really scary elements. After a long boring period, it seems we do now live in interesting times.

The other dimension I might add would be on foreign policy: interventionist vs. isolationist. The elitists are generally also interventionist and the populists generally isolationist at the moment, but a burst of jingoism could easily make the populists interventionist, and it's possible to conceive of elites deciding intervention is generally bad for their bottom lines and ceasing to support it.