Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: [africanworldforum] STAR OOPS: Brexiters Have a Buyers' Remorse - But Is it Not Too Late?

Bode:

Maybe "super-majority" is not the word to use, but "qualified majority" BASED ON THE ELECTION OR VOTING QUESTION ASKED as is evident in   with Articles 49, 40 and 283 of the EU Lisbon Treaty that I repeat far below......

The principle might be as follows:  Suppose we specify that a threshold percentage (let us call it Z) of the eligible voters is required for the vote to be considered valid at all.  

                     Necessary Condition 1:  Eligible Voter Participation > Z

Now let us call the ACTUAL percentage of those who vote for a valid election as X, where X > Z.   To fix matters, suppose we specify Z to be 55% and in a particular election X = 60.  Then that means that 40% (or (100-X)%) of the voters have not voted.  Then it can be stated that for qualified majority to be obtained, the difference of the percentage between the Affirm Question Asked (Y) and Negate Question Asked  (100-Y))  must be at least a quarter  (or even half) of those who did not vote - that is 10% for the fixed case, or in the general case  

                              Modulo [Y - (100-Y)]  > (100 - X)/4

That is:

                Necessary Condition 2:   Modulo[2Y-100] > 0.25(100-X)     

or            Necessary Condition 2:   Modulo[2Y-100] > 0.5(100-X)

Y could be greater than 50 - in which case Affirm the Question Asked (Brexit).  If Y is less than 50, then Reject Question Asked ("Bremain") 

In the present Cameron Brexit situation, X = 72, and for

                             0.25 (100-X) = 7

                             0.5 (100-X) =  14

and with actual Result Modulo [2*52 - 100] =  4 < 7 or 14

the Referendum would have FAILED.

However  at X=72,  rather than the 52%-48% split, suppose we had had

       (1)  Y = 53.5 and (100-Y) = 46.5  or Y=46.5 and (100-Y) = 53.5 - a 53.5%-46.5% or 46.5%-53.5% split, then the result would be acceptable at the 0.25 specification

       

       (2)  Y = 57 and (100-Y) = 43 or a 57%-43% or 43%-57% split, then the result would be acceptable at the 0.5 specification.

All of this is of course Monday Quarterbacking arithmetic and spilled milk......but that is a lesson learnt.

And there you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

APPENDIX: Some Articles in the EU Lisbon Treaty

QUOTE

Leaving the EU

Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU) 

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements. 

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. 

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period. 

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it. A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. 

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49

UNQUOTE

 

QUOTE

Article 49 – Treaty on European Union (TEU) 

Joining the EU

Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the assent of the European Parliament, which shall act by an absolute majority of its component members. The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. The conditions of eligibility agreed upon by the European Council shall be taken into account.

UNQUOTE

 

QUOTE

Qualified Majorities, etc.

Article 238 – Treaty on European Union (TEU)

 

1. Where it is required to act by a simple majority, the Council shall act by a majority of its component members.

2. By way of derogation from Article 16(4) of the Treaty on European Union, as from 1 November 2014 and subject to the provisions laid down in the Protocol on transitional provisions, where the Council does not act on a proposal from the Commission or from the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the qualified majority shall be defined as at least 72% of the members of the Council, representing Member States comprising at least 65% of the population of the Union.

3. As from 1 November 2014 and subject to the provisions laid down in the Protocol on transitional provisions, in cases where, under the Treaties, not all the members of the Council participate in voting, a qualified majority shall be defined as follows:

(a) A qualified majority shall be defined as at least 55% of the members of the Council representing the participating Member States, comprising at least 65% of the population of these States.

A blocking minority must include at least the minimum number of Council members representing more than 35% of the population of the participating Member States, plus one member, failing which the qualified majority shall be deemed attained;

(b) By way of derogation from point (a), when the Council does not act on a proposal from the Commission or from the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the qualified majority shall be defined as at least 72% of the members of the Council representing Member States comprising at least 65% of the population of these States.

4. Abstentions by Members present in person or represented shall not prevent the adoption by the Council of acts which require unanimity.

UNQUOTE

On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 11:06 AM, Bode <ominira@gmail.com> wrote:

Are there examples of referenda based on super majority rather than simple majority? Is a referendum not different in essence from general elections? The super majority clause in elections and other congressional votes is meant to force compromise and consensus. what compromise is there to forge in to leave or not to leave? if you change the rules of referendum to super majority, which side would you apply it to, remain? would you say unless Bremain has 60% UK leaves? otherwise, you are simply making it difficult for only one side, or a particular agenda to prevail against the status quo. that is the definition of a rigged system.  this in part would be a reason why it has always been based on simple majority. what you can ask for is a double majority or quorum clause. that a referendum meets a threshold of turn out and a majority of votes. but if there are examples of super majority referenda, i withdraw my point.   

On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 1:27 AM, 'Ola Kassim' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I agree that David Cameron bungled the EU Brexit Referendum right from the start. 

He should have demanded a super majority clause of 55 to 60% for such a monumental decision  along with a geographical clause of 60% of the counties in each region in order to carry the region and that 60% of the regions vote Leave in order to effect the change.

This is what I would recommend for any referendum seeking to dismember Nigeria.

Bye,

Ola

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 25, 2016, at 13:38, Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com> wrote:

My People:

Oops!

You can now see buyers' remorse in the UK already, and a request for a second referendum because  "less than 75% voted and the winning vote was less than 60%" - according to a curious petition demand!:

This is what was very worrying to me over an issue as important as this:  even if ten people more had voted to "Brexit" rather than to "Bremain", we would still be talking about this Brexit move.

I would have thought that a SUPER-MAJORITY clause should have been specified   - that unless a difference like 10%  or even 15%  was achieved -  the 43-year-old status quo should be maintained.  Is that not what is done, when 2/3 majority or 4/5 majority is required rather than simple majority in parliamentary system?  Or that if the vote is within 5%, a five-year breathing or cooling-off period will be provided, and a re-vote taken, after which a simple majority would be allowed?

 When we couple it with the fact that it appears that many of the UK voters did not REALLY know the full CONSEQUENCES of the outcome of their vote - hence a recent uptick in Google searches for "EU"  AFTER the vote -  we have a problem....so we might also institute a ISSUE-KNOWLEDGE test for voters in a democracy - what ethicist Jason Brennan reminds us is called "epistocracy"

But that is spilled  milk now - or is it not?

Bolaji Aluko

Shaking his head

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/25/could-britain-actually-have-a-second-referendum-on-brexit/

As more than a million people sign a petition for a second EU referendum we ask - could it actually happen?.

http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2016/06/24/ethicist-jason-brennan-brexit-democracy-and-epistocracy/

Ethicist Jason Brennan: Brexit, Democracy, and Epistocracy

QUOTE

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/25/could-britain-actually-have-a-second-referendum-on-brexit/

As more than a million people sign a petition for a second EU referendum we ask - could it actually happen?

 Camilla Turner  Michael Wilkinson 

25 JUNE 2016 • 3:57PM

A petition calling for a second EU referendum has reached over a million signatures, attracting the biggest surge of support Parliament's website has ever seen.

The author of the petition, William Oliver Healey, says the Government should re-stage the referendum because the winning vote for Leave was less than 60 per cent and was based on a turnout of less than 75 per cent. 

But could this actually happen?

Professor Vernon Bogdanor, one of Britain's foremost constitutional experts said a second referendum is "highly unlikely".

He told The Telegraph: "I don't think the EU will wish to bargain any further, they will take this vote as final."

Prof Bogdanor, an expert in constitutional history at King's College London who was David Cameron's tutor at Oxford, warned that Governments will be "very careful" about calling for referendums in the future. 

Professor John Curtice, whose exit poll was the only one to predict the Conservatives would win last year's general election, said the subject was so divisive within mainstream political parties and their supporters that it would be unlikely to form a campaigning issue for some time - let alone spark another public vote.

Thursday's referendum saw 17.4 million (51.9%) votes cast to leave the EU, compared with 16.1 million (48.1%) for remaining part of the bloc, with a turnout of 72.2%, according to the Electoral Commission.

In response, more than a million people have signed an online petition calling for the Government to implement a rule that "if the Remain or Leave vote is less than 60% based on a turnout less than 75%, there should be another referendum".

The petition passed the seven-figure landmark just over 24 hours after the referendum result was confirmed.

A petition calling for a second EU referendum

Prof Curtice said: "How many people voted in favour of Leave? Seventeen million. One million is chicken feed by comparison.

"It's no good people signing the petition now, they should have done it before. Even then, these petitions don't always mean a great deal.

"It has passed the 100,000 mark for it to be debated in Parliament. All that means is that some MPs will say, 'It's a terrible shame', others will say, 'Hallelujah'. Then that's the end of it.

"Mainstream political parties have been divided on Europe. The parties' supporters have been divided. Nobody is going to want to campaign prominently on this."

The professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde added: "If Boris Johnson is running the Government and if (disengagement from the EU) is taking a long time to be implemented, two years down the line we could have another poll showing people actually want to reverse the decision and remain in.

"Then there could be a situation where the opposition party in a general election have a mandate to hold a new referendum on it."

Is the referendum legally binding?

In theory, the Prime Minister could ignore the referendum result, put the question to a parliamentary debate and gamble on the majority of MPs voting to remain.

This is because parliament is sovereign and referendums are generally not binding in the UK.

Had the 2011 referendum on changing the electoral system to alternative vote been successful, the Government would have been obliged to change the law. However, no such provision was contained within the EU referendum legislation.

What is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and why is it important?

Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty states: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements".

Mr Cameron can decide when to invoke Article 50, which is the formal notification to the EU of Britain's decision to leave. He could still decide to ignore the vote and refuse to invoke it. However, in practise, this is very unlikely.

He has said in the past that he would have to trigger it immediately after a vote for Leave, although he could have been speaking figuratively to emphasise that the referendum was final.

On Saturday, the EU founding states called on Britain to "urgently" trigger Article 50 and begin the process of departure. 

When will Britain actually leave the EU?

After invoking Article 50, Britain would have up to two years to negotiate their terms of exit. If they wanted any longer, all member states would need to unanimously agree to it.

Prof Bogdanor said that Article 50 is "deliberately designed to make it difficult to leave. The balance of power is with the other 27 member states."

He went on: "There are up to two years to negotiate. Unless there is unanimity, they can say 'these are our terms, take it or leave it'."

Senior EU officials have already said they want Britain to leave as soon as possible.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, said "it doesn't make any sense to wait until October to try to negotiate the terms of their departure".

In an interview with Germany's ARD television station, he added: "I would like to get started immediately." 

Will Britain ever be able to re-join the EU?

Yes. The final clause of Article 50 states: "If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49".

Article 49 of the Lisbon Treaty deals with the procedure for any countries wanting to join the EU, whether they have previously been members or not.

 

It says that if a European state is committed to promoting the values of "human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights" then it may apply to become a member of the Union.

Following an application, the European Council would have to unanimously agree to Britain re-joining, after consulting with the Commission and receiving assent of the European Parliament. The decision would then need to be ratified by all member states.

UNQUOTE

_____________________

http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2016/06/24/ethicist-jason-brennan-brexit-democracy-and-epistocracy/

Ethicist Jason Brennan: Brexit, Democracy, and Epistocracy

June 24, 2016 by PUP Author

By Jason Brennan

The Washington Post reports that there is a sharp uptick today in the number of Britons Googling basic questions about what the European Union is and what the implications of leaving are. This is a bit like deciding to study after you've already taken the final exam.

Technically, the Brexit referendum is not binding. Parliament could decide to hold their own vote on whether to leave the European Union. Perhaps they should. Perhaps the UK's leaders owe it to the people to thwart their expressed will.

Leaving the EU is no small affair. It probably will have enormous effects on the UK, Europe, and much of the rest of the world. But just what these effects will be is unclear. To have even a rudimentary sense of the pros and cons of Brexit, a person would need to possess tremendous social scientific knowledge. One would need to know about the economics and sociology of trade and immigration, the politics of centralized regulation, and the history of nationalist movements. But there is no reason to think even a tenth of the UK's population has a basic grasp of the social science needed to evaluate Brexit.

Political scientists have been studying voter knowledge for the past 60 years. The results are uniformly depressing. Most voters in most countries are systematically ignorant of even the most basic political facts, let alone more the social scientific theories needed to make sense of these facts.

This brings us to the central injustice of democracy, and why holding a referendum was a bad idea. Imagine, as an analogy, that you are sick. You go to a doctor. But suppose your "doctor" doesn't study the facts, doesn't know any medicine, and makes her decisions about how to treat you on a whim, on the basis of prejudice or wishful thinking. Imagine the doctor not only prescribes you a course of treatment, but literally forces you, at gunpoint, to accept the treatment.

We'd find this behavior intolerable. You doctor owes you a duty of care. She owes it to you to deliver an expert opinion on the basis of good information, a strong background knowledge of medicine, and only after considering the facts in a rational and scientific way. To force you to follow the decisions incompetent and bad faith doctor is unjust.

But this is roughly what happens in democracy. Most voters are ignorant of both basic political facts and the background social scientific theories needed to evaluate the facts. They process what little information they have in highly biased and irrational ways. They decided largely on whim. And, worse, we're each stuck having to put up with the group's decision. Unless you're one of the lucky few who has the right and means to emigrate, you're forced to accept your democracy's poorly chosen decisions.

There's a big dilemma in the design of political institutions. Should we be ruled by the few or the many? What this amounts to is the choice between being ruled by the smart but selfish or dumb but nice. When only a small number of people hold power, they tend to use this power for their own ends at the expense of everyone else. If a king holds all the power, his decisions matter. He will likely use that power in a smart way, but smart for himself, rather than smart for everybody. Suppose instead we give everyone power. In doing so, we largely remove the incentive and ability for people to use power in self-serving ways at the expense of everyone else. But, at the same time, we remove the incentive for people to use power wisely. Since individual votes count for so little, individual voters have no incentive to become well-informed or to process information with any degree of care. Democracy incentivizes voters to be dumb.

Going back to the doctor analogy, here's the dilemma: Suppose you could choose between two doctors. The first doctor prescribes you medicine based on what's good for her, not you. The second is a complete fool who prescribes you medicine on whim and fancy, without reference to the facts. Roughly, with some exaggeration, that's what the choice between monarchy or democracy amounts to. Neither is appealing.

What if there were a third way, though? In my forthcoming book, Against Democracy, I explore a way of splitting the difference. The trick is to find a political system that both 1) spreads power out enough to prevent people from using power selfishly and 2) weeds out or at least reduces the power of incompetent decision-makers.

In some sense, republican democracy, with checks and balances, was meant to do just that. And to a significant degree it succeeds. But perhaps a new system, epistocracy, could do even better.

In an epistocracy, political power is to some degree apportioned according to knowledge. An epistocracy might retain the major institutions we see in republican democracy, such as parties, mass elections, constitutional review, and the like. But in an epistocracy, not everyone has equal basic political power. An epistocracy might grant some people additional voting power, or might restrict the right to vote only to those that could pass a very basic test of political knowledge. Any such system will be subject to abuse, and will suffer from significant government failures. But that's true of democracy too. The interesting question is whether epistocracy, warts and all, would perform better than democracy, warts and all.

All across the West, we're seeing the rise of angry, resentful, nationalist, xenophobic and racist movements, movements made up mostly of low-information voters. Perhaps it's time to put aside the childish and magical theory that democracy is intrinsically just, and start asking the serious question of whether there are better alternatives. The stakes are high.

Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Ethics of Voting (Princeton), Why Not Capitalism?, and Libertarianism. He is the coauthor of Markets without Limits, Compulsory Voting, and A Brief History of Liberty. His new book, Against Democracy, is out this August. He writes regularly forBleeding Heart Libertarians, a blog.

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