Brexit and Voting Outcomes
Our chapter on voting has a significant connection to the British decision to exit the European Union. The British referendum on the European Union was structured as a plurality vote. Britain’s leaders chose to structure the referendum as a single “Yes-No” decision, staying or leaving the European Union. However, in reality, there were 4 options for British citizens to choose among within their relationships (particularly economic) to other countries: remaining in the EU, choosing the EEA, choosing the Customs Union, or choosing the WTO. This may have had a large impact on the results of the referendum – there may have easily been a plurality that would have chosen to remain in the European Union, or the majority of people may have preferred to remaining in the European Union over choosing to form another organization.
In this situation, it may have been better to run a Borda Count-style election. There are multiple options for the decision, and as a result, any sort of simplification to a binary majority-rule vote would skew the results significantly. Having voters order their preferences among these four options may have significantly impacted the results. In this scenario, the British voters may have generally favored remaining in the European Union over the other options. This is a real-life example of how decisions on how the structure of referendums have a significant impact on the actions of a democratic country.
I think this paper opens up another discussion: how do we balance the amount of impact the general public has over specific decisions? There could have indeed been a referendum using the Borda Count style to choose a different type of relationship to maintain with other countries. However, that decision would rely heavily on the amount of knowledge British citizens have on the matter of international politics and economics – it may not be good to have the average daily British citizen stress about how to manage this large decision. The Borda count style would have provided a better method to gauge how the British public feels about the specific choices provided that these citizens understood each implication. It may be too large an assumption.
Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/wfd/peter-emerson/brexit-wrecks-it-theory-of-collective-decision-making