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John's point about "raising the bar" -- in other words, encouraging participation -- has been explicitly addressed by Frances O'Grady, the TUC general secretary, who has pointed out that the government has refused to allow on-line voting http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2015/07/trade-unions-bill-unfair-unnecessary-and-undemocratic/ http://act.goingtowork.org.uk/page/s/let-us-vote-allow-unions-to-balllot-members-online Julian -----Original Message----- From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Whittington Sent: 16 July 2015 12:04 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [RADSTATS] and now they are going after the trade unions It's certainly not 'right' that strike votes should be subject to much more demanding 'pass criteria' than any other voting in public life (such as the examples you mention). However, particularly if one is concerned about 'democracy' or 'representativeness', one probably should be looking to raise the bar for every vote (including general elections and parliamentary votes etc.) to a much higher level, rather than just accepting that they should all have very low 'pass criteria'. The problem is, of course, a practical one. If, in all these areas, there were a requirement for a majority (or even anything approaching a majority) of the eligible voters to vote for something for it to become 'the collective decision', then we would probably have very few strikes, but also few laws, and probably no government! It arguably gets even worse with referenda - given that one would rarely get >50% of eligible voters voting for _anything_,, government could manipulate the outcome by the wording of the question - e.g. "Should we leave the EU (Y/N)?" and "Should we stay in the EU (Y/N)?" would probably _both_ be expected to fail to get >50% of 'eligible votes'. I think that it would take a far more clever person than me to come up with a workable solution to any of this! Kind Regards, John ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk. *******************************************************