United States has a big obvious stake in keeping the UK in particular whole, but might be seen also in having a stake in encouraging European fractionalism. Outside parts of western world, United States is not regarded as impartial at all.

(September 19, 2014 at 4:49 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Let me guess: America? We've been at war with most of the others on and off for at least a thousand years. It's hard to be unbiased in the political arena.

Let France do it for all I care. I was alluding to the fact that 45% of the Scottish population voted for seperation. That is a large portion of any populace to wanting to leave. Why not at least give the appearance of impartiality. With an 85% turn out on can bet those counting the votes were not neutral.

The point you're missing is that 55% voted no. Every eligible voter in Scotland had the opportunity to register their opinion and the majority won. It's called democracy, you see. The result was clear enough not to require any recount.

(September 19, 2014 at 4:08 pm)Drich Wrote: I think the should allow an unbiased country recount the votes.. Otherwise their will always be lingering questions.

This is not Florida in 2000. The UK seems quite capable of counting votes.

(September 19, 2014 at 10:57 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

(September 19, 2014 at 4:08 pm)Drich Wrote: I think the should allow an unbiased country recount the votes.. Otherwise their will always be lingering questions.

This is not Florida in 2000. The UK seems quite capable of counting votes.

Yes, they know down to the decimal how many votes they stuffed into each ballot box.

(September 19, 2014 at 9:32 pm)Drich Wrote: Let France do it for all I care. I was alluding to the fact that 45% of the Scottish population voted for seperation. That is a large portion of any populace to wanting to leave. Why not at least give the appearance of impartiality. With an 85% turn out on can bet those counting the votes were not neutral.

Scotland has a population of about 5.5 million, out of those about 3.6 million voted in the referendum. Which means, if my maybe is correct, about 29℅ of the population voted no. The rest either voted yes, didn't vote or were ineligible to vote.

I honestly don't know where you get your facts from.

45% of those eligible to vote.

In total, 3,619,915 million people voted, making the turnout 84.5%.
The "No" side finished with 2,001,926 votes to 1,617,989. 55% to 45%.

4,283,392 people - 97% of the electorate - had registered to vote.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-29263237

This is my favourite re-design for the UK's flag (had the Scots left the UK):



I like how St Patty's cross is now full and also the Welsh Green.

(September 20, 2014 at 5:30 am)fr0d0 Wrote: 45% of those eligible to vote.

In total, 3,619,915 million people voted, making the turnout 84.5%.
The "No" side finished with 2,001,926 votes to 1,617,989. 55% to 45%.

4,283,392 people - 97% of the electorate - had registered to vote.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-29263237

It's 45% of the people who voted, not 45% of those eligible to vote.

Using your figures. 97% of the electorate had registered to vote, so that is 100% of those eligible to vote. Therefore -

1,617,989/4,283,392=0.3777354489152522

Which means approximately 37.8% of of those eligible to vote voted yes.

And, if you do the rest of the maths, you'll see that 46.7% voted no and the remaining 15.5% didn't vote.

Again, where on earth do you all get your facts from?

(September 20, 2014 at 4:25 am)jesus_wept Wrote: Scotland has a population of about 5.5 million, out of those about 3.6 million voted in the referendum. Which means, if my maybe is correct, about 29℅ of the population voted no. The rest either voted yes, didn't vote or were ineligible to vote.

Yes, and you nearly highlighted the problem with optional voting.

The number you've been hearing reported is that there was an 84% turnout of registered voters, and this is true - but only from a certain point of view. The truth is that the pro-unionist councils had a much higher voter turnout than the pro-independence ones (). For instance, Glasglow - the council with the highest percentage of yes votes had a voter turnout of only 75% which was the lowest in the election!

This highlights exactly the nature of the problem of optional voting, the pro-Yes working class councils had a low voter turnout which is exactly what you expect in a mock-democracy where voting is optional. There is only one way to have an equitable election and that is to have equal representation of all community demographics, which is just not possible with optional voting.

Let's compare that with our last federal election here in Australia. The true turnout figure was 87% - however the official number is 93.3%. The latter is the number of people who were required to vote and on the electoral roll - much like the 84% figure given for the Scot's last election. However taking into account people who were required or eligible to vote and who were not enrolled we get 87% - which we consider to be a low turnout. We also had an all-time high of informal votes - 5.9% to be exact. If you deduct that then we had 81%. I, however, don't believe in deducting that number because once you make voting mandatory you are giving people the opportunity to participate by casting an informal vote if they wish - in other words those 5.9% (for the most part) deliberately chose not to make a choice on their ballot, but they still cast it. So we had an actual turnout in 2013 of 87% which we consider quite low.

97% of the Scottish electorate were eligible to vote, so in total they had an actual turnout of 82% - and they consider this to be a high voter turnout!