[Lerc]

I live in a country where 91.78% of the population voted for a referendum that bought back hard labour in prisons.

As one of the few who voted against it I have yet to encounter a single person who voted for it who both supports hard labour and realised that was in the question being asked.

[pnw]

Why do you claim the 1999 referendum reintroduced hard labor in NZ prisons? I've never seen anything to that effect. The reforms were related to bail, victims rights and parole.

[Lerc]

It did not reintroduce hard labour. People voted to reintroduce hard labour. The referendum was non binding,

[lazide]

Let me guess - ‘do you support violent prisoners being given work in proportion to their crimes’ or something similar?

[Lerc]

Oh far more deceptive than that.

"Should there be a reform of our justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them and imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offenses?"

Now let's play tldr with the law!

Luckily it was non binding and stands forever as an argument against binding referendums.

[anigbrowl]

I'm not really seeing the deception here since it specifies hard labour and says it would apply to all serious violent offenses. How could you vote for this and not know you were voting for hard labour?

[NooneAtAll3]

I can easily point to deception in two words

1) Hard 2) Words

"Should there be a reform of our justice system" -> "should the law be passed"

"emphasis", "restitution", "compensation" -> too hard to skim, brain is bailing out

---

the only way to provide valid direct democracy is to provide more than enough explanations and rewordings from both sides of the debate *at the point of voting* to remove miscommunication

[anigbrowl]

I agree that it's unnecessarily wordy, but I still don't think it's deceptive. If your brain is bailing out that fast maybe it's better not to vote.

[xvector]

Hard disagree. Systems must be designed with typical human fallibilities in mind.

Anyone that phrases a referendum like that ought to be sentenced to hard labor themselves for attempting to subvert democracy.

[account42]

The deception is that it combines two largely unrelated questions into one vote - leading with one that most will agree and followed by one that is more questionable. By the time people will be reading the second question they will already have be primed with an opinion on the first.

[Lerc]

I don't know how you could vote for it, I didn't and was astonished that people did.

On the other hand. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870087

[anigbrowl]

I would probably not vote for it on principle, but my specific question was how the text as quoted could be considered deceptive.

[Lerc]

In many respects I agree with you there, I almost went with softer language. The fact remains that it appears people were deceived. All of the advocacy pushing the referendum only focused on the first part. To this day I find people who are amazed that it mentioned hard labour and and that they voted for it.

[edit]

I guess think of it in terms of a vote that you had discussed and decided upon before you voted. Could you honestly say that you would read every word of the question or would you just look at the start of it to establish that it was the question under discussion and then trust that the discussion accurately represented what the question on the form would say. The length of the question, was I believe specifically designed to be long to prevent the frequency of its full publication.

[jacobolus]

People read "greater emphasis on the needs of victims" and stop processing afterwards.

[mvdtnz]

No, we didn't. We knew what we were voting for. And I'd vote the same way today.

[Lerc]

Do you believe you are in the majority? I'm quite confident that being in favour of hard labour is a minority opinion in New Zealand.

I guess it is at least consistent with your belief that there is a mandate for Project 2025.

[anigbrowl]

I don't buy that, and even if they did that doesn't make it deceptive. I'm not arguing in favor of this increased punishment, it just seems to me that its stated plainly enough you can't seriously argue that people were tricked.

[bee_rider]

It is somewhat deceptive, or at least misleading, to bundle up the concepts of giving the victims compensation, and punishing the prisoners more aggressively.

Unless the prison labor is providing the compensation, but that would be totally bizarre and dystopian, haha. Not really the sort of thing you’d see in a civilized country.

[tiltowait]

"Hard labour for all serious violent offenses" seems almost refreshingly straightforward. Was there more in the actual referendum that was hidden? I grant that "serious violent offenses" is somewhat vague; was it overly broad?

[sczi]

That question clearly says hard labour. I'm sure some people didn't read it, but I think there also may be another effect there, where when talking to people in person, they realize you are morally opposed to forced hard labour, and don't want to seem like a bad person, so they pretend they didn't know. Sort of similar to the recent effect in the US where trump significantly underpolled as many voted for him but don't want to admit it.

[account42]

Sounds more like an argument for requiring referendums to be about a single issue rather than bundling multiple ones into a single question.

[bcrosby95]

If a new law mentions victims I assume they're trying to appeal to my emotions. The joke is on them because I am a robot in skin form.

[lazide]

Yeah, there are many terrible legal abortions in California with the referendum setup too.