This House Would...
This House Would...
EP5: Referendums: A blursed tool (Extended Ep)
In this fun hour-long debate over whether referendums are beneficial or detrimental to democracy, we look into how different levels of debaters think and take turns prepping the motion. At THW, we aim to reach every tier of debating and this episode sheds some light on the thought processes that go into a voting-related motion prep from non-debate, competitive secondary and university-level debate perspectives.
Credits:
Hosts: Noah Pinno, Heather Yuan, Eric Jiang
Editor: Eric Jiang
Cover Art: @onlyooh_
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Do you have a suggestion for a topic you would like to hear about? Feedback on how we can improve? Let us know by emailing us at thwdebatepodcast@gmail.com
Kids do not be trick or treating anymore. My little like, I asked my like grade fours.
Heather Yuan:Uh huh.
Noah Pinno:Like anybody going trick or treating? And they're like, no. Are you fucking stupid?
Heather Yuan:Like, how great are you?
Noah Pinno:Liking? I hope that your parents are like over your shoulder look, because I look like a fucking cloud big like, Have you thought about catching COVID for a sticker as far?
Heather Yuan:Wait, that doesn't make sense. But I thought kids love trick or treating, like, love getting free candy.
Noah Pinno:Not a thing anymore.
Eric Jiang:Because Oh, boy, I don't think it's also cuz of COVID.
Heather Yuan:I don't get why it's because of COVID It's packaged candy.
Noah Pinno:But if you're out of Halloween, and you're going door to door, right, yeah. So you're like, you're breathing and you're like, in interaction with a lot of strangers.
Eric Jiang:I think this is less of a thing in cities and more of a thing in like suburbs and rural areas where the COVID cases are slightly lower per capita. Maybe it's more dispersed and
Noah Pinno:harder. I know I just I might have also just been that the tradition died like because it couldn't have happened last year. Yeah. But I heard like, all over lots of people have just no trigger traders. Whoa, that's really strange. And it's really rare to because this was such a warm Halloween. Yeah, yeah, in Alberta. I was telling people always think this is weird. Like in Alberta it's like a fucking Field Day literally a field day when there's not snow on the ground on October 31. Because that means you don't have to wear your winter boots and parka so you could actually wear Yeah, can you imagine like being like Superman. Like you're like sick like Scarlet booties. Oh my god. You have like the like gray fur line like polar bear boots. Just stomping around? Well,
Eric Jiang:at least you dress up buff. So if you weren't buff before at least you okay.
Heather Yuan:Yeah, cuz you'd have these fake muscles on and then you'd wear your coat over and if
Eric Jiang:you're fake muscles like no
Noah Pinno:no code
Heather Yuan:ever makes you look like you've muscles it makes you look like a fucking Roly Poly.
Noah Pinno:Right your costume was the Michelin man your
Heather Yuan:tights on heights and what is it zip ties around and like really gives you the Michelle of manleigh Hey,
Eric Jiang:but if you like, like strapped a Superman texture onto the Michelin men, like 3d, you can just imagine those roles as muscles.
Noah Pinno:I always had the issue because I wanted to wear a cape because I wanted to be a witch. I mean people always said wizard, but I was like I think which are gender neutral. So I'm a witch. But I couldn't wear my fucking Cape because I also have like a hooded parka. But I have to wear because it's minus 15 degrees.
Heather Yuan:Oh my God,
Eric Jiang:I wish gender neutral. Absolutely interesting. I thought in popular culture was wizards or wizards or like the magical equivalent or druids or the magical or the male equivalent of I think we've de gendered with so the Salem witch trials are
Heather Yuan:our yeah we execute men combat binary and women equally. Yeah, we execute Oh, toss No, no barrel and drown him.
Noah Pinno:Happy Halloween.
Eric Jiang:I mean, I've been recording. This can go on the podcast October 31. And magic and supernatural is referenda. October 31 was the 1995 Quebec independence referendum.
Heather Yuan:Wow.
Noah Pinno:October 30. Oh, no. Like maybe maybe people like we're like waiting. Yeah, to like as a gag joke. They'd be like, I'm young as independent Quebec and then they just don't go out. Oh, okay. October 30 1995. The referendum read? Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12 1995.
Heather Yuan:Let's just let the silence hang in the air for a bit as we all collectively trying to process what the fuck we just heard
Noah Pinno:I asked Heather to read this. And she really was like looking at it for like two minutes straight like it was like a final exam question that she was like manifested the answers.
Eric Jiang:Like imagine no, no, cuz imagine you're at the ballot box right there like the voting booth. And you're just staring at this like what the fuck is going on? And I can just imagine people yelling at ahead of it, like get the fuck out.
Heather Yuan:When I walked in, and no I was like, Look at this, I thought I was being tested on my reading comprehension skills. Okay. And as an SSAT taker, and an essay taker, I was like I'm prepared for this. My whole life has just been standardized testing. So I know how to break this down. And I didn't know how to break this down, because at first I thought this meant we are holding a referendum to vote for comebacks, quote, unquote, independence, in actuality, sovereignty.
Noah Pinno:Yes. So this is called the Quebec independence referendum. I think that's a bit generous, and maybe like, nostalgic way to look at it. If I look at the French, I don't remember French very well, but a play of what affair? To me says like, actually, yeah, and then past. So after having made a formal offer, makes it seem like the sovereignty is conditional on a future offer, which itself is not part of the referendum. So to me, what I read The size is basically the same thing as the 1980 referendum, which was explicitly about getting the mandate to negotiate sovereignty. And here, I could have read this in the same way. I think that the fact that that question is very narrowly worded, to tell you exactly what it does do leave so much up in the air for what it doesn't do. And makes it so unclear for a lot of voters what they're actually signing up for. And I thought that this was something interesting to start with, because we so often talk about no referendums, campaigns, and how many of us have actually read a referendum question? Like we think like Brexit, yes, though, like, all those in favor, say aye. And like 45% of people are like they had 55, or like I or whatever else, I don't know the Perseids. But no, it's not like that. There's I thought
Heather Yuan:it was really close. I thought it was like 49, or like a 5240. kind of situation.
Noah Pinno:This Quebec referendum was also really close. 49.42 to 50.580 with 93.5 turnout. Oh,
Eric Jiang:well, I need 5.3% turnout, and
Heather Yuan:3.5 93.5. Considering last episode, we talked about how in Canadian elections, there's like a 30 40% turnout only in elections. And this was an election for the next four years of government premier show. But like,
Noah Pinno:yeah, though, this is just a regular This is a referendum. There's no electoral outcomes. There's no representative outcomes of this 93.5% turnout. And yet, there's a very interesting, very stark divide to the population that exists. So this was taken as a no to sovereignty slash independent slash negotiation slash mandate. Whatever it is, I'm not a lawyer.
Eric Jiang:But it's so often gets boiled down to a yes or no questions. Yeah. And that's, that's the issue, right? We're gonna talk about that, how it just gets radicalized and simplify it and all the nuance just goes out of the window.
Noah Pinno:That's exactly right. So the topic that we've chosen for today is, are referendums even good for democracy? Are they something that should be offered? Are they something that's democratically legitimate? So we are going to approach that topic today, we've all prepped our separate opinions of this as if we were prepping for a real debate. And we're going to come together and compare what we have
Eric Jiang:to varying degrees of quality. And
Heather Yuan:so before we do actually start with reviewing our notes with each other, which, for our listeners, we we do not know what any of us have prepped individually. I mean, obviously, we know what we prepped ourselves, but I don't know what any of these many of these these people that I don't know of who are not my friends. I don't know what they have prepped. But we are Yeah, trying something new today. And I realized in the past, we've never really introduced ourselves. Actually, we have but I just just not in detail. This is just like Eric says, Hi, Noah says hi. And then somehow we'd start becoming like your teachers or something. So maybe we were like, We shouldn't do that.
Noah Pinno:For fun episode.
Heather Yuan:Exactly. We're gonna throw all caution to the wind and reading week it's reading week. Exactly.
Eric Jiang:Oh, is it? Yeah.
Noah Pinno:You're the school so you would no doubt this reading. We actually
Heather Yuan:fun fact for our listeners, Eric is no longer in university.
Noah Pinno:So real adult,
Heather Yuan:he really said I'm old, and God. So for our listeners, we're gonna introduce ourselves and kind of our roles. And maybe we should start with Eric, who on our skill is the least experienced.
Eric Jiang:So my name is Eric, as a lot of you guys know. I, in this context, am not a debater. I've never even set foot in debate, or honestly, debate to me has always been this kind of ostracized group of you know, anti social kids. Who? Listen, listen, this is this is like, like a public perception of somebody who is outside of debate, who has friends in debate that, you know, make fun of debate, like we have friends who are in debate to troll in debate. So, you know, I've always thought of debate as kind of like a casual Model UN kind of thing. And we've gone through this and 20 to 20 $21 episodes that I associate debate with model
Heather Yuan:is just how you thought of me and your time. No, we just casually do mine.
Eric Jiang:But hey, me. Now, clearly, I'm in a debate podcast. So we're gonna get
Noah Pinno:sued by somebody who was fun, because we just called it a casual activity.
Eric Jiang:Hey, look around. No, you know, I'm helping run a debate podcast, and I look how the tables have turned. My camera turns a table. Look at the turns of tables.
Heather Yuan:I guess I'm kind of like, second in this mine. So my name is Heather. As you guys know, I, I have like a competitive debate background. But then coming into university, I just really, I couldn't like handle it anymore simply because of just the amount of work and commitment, which you'll hear from Noah because No, I like, last year, at least debate and throughout all of his years in debate, like debated every weekend went to every single tournament. And I was like, okay, that's not mean anymore. I'm going to go and coach instead. So coming into this podcast, I bring the perspective of someone who coaches, younger students in high school. So that's my background.
Noah Pinno:All right. And I'm I'm Noah. So I have debated for a very long time. And yours, baby. Yeah, I started when I was in grade seven.
Eric Jiang:Oh, that's a whole decade. Right. Though it is a whole decade.
Heather Yuan:10 years baby comment?
Noah Pinno:Yeah. Krej. Just kidding debate. Super cool. So yeah, I've been debating for a very long time. I've also been coaching since I guess 2017. So I work with mostly like high school aged students as well. I've done a lot of mentoring within Hart House for younger university students, too. So I do have that perspective. But I'm a bit more competitively oriented, because that's what my personal debating experience has been geared around. So I guess I am the person who keeps talking until somebody says, Please, we need to move on to the next.
Heather Yuan:But yeah, I think the three of us have, obviously, every time we come to the table to prep a topic, we have varying ideas and varying perspectives. And we all bring in little tidbits of what we know or in the case of knowing what we know from just general debate techniques. So that's why the three of us are hosting these episodes. Now. Thought Process is for sure, exactly. So and I think it's interesting also for our listeners to listen in, as we literally debate the topic amongst ourselves. So let's get into what we have today. The way things are going to work is each one of us are first we're going to break down our brainstorm for side government and side opposition of the topic that you just heard from Noah, which is about referendums. I'm saying it's about referendums. And I'm not saying the topic because we actually prepped for the debate topic. This House believes that referendums are bad for democracy, which means if we're first looking from the government perspective, we're saying we agree with this motion. So yes, we believe referendums are bad for democracy. And the way that these topics are worded will actually then it'll be interesting when we talk about government. Because Hint, hint, if you get a motion like this on opposition, it doesn't mean you have to say the exact opposite. It doesn't mean you have to say that. We fundamentally believe on opposition that referendums are good for democracy, you can say we are neutral about it, you can say, we think in general, it is good for the population. And maybe you can win on that. But that is for later that is for opposition. We're first going to talk about governments. So I want to start with Eric, what were your thoughts for government?
Eric Jiang:So I have a couple of points, actually, that I think we talked about it before, during like the pre recording phase. But the first one is that it's actually extremely unrepresentative of the population. Word by word I wrote it has a piss poor sampling methodology. Because if you care enough to like, you know, cuz if you care enough to vote, then you will vote. Right? And a lot of the times I think we mentioned it in the voting episode as well, like you care enough to vote, then you will vote. And so a lot of the times the winning party, like the winning opinion party will like focus most of its energy on just trying to get voters to turnout right because referendums, unlike elections, they have like a minimum voter. turnout, a lot of them at least a lot of them have a minimum voter turnout. And so a lot of the times the the winning opinion party aka the party that is trying to get this from a friend of mine Macross they will focus a lot of their energy on trying to like radicalize their message to promote voter turnout instead of trying to educate voters on the nuances of this referendum. So that was my first point. Okay, the second one is that it's it's similar, it's not indicative of current trends and popular beliefs. Due to the heavy influence of marketing tactics, again, the radicalization of nuanced topics, and the polarization of popular opinions. And lastly, because potentially no policymaking can occur, like, I felt personally that it was kind of like a meaningless exercise in democracy. But it costs a lot of money in both logistics advertising. And also the time taken away from actually like researching the effects of policies, like internally in the government, and trying to implement certain policies than just like convincing the public for or against the policy, right. And if you're if you lose, you know, you're fucked.
Noah Pinno:I always do this when I'm prepping like full cases with my own students as well. Like I always just stick to one case, take it out entirely. And then from there, it's, you know, it's a bit easier because you can follow the clashes to the other side as well. Yeah,
Eric Jiang:I have a couple of cases actually. Okay. Like I wanted to reference like the Columbia referendum in 2016. And also like the Hungary referendum in 2014. Were in Hungary, they voted to reject actually with a 98%. Vote to reject the EU mandate for refugee settlement in Hungary.
Heather Yuan:Oh, interesting, like 98% rejection rate, or like 90% turnout rate?
Eric Jiang:No. So it has a 30 something percent turnout rate, which was underneath, like, it was under the required turnout rate, for accepting a referendum. But the result was 98% in favor of rejecting it.
Noah Pinno:That's really interesting. This is a really common thing with referendums where, if the question like poses a possibility that people think is not even like legally legitimate, regardless of their personal stance, like they think it's not legitimate for to be decided from referendum to be decided, without a change to the Constitution, then people will just boycott the vote, because if they go to vote no, it was very, instead of, or if they go to vote, like yes, or whatever their participation legitimates, the idea that this is something that is up to referendum. So that's why so often you see really divisive or very, I guess, decisive so either like pretty 5050, or very much one side. And it's really common for those types of elections have super low turnout. Because a lot of the time, people will just not think that it's even it even should be put to referendum. I'm pretty sure that's also the case with Rico independence that has had numerous referendums that usually end up like that to ICs.
Heather Yuan:Wait, Eric, for your Colombia example. What was what was that
Eric Jiang:it was like a 50.2% vote to reject a peace agreement. Okay, the civil unrest in Colombia, like a, like a half century long civil unrest, quote, unquote, the longest civil war in the world. And they wanted to have a peace agreement. And the referendum voted to know to continue the war. Oh, and actually, like the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to as a prediction of a yes vote to accept. And so the President of Colombia at that time, received a Nobel Peace Prize for this peace deal, which hasn't even been voted yet. And then it turned out that the vote was to reject this peace deal. And like the Nobel Peace Prize, basically awarded on a predisposition that the peace deal will be accepted by exactly the
Noah Pinno:problem that I just described with like Puerto Rico and Hungary. So it's a civil war, but it's a civil war with a militant gang, that controls drug trafficking throughout Colombia, as well as the region. So they do act as like a quasi state in the same way, like gangs acted as a quasi government in post Soviet Russia in the late 90s. Or like, in anywhere where the state is kind of failing and can't control. It's similar to the how Taliban works often in more rural areas. So they do technically have the authority or like monopoly on force of governments. But that doesn't mean that people view them at all legitimate. So if you're having a peace deal, imagine how controversial it would be in the US to have a peace deal with the Taliban, right? Like that. That idea. It just inherently acknowledges the legitimacy of the government of the Taliban, right? So people often feel the same way about the FARC. They feel the same way about like a gang that is mainly involved in drug trafficking. That kind of that's part of why another example of you don't even view the question. It's out of the question to even negotiate with a group like that to some people. So these types of people will not show up to vote, because they don't want to legitimize the idea that this is somebody who's on an equal negotiating playing field.
Eric Jiang:But the last point I really want to make is that yeah, we talked about these two referendum but at the end, which supports my last point of like, how no policymaking can occur, most of these referendums were actually ignored. The government went ahead with the opposite policy, right? The Colombian government reached a like a, like a temporary peace negotiation. The next month, and oh, yeah,
Heather Yuan:yeah, yeah. Okay.
Eric Jiang:Okay. And despite the, like, the fact that the low voter turnout made the referendum in Hungary, like invalid, the government went ahead with that anyways.
Heather Yuan:Okay. I think that really ties in are actually one of my last points ties into what you just said, which is on the idea of implementation. But I think, firstly, just for me really quickly, when I approached brainstorming points right off the bat, I thought about, like, when and what scenarios are referendums deployed in? And I think we kind of briefly covered it right, either as a decisive or divisive win, or divisive decision. So when I thought about it that way, then I took it from the perspective, I think, from less from like, an example based perspective of like, he rd exact examples of when referendums were used. And here are the exact data. And I took it from just a general perspective of the impacts. So the first thing I thought about was, like public vote, which is similar once again, Eric, to what you said, but my perspective was on how, like, fundamentally, the public doesn't really always know what they're voting on. As we can tell from our cold opening that we said, where we
Noah Pinno:were people voting on.
Heather Yuan:You know, it's like with such convoluted language, you're going to the poll, you are going to the polls, and you're just looking at it, you're like, I don't know, what I'm voting
Noah Pinno:on causes huge issues to in linguistically diverse areas. Yeah, I think even if you look at the 1980 Quebec referendum, it only shows the question in English, right? But just imagine, if you imagine, for example, if you're in Colombia, like their indigenous populations that actually are, you know, more well integrated with the state than you'd think, and interact regularly would even participate in things like voting, and there's frequently pen indigenous organization to vote. But if it's not in a line, if it's only in Spanish, it's hard to participate.
Heather Yuan:Yeah. And I guess that adds on to the point about, like public knowledge. Yeah. Because it's like a language be the perspective I thought about was from like a media perspective, it's when, when you want to do reporting and you want to sensationalize something, obviously, you simplify what the vote is about. And you immediately, I don't want to say take a position or take a bias. But obviously, the language you use is you're trying to make it simple for people to understand. And you're trying to make it simple for people to immediately have an opinion. And then what that means is even when people start having discussions about it, they're still biased in some way, or they're so simplified in some way. So at the end of the day, we can't really fully guarantee of people, people's decisions actually reflect the referendum itself. And then my second point is about the implementation. Or actually, going back to my first point, another part of it was my thing about, you know, how easy it is for politicians to skew the perception through vague wording, or phrasing. And then my second point is about implementation and groundwork, because I feel like that part is never really fully discussed in a referendum. So a lot of the times it's saying, like, here's what we want to do, and here are our reasons behind it. But it's never like, do we carry it out? How do we carry it out? And obviously, you know, Brexit, as we can look at it now, not great.
Noah Pinno:You know exactly why there's so many referendums that asked about receiving a mandate, or even just ignore the mandate given by the population, because really, what they're doing is trying to either give the illusion of consultation or to get a general sense of consultation, but the population is never actually contending with the reality of putting into place or stopping something from being put in place. And that is both at the level of voicing your support for particular policies, but even just for having any say whatsoever, and how the reality of that policy is implemented. So it's not just your You don't see it on the ballot. It's also you're not supposed to be given that question, even though you may think that you're given it right, you think that you have you have some say in how Brexit will shake out and you don't? Yeah, it's one of the ways that I think, well, it's something that I had that I thought was a big part is how the fact that these questions are misleading is not just because it's, there's obviously a tension between how clear something is and how specific something is. But a lot of times, it's on purpose, I think it's meant to get people to not participate. So let's say you are trying to appease dissent, as a leader of some federal society, maybe Canada, for example, and you want to sink some sort of sovereignty vote. So you phrase the question in a way that's confusing, so that the participation is low enough that no matter the result, it doesn't actually lead to what would have quantified as binding. And that way you have cover for not following through or not obeying. Or if you could structure it in a way that seems confusing and gets people to vote in a different direction, then you basically use that as cover for accountability. So it's a way to basically, like give people the illusion that they have say, or to give people the illusion that they're being
Heather Yuan:that was my point. Yeah, I wrote down illusion of choice question mark.
Eric Jiang:That isn't participation.
Heather Yuan:And then I also wrote down your point, Eric, which is idea of like, it's just fundamentally not necessary. But then my debater brain was like, Okay, but what are the impacts? is like, do we actually care that people believe they have an illusion of choice? Do we care that it's necessary or not necessary? Or a waste of money?
Noah Pinno:I mean, even I might concede, like, it's good for people to think that their vote matters, right? If we were to be really cynical, we'd say it doesn't actually matter if any of you listening ever vote one day, because you're just one vote, but we have we have to rely on people believing they have to say, for democracy to work, right. I think that's almost like a separate question from this. That's a philosophical
Heather Yuan:question.
Noah Pinno:Maybe there is some value in people actually being consulted and governments feeling like they need to consult. But I personally feel like a lot of the time it is meant to hide accountability. So to get approval for something that is like lightly unconstitutional, or to basically not be held up to task to to implement something that people want, you know, you can say the population rejected, so I'm not worrying about it anymore. And I think, I think dodging accountability, like that is a big function of Brexit is our sort of Brexit of referendums, a big Brexit because David Cameron was like, well, I'll just resign, voted to leave. And he was like, fuck, I have to resign right now, if it's my promise, because he was going to use this vote as a way to quell the anti EU sentiment in the UK, which had backfired. Yeah, I guess that's positive evidence. Right, that referendums are accountable. So he went on to say that I was gonna buy for example, okay. Yeah. I mean, hey, that's why it was a political failure. It was literally David Cameron gambling that he could display that Britain wants to stay in the EU. And then it bit him in the US. Yeah. And of course, part of the misinformation that people have is also just because of the spread of misinformation that is so easily weaponized when you're focusing on just one choice. So obviously, if you look at misinformation surrounding Brexit, there is all sorts of evidence that there was rules of social media influencing results towards the leaf side, for example, Facebook, most notably, there's evidence that Russia was behind several like bot accounts or ag accounts on Twitter, that would prop up the leave side of the campaign because it fractures the EU, which is a major regional competitor. And that's, you know, one version of it, especially in the internet age, but it's nothing new, right. misinformation has existed for forever. People were misled in 1980 and 1995, about what Quebec separation would actually mean. Yeah, sure. There's an economic and political association with other things dependent slash independence. Like what what are the what is the difference, too? We know that we share a common currency, we probably will still get to cross the border relatively easily. And what else like what is going to happen?
Eric Jiang:See, that's the problem though, because all these referendums are held in a very Boolean fashion like their by their binary choices is a yes or no a true or false. But what about when you held when you hold or potentially will hold a referendum with multiple choices? Let's say How should Quebec establish sovereignty? Should they do it through this mechanism through this mechanism to this mechanism, and there's a majority choice, and that's
Heather Yuan:what we were focusing on, is the idea of implementation. And who has say in that and oftentimes, like we were talking about, implementation doesn't end up happening.
Noah Pinno:We were on the side of referendums are bad for democracy, I think the easy response to that is, well, now you're splitting the vote, and you are not going to get a clear majority. And even if you did, it could have been decided in a different way. And that defeats the whole purpose of referendums, because referendums want to bypass representative first past the post, which normally has unclear majorities, right, somebody would intercede with 35%. And if the whole point is to get 50% of the population saying one thing, then anytime we offer more than two choices, you have ruined the majoritarian ism, that was the main reason to use it in the first
Eric Jiang:not necessarily there are they can be categorized as like this mechanism of supports to know this mechanism is worse. They know, these two mechanisms worse the Yes, but it just gives more nuance to the idea of only choosing yes or no. Right. There are more, there are more subtrees. Instead, inside that branch of choice.
Noah Pinno:I would push up to give some examples of one that's happened.
Eric Jiang:I don't really think it has. Yeah, because I
Heather Yuan:feel it's an idealistic situation.
Noah Pinno:Like if yes, then this If no, then this. I mean, it might have already been done before. But I know that that's not conventional of referendums. But of course, again, like you said, OPP has a lower burden than you might think, because they don't have to defend all referendums that have happened, just that referendums are a viable tool.
Eric Jiang:Oh, that that you can suggest potentially a model in which case a reference can be a valuable, valuable tool,
Noah Pinno:I would say that they are confined a bit by what really happens. But yes, I am, in my opinion. Yes.
Heather Yuan:And I think we've reached a point where we've significantly discussed Eric and I's case, Noah, to bring it all together
Eric Jiang:in the perfect in the perfect
Heather Yuan:case. So
Noah Pinno:I already mentioned the misinformation. I think that's a big thing. The reason that I think it's worse when it comes to referendums versus when it comes to, like regular political campaigns is for two reasons. The first reason that I think it's different and worse than representative campaigns, is because in campaigns that focus on just one issue, it is super easy to target the content of the misinformation. So when you're trying to sync Hillary, for example, there's all sorts of different information that's being put forward. There's like, no amplifying her emails, there's like pizza gate, or whatever the fuck. And then there's like, she's actually a communist. She's actually a capitalist. And like, she like sacrificed a baby birdies basement or whatever else. And it's personal. But for people who don't really like Hillary, who, just like Democrats, they couldn't give two shits. And they also just, you have to target so many different types of content. But when it's something like leaving the UK, there's no representative behind that that you're voting for. Right? So it gives an automatic narrowing of the parameters for what you actually message. You know, right, your misinformation is targeted just to that single issue, rather than all the issues that a campaign might stand for behind a person. The second reason I think it's really bad is because the main use of referendums, especially the ones that are most controversial in their use, are sovereignty movements. So I think that this is kind of like a chicken and the egg problem. Because if you if you have a sovereignty movement that's put up for referendum, the idea of statehood of identity, and like, your national identity is at stake. So this is naturally breeding grounds for nationalism, nationalism, often leads to rejection of, you know, rule of law or constitutionalism. It can also lead to things like in grouping or out grouping that discourages trusting outside information, all sorts of as we've seen the like in more nationalist movements in like countries that want to leave the EU. But of course, if it's also a bit like egg gives the chicken because if you see referendums as basically your tool for sovereignty, then any issue that's actually attached to it will always be viewed from the lens of sovereignty, which is why the idea of, for example, refugees, or cross European immigration was seen as a threat to sovereignty, rather than just an economic issue. So the lens that this issue is debated with within the UK became an issue of sovereignty and therefore about race, primarily, as opposed to just a labor concern.
Eric Jiang:So A lot of these you're saying is down to the fact essentially inherently gives an argument of are you like patriotic or not? It gives you a sense of if you're voting against this, then you're essentially a non patriot. It gives a sense of like, you're not actually voting in favor of this country as a whole.
Noah Pinno:I definitely agree with that. And that thinking is employed by a lot of people who are proponents or opponents, depending on the size of this campaign. And yeah, so if you view referendums as for this purpose, I mean, most referendums in Europe are about EU membership, there's referendums all over the world for smaller components of countries to become concerned sovereign. So since we view referendums as basically the tool in our toolkit in democracies to become sovereign, then anything related to such a question is always tied ultimately to sovereignty. Right?
Heather Yuan:Okay.
Eric Jiang:That's a lot more like nuanced than useless, they can cause issues. You know?
Noah Pinno:This is like, if you're like, if you're CG shoe, baby, everything else was taken. I would never go to take so much more time to explain then you really have to debate realistically.
Heather Yuan:Yeah, cuz honestly, the whole time no was talking. I was my branch just trying to process what he was saying on until he spoke that last and I was like, oh, that's why he doesn't debate
Noah Pinno:y'all. Like you have to you go for that you go for the first things that you think of? Mm hmm. Because if you I made this mistake too many times, I always like asked, like, why did we get a four on Oh, and the judges always like, because he ran an extension instead of the obvious shit. So like, super inventive, you know, keep it in your toolkit for future rounds, but always go for the obvious stuff first.
Heather Yuan:Always to know what that beautifully explained was your first point what? We are 30 minutes into recording, what are your second 40 minutes
Eric Jiang:into recording?
Noah Pinno:It's okay, Ted, it was about
Heather Yuan:a Halloween. Um, which I still don't get why student kids don't go out. But anyways, sorry, we had a second point from Noah.
Noah Pinno:Was that my second pointer? Did I have something else? My other point, I think was just, I think it was mostly what we've already talked about about offloading accountability, it ends up being not binding, and you either don't follow if there's a yes vote, or you do it anyways, if there's a no vote. And it is, it is a way for politicians to basically either do things that are lightly unconstitutional, or to just kind of quell an issue for good and say, you know, it was up for debate, the public spoke, so don't, don't ask me about it in press conferences anymore.
Heather Yuan:And with everything that we've talked about, thus far, yields what we would in debate like to call areas of clash, which means these are general areas that are we've covered some of them from from the government perspective, but these are general areas that we believe both government and opposition sides should care for. And I think to summarize, what we talked about the first area is public knowledge and information. Secondly, the implementation of results. And thirdly, engagement in democratic proceedings, or also the, basically the behind the scenes of why referendums are held in the first place. I think that brings us then to talk about the opposition side. We should do a switch this time. Let's start with Noah.
Noah Pinno:Okay, what do I have? So honestly, the first thing that I would probably start with is just trying to tie it back to the principles of democracy, kind of like what we talked about last week. So I don't think it's a given that majoritarian ism is actually good. If you remember from last week, I was kind of like, why is it 50? Why not? 65? Why not? 100? I don't know. So I think that you do I kind of need to defend why majoritarian ism is good. I think that you would build that from very simple first premises. So first of all, the point of democracy is so that we can all as a society, consent and express our consent to what is occurring around us. We agreed to give up certain preferences, certain rights, certain freedoms in exchange for the common good. And it's our bound duty to the common good, that we vote and express what our opinion is. And the reason that we have referendums then, is because normally for mundane things, we work through representatives to make it efficient, but every now and then something is so important that we need to reaffirm that consent, and we need to directly show that we have satisfied what the majority wants and to rightly show that we are maximizing the good for most of society in the views of the majority.
Heather Yuan:Wow, that sounded so powerful.
Noah Pinno:I do not agree with this. This is like by like, what I think somebody who agrees that the referendums might say, because on government you could have easily just had like, majoritarian ism is not good guys. That's why we have constitutions. So that like 51% of people can't vote to start genocides. Yeah, or like less severe things. But there's obviously limits to what we can vote on.
Eric Jiang:But then the argument is like, what is better than majoritarian ism?
Noah Pinno:It's a great question. Great. Like, if
Eric Jiang:you don't, if you don't, if you don't appease if you don't, at least, like agree to the principle to appease 51% over 49% Then what's what, what's better than Well, here?
Noah Pinno:Are you liking that I
Eric Jiang:think he's 49% instead of 51%. Here's, I
Noah Pinno:think one of the reasons that are also in favor of referendums is sometimes the reason that you consistently fail to do that, is because the pool of people that you're sampling for preference is too big and too distinct. So going back to the idea that referendums are frequently about questions of sovereignty, you are basically breaking it down into smaller groups of people that are more similar in their values, and therefore can actually have their voice, you know, represented and become valid consent. So if the issue is like, you know, there might be an issue with majoritarian ism, you have 51% of people and that could lead to things like oppression or marginalization of minority perspective. A good example of this is Scotland, Scotland overwhelmingly voted to stay within the EU, and even entertain their own referendum to leave the UK in order to remain in the EU. So, that type of referendum solution is exactly the follow up if if referendums are used for sovereignty movements, that they actually achieve a fix to issues with majoritarian ism, they achieve. Way to repair the, I guess, over totalizing, over generalizing feature of large democracies, so more
Eric Jiang:like a breakdown of sub trees, like a, like instead of having a referendum for an entire nation, you have sub referendums,
Noah Pinno:Hmm. Maybe let the we're kind of seeing this so far, like in my head, what this is for is, you have the first level, which is just explaining why referendums are principally okay. You know, our foundation of democracy is actually direct participation, but it only evolved to be representative to accommodate for size.
Heather Yuan:And I would say this is a good point and a good lesson as well for beginner debaters, or in this case for Eric and non debater, because from a debate technique perspective, this topic is a believes that motion, which means you don't have to argue for implementation, you don't have to argue for maybe a different policy. So the only thing you have to talk about is do you believe, as an ideological level, if referendums are good, bad, neutral, that sort of
Noah Pinno:thing. And that's why principles are super useful when you get the like, low burden up on these plays that motions, because then you just showed that it's like, legitimate. Exactly. And that's your
Eric Jiang:burden. But then Noah, like you basically just went in arguing for government, you basically just proved opposition, because all the arguments you had in government. Actually, you argue that, in actuality, a lot of these referendums are used for sovereignty movements, one of your core arguments was that in practice, referendums are bad. But the idea of referendum, which you said in opposition, is that it can be used functionally, well, essentially, like, if you're arguing for principle, then like, you're saying, like, oh, this can exist, right? And this can be used for good. But if you're not arguing for principle, right, you have to say, if you're arguing against it, if you have to say that, in practice, this is bad, which which way you do this, and you have said that government is easy to argue for
Noah Pinno:this is really common in this motion, and similar emotions about believing that something is like causing, like a practice is causing harm, or just ends up more principled, because it's so safe to just prove that something is legitimate or can be good, whereas government usually has much stronger case studies of failures and will be more practically oriented. So yeah, I would that's definitely reflected in my own prep, but it's also just common in how you'll see a lot of these debates shake up if you're judging. Like any given room, or if you're participating in one sticking to principles really helps. In some of these motions. I do have more for the opposition side, why they're good as well. I think that you can still argue that the population can actually Voice opinions or consent to issues in a way that would change outcomes. So for example, if you voiced that you are not satisfied with the phrasing of a referendum by not showing up, that implies that you're going to have to revisit your approach to the problem. If you vote overwhelmingly in favor of something like sovereignty, and the government doesn't allow it, they still know that they will have to bear the legacy of that decision, when they consider how to treat your region, right. So they'll have to kind of give you a bit more privileges, they have to understand that there's a looming threat of maybe more uprising or even violent revolt. And that in a way still leads to some change. So I think you would, it's a bit optimistic maybe and a bit hard to show hard evidence. But I also think just practically, even in the worst case where the population isn't heard, you still are kind of hurt, right? The government still has to keep this in mind, and maybe change away from what they're going to do to make sure that they're accommodating the group in question. So if
Eric Jiang:you do it like a hypothetical, because what you describe is like, Oh, if you can describe a hypothetical, in which case, in a case where this referendum would work in a case where, like, the citizenry would be sampled a lot better, and that like the government can use that essentially as a non committal survey, yes, to understand what the country is going through and to understand what part of the country experiences what, what problems,
Noah Pinno:yeah, it's like Quebec, I mean, that's how Quebec has been allowed to not just ignore the Constitution by using the notwithstanding clause in more contentious issues like the hedgehog ban, but also just for every single piece of legislature that they passed, whether it would have been in constitutional violation or not. So in the actual introduction, that we read, like 1995 referendum, the legacy of this referendum is that Quebec constantly uses section 33 of the Constitution, to say, by the way, we are going to disobeyed the Constitution on this one, regardless of if it's remotely relevant. Like it's more of like a message thing. So, you know, and that's something that I think the federal government has had to keep in mind.
Eric Jiang:And so in a debate, when you try to make a hypothetical, it's called modeling.
Noah Pinno:Hmm, you could, you could use hypotheticals that were in a model, if you're, if you're modeling, I think it would just depend on the prompt of the motion if you need to build a full example like that.
Eric Jiang:And I guess since Heather's talking about, like, arguing for principles, more heavily than impractical is because like, Yeah, please, just help please motion, then you can just run on can you just run on hypotheticals like you build like a almost bulletproof hypothetical case?
Heather Yuan:Yeah. I think some debates. Exactly. Yeah.
Eric Jiang:Exactly contradicts the government practical cases, like you just like invalidate all the arguments by telling, telling the by explaining a case where all these flaws with a bad implementation is addressed, like this can be implemented. Well, it's
Noah Pinno:it's very defensive, but I've seen it work. I've seen it work. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I mean, as as ugly as it sounds, to say, if the majority of people wanted the UK to leave the EU, then like, let them write, like if the majority of the population wants something that we think is bad, or doesn't align with our views, like, the democracy is not decided as like legitimate or not legitimate because it's an outcome we like or don't like. So it's not like the outcome is illegitimate, just because it has an outcome we didn't like. So
Eric Jiang:is that just an explanation in favor of majoritarian ism? Like, oh, the majority likes it. So like, don't do it. Yeah.
Noah Pinno:I think that the OP is pretty pro majoritarian ism here. Yeah. And I think I think that the OP is in general and democracy motions. majoritarian ism is like a pretty safe principle. You usually just talk about like limiting it as opposed to having it be like in its pure form, but yeah, I would say as opposition you can lean heavily into that principle, or like challenge government to show the opposite.
Heather Yuan:Yeah, cuz I think when I went about prepping it, I took what Noah said about, like, the whole principle of democracy and the fact that people can and should still exercise you know, using referendums simply because they are part of a society like we talked about, we live in a society that, you know, all of this, this should still happen, whether it's good bad or what I would say on top I would be the person take a neutral stance and say, in general, people should be reminded to exercise their referendum. But I added on to this once again, coming from the perspective of impacts society, firstly, about how generally, we can prove on off that this makes the public overall more informed whether or not, you know, like we talked about earlier, there's always going to be media bias, there's always going to be black holes of conversation happening. But we still think that when this is, especially when it is a national referendum, you're going to get a lot more conversations surrounding it, you're going to get a lot of news reporting it all the time. And this is once again, getting into extension land. Something you can also expand on is how this actually makes the younger populace become more engaged earlier on, because now schools are more willing to have conversations around it. I'm a little iffy on that point. But I threw it in there because I was like, yeah, it's another impact for a specific group of people in society. And then the second idea that I had, which was actually opposite to what one of our government points were, was about, like public pressure, and how that actually might hold our governments more accountable. Once again, in the case of Brexit. Okay.
Noah Pinno:I mentioned like, if you were, if you were trying to get something really major changed about your country, whether it was like part of the EU, whether it was a region that was becoming independent from a larger country, whether it was like a peace agreement, as Opp, you could flip it on the government, how could you not consult the population on something like this?
Eric Jiang:So that ties really nicely into mine? Actually, because I had a couple of had I had one that I guess, I'm not sure has been discussed already. But it allows or rather, in this wording, it allows for more heterogenous government leadership, rather than like a, like a broad bipartisan system. Yeah, that are like flip flopping like all the policymaking federally in one direction versus another. It's kind of like your Scotland versus the UK argument where like a mini like a sub referendum was held to basically like counteract a mainland by the United Kingdom. This is
Noah Pinno:like Switzerland, where they have like referendums for just a regular laws. Yeah. Because it's like a big part of their political tradition there.
Eric Jiang:Yeah. Because it allows for, like diversification of a singular government instead of like, making all the policies aligned towards one direction. Yeah, for like, four years,
Noah Pinno:and the people decided it. So you can't like be the next government and revoke it. Because it's not like her Obamacare. Bad.
Eric Jiang:Yeah. revoke it. Right. Because Because, people, yeah, because because you're in office now. Right? Because there's no flopping of policy. Right. That was one of my arguments. My second argument was pretty similar to Heather's it's like indicative of current trends and popular beliefs. And it like, even though that nope, even though no policymaking can occur, like just like a survey, like it's still very much indicative of how the popular how the populace feels. And my last point is that I think we've talked about this, but in a negative sense, and that it focuses on a singular issue, rather than dilute on a large scale policy agenda. For example, if you vote for a political party, there might be multiple issues that you might agree with a little bit, but you also might not right, especially for centrist leaning people, centrist leaning voters, you might want to decide between this evil versus that evil or this good versus not good. Right. So you want to vote for both parties in some fashion and referendums, especially in the case of Switzerland. They're a good idea for you to like, pick and choose your laws.
Noah Pinno:Yeah. And that's even pretty well observed. I keep going back to Quebec, but I guess it's useful if we have Canadian listeners. But yeah, that's like a big issue that exists with both the PQ and the B. Q. So I both provincial and federal level. There's, it's a pretty big tent party, like they have from left to right. Traditionally, they do and still to this day, they do. And that means that this is a party that is really only defined around one question that almost exists outside of the political spectrum. I honestly think that's not just worse for those questions. But it bleeds into problems for standard electoral politics, too, right? Like we think we may think, oh, it's useful for this question to be discussed as referendum rather than through a campaign, but something else we should probably ask is, is having this question in a campaign actually harmful? Do we need to separate for the good of electoral politics? This question to a separate idea
Eric Jiang:also You mean like essentially like, like taking like dissecting or removing the party as a whole like, because then in electoral politics you're arguing for is this party a good ruler for the country, whereas that party that became the Kikuyu, they're like uniquely focused on Quebec sovereignty, whereas in for a political party in electoral politics, you have to focus on their ability to rule in a complete nation.
Noah Pinno:Yeah, so I think opposition can argue that the separation is beneficial in both directions, right? That it would be bad for both the actual key important issue as well as party politics or representative politics, both would be hertz. And both of them improve in the ability for people to participate, and to focus on what they want to focus on in each version. Like if you are, let's say somebody who feels strongly about welfare, but also about Quebec, sovereignty and believes in Anglo chauvinism, which was the word of the day that I introduced. I was like explaining it and they were like laughing and like it's not a joke because like it's a real thing that is very, like very popular in Quebec Marxist circles. I
Heather Yuan:was gonna say is this like me? Okay? For audiences that so I'm Asian? Is this like me making fun of white people?
Noah Pinno:What do you mean?
Heather Yuan:Like, like using the word Anglo chauvinist as in like, literally in common languages as like a as like a joke?
Noah Pinno:It's no it's like calling them bourgeoisie. Like
Heather Yuan:Ah, okay, eggs. Wow, okay.
Noah Pinno:Futile lists, etc.
Heather Yuan:Okay, so would you casually like if you go to a
Noah Pinno:supermarket organism just so like I don't like if
Heather Yuan:you go to a supermarket and like the cashier the cashier the cashier refuses to speak French to you. You'd be like
Noah Pinno:chauvinism is the unreasonable belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group of people are seen as strong and virtuous, while others are considered weak, unworthy or inferior. Yeah, so Anglo chauvinism refers to the Anglo superiority over people in Quebec to the French speaking population. But I'm pretty sure it's usually used by it originates from leftist circles in Quebec, but I'm not sure.
Heather Yuan:Anglo chauvinism is a mouthful, so I can imagine Yeah, because using it and common language like if you're
Noah Pinno:walking down like U of T, yeah. And I saw like a sign for like Quebec sovereign arts. And they had like, they had like, down with like, budget cuts down with like vaccine and masking mandates dealt with angle chauvinism. And that's a representation of just how so often party politics, marrying dilute like, yeah, marrying a sovereignty issue dilutes the actual policies. If you have people that are like we want, like, expansion of welfare. Yeah, like for unvaccinated people as well, like, what? That's
Heather Yuan:okay. And like literally just reminded me of like Trump supporters rhetoric of just like, if you don't believe in this, that means you're against the government, you're against the US. No, I
Noah Pinno:don't want to I don't want to talk smack about Quebec sovereigntist. Because I think that there are some valid concerns. I don't really know how I feel myself personally, like I would I don't know if I should have a position as as an Anglo. But still, my point is like, I thought it was so interesting that you have like such a like, standard center left position. They're handing out like, Marxist of Quebec handbooks. 201. Like they have the Marxism, they have the like, centrist leftism, and then they have the like, alt right, like, no masks and vaccines. That is literally like speed running the political spectrum. Yeah, that's done. So we, of course, this is just one example, right, of one example of this group. But I think this is, I guess, an extreme example of what is really common, which is, you can't really have a cohesive political ideology for things outside of sovereignty. Because it big tents so hard, it has like everybody under it.
Eric Jiang:Yeah, but the problem is, is like if you have such a narrow political agenda, then you don't really attract as many voters as if you have a broad tent. Right. So the point of, like, electoral politics is that you do have a broad tent, right? That's what we were talking about last
Noah Pinno:time supported welfare. And you also supported people getting vaccinated and wearing masks, and you wanted that to be mandatory. And you also supported like Quebec sovereignty, would you vote NDP, or would you vote Liberal? Or would you vote for like b q p q?
Eric Jiang:You just have no idea.
Noah Pinno:Exactly right. So you have to ask like, okay, my national identity versus like, practical economics. And that is, I think something off that you can say it's honestly better to just remove this from the ring. And to let like academics and Social Policy duke it out while you leave larger questions like this that are so foundational, and so divisive to just be separate. And it's good for both right? It avoids people not getting the benefits of a sovereignty movement they'd actually support. And it also allows people to express their own political views for standard economic or social life.
Eric Jiang:Yo, you know, like, before we even started recording, even like, we were talking about how government is like, a simpler argument to run. Well, I now I'm not so sure. Like maybe opposition just wins on principle?
Noah Pinno:I don't know the selling principle to judges is always risky business. Yeah. Because sometimes, like judges are just like, I want to know what this looks like on paper. And sometimes that's a standard that they have that you just have to you have to meet.
Heather Yuan:Yeah. And I think it also once again, we are we give you guys what the behind the scenes look into like debaters, brains or non debaters brain do for
Noah Pinno:two hours before your episode. You're getting that person. Exactly.
Heather Yuan:So you're getting varying brains and their thought processes, whereas I think it's clear to our audiences that, you know, the biggest difference, I think, between no and I was like, no was thinking really deep into things. And he's adding a lot of nuance, and I'm just like, here are the impacts. Here's the things.
Noah Pinno:Here's my political science degree.
Heather Yuan:Oh, my God,
Noah Pinno:let's thought it's okay. It's not it's not I'm not anything special. I just have had a class about these Quebec reference.
Heather Yuan:So I'm bringing in obviously, the more just like, logical just what sounds right, or what the impacts
Noah Pinno:where you biggest organization because my brain struggles to put in order.
Heather Yuan:Yeah, so I mean, look, and this to this episode, I'm not sure if it's gonna be uploaded. But this episode was just to change up the structure to better accommodate our listeners, but also for us to kind of show you we're always trying to find ways to show you and to display to you how our brains work and how we break down topics so that when you guys do go to an actual debate tournament, and you only have 15 minutes to break down this complex of a topic, which we just spent the last hour talking about. Hopefully, this gives you more things, a vault of knowledge to dig through, as you are prepping for your side for this topic or something similar to it. So we're very thankful for you guys for listening. Once again. Thank you everyone for listening, switching around our speakers week.