One of the joys of the East Anglian Daily Times is that it not only features regular letter contributors but it also allows for ideas to be developed,
One such correspondent is John Dell from Shotley who recently has been arguing that the Brexit vote did not reflect the will of the people, as the Remainers and the Abstainers outnumbered the Brexiteers.
As readers if this blog will know, I greatly believe in voting. If you don’t vote then your views do not count and you are only a whisker away from not mattering.
Acknowledging John’s position on this issue I caused the following letter to the editor was published by the EADT on 30^th June.
Dear Sir
Let trumpets sound. Let the bells ring throughout Suffolk. Let there be bunting and dancing in the streets all along the Shotley/Pinewood corridor. John Dell (EADT letters 24^th June) and I seem to have found something we can agree on in respect of the statistics regarding voting for the UK/EU referendum.
If you add the abstaining votes to the Remainers then 29 million people did not vote for Brexit. But fairness demands that you also add the abstainers to those who voted against remaining in the EU. The overall result is the same but by reclassifying the abstainers as being both against Brexit and against Remaining then you have an accurate and verifiable result based on 128% of the electorate. Thus surpassing anything seen, so far, in Russia, China or North Korea.
Abstainers effectively assign their votes to those who do vote.
But the Dell-Riley principle of counting abstainers twice revolutionises vote reporting and allows everyone to move forward
Such is the joy of the Dell Riley principle; it lets the voting outcome to truly be the will of the people and lets political activists harmonise political wistfulness with political reality and so happiness can be achieved all around.
And that is my contribution to Suffolk happiness this week
The full correspondence is below.