Comment by Lerc
2 days ago
I live in a country where 91.78% of the population voted for a referendum that bought back hard labour in prisons.
As one of the few who voted against it I have yet to encounter a single person who voted for it who both supports hard labour and realised that was in the question being asked.
Why do you claim the 1999 referendum reintroduced hard labor in NZ prisons? I've never seen anything to that effect. The reforms were related to bail, victims rights and parole.
It did not reintroduce hard labour. People voted to reintroduce hard labour. The referendum was non binding,
Let me guess - ‘do you support violent prisoners being given work in proportion to their crimes’ or something similar?
Oh far more deceptive than that.
"Should there be a reform of our justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them and imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offenses?"
Now let's play tldr with the law!
Luckily it was non binding and stands forever as an argument against binding referendums.
I'm not really seeing the deception here since it specifies hard labour and says it would apply to all serious violent offenses. How could you vote for this and not know you were voting for hard labour?
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"Hard labour for all serious violent offenses" seems almost refreshingly straightforward. Was there more in the actual referendum that was hidden? I grant that "serious violent offenses" is somewhat vague; was it overly broad?
That question clearly says hard labour. I'm sure some people didn't read it, but I think there also may be another effect there, where when talking to people in person, they realize you are morally opposed to forced hard labour, and don't want to seem like a bad person, so they pretend they didn't know. Sort of similar to the recent effect in the US where trump significantly underpolled as many voted for him but don't want to admit it.
Sounds more like an argument for requiring referendums to be about a single issue rather than bundling multiple ones into a single question.
If a new law mentions victims I assume they're trying to appeal to my emotions. The joke is on them because I am a robot in skin form.
Yeah, there are many terrible legal abortions in California with the referendum setup too.