Comment by ndsipa_pomu

> another brexit exit (a singular, definable political question that can cleanly classified in a binary label)

Yes, the referendum was a binary choice, but I think it was flawed in that Brexit covered many different, incompatible options (e.g. soft, hard, in-between). If the referendum had depicted the situation more accurately, then we wouldn't have wasted so much time and money going through the whole charade (mainly because "remain" would have won).

I like to think of an analogy where people are asked what they want to eat for dinner and they're given a choice of "meat" or "vegetarian". If 40% want vegetarian, 30% want beef and 30% want pork, then the "meat" option will win, but then someone has to choose whether it's beef or pork. That ends up with a choice that only suits 30% of the voters.

Also, it makes sense for a referendum to specify the required margin for whether the choice is carried through and I think the vote was too close to lead to such a destructive change.