Is it possible to devise the voting system to prevent post result regret?

[Tribble]

Before Brexit, the last time the UK had a referendum was on whether or not to remain in the EEC back in 1975. Given that ~67% voted to remain the clear majority mandate had been met.

However, there were no referendums on subsequent treaties changes. The signing of the Lisbon Treaty was particularly undemocratic. The Labour government had been elected on a promise that they would hold a referendum on the proposed Constitutional Treaty. The French and the Dutch held a referendum beforehand and the majority voted against the Constitutional Treaty (just goes to show that not all Euroskeptics are English). Then the Lisbon Treaty was proposed, which was largely the same as the Constitutional Treaty, and France, the UK and Denamrk went ahead and signed it without those pesky little referendums getting in the way. IIRC Ireland was the holdout and voted against it in their first referendum, but not to worry; a 2nd one was held shortly afterwards to make sure they got the "right" answer, and in the 2nd one the majority agreed to sign.

This is why I find the complaints from the Remain about the legitimacy of the Brexit referendum completely ridiculous. The UK signed onto the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum despite the government being elected on a promise to hold a referendum if there was a major treaty change, and yet the Remain camp complains about the Brexit vote because it wasn't democratic enough, or that there wasn't a big enough maority? Really??? Like the signing of the Lisbon Treaty was? At least the Brexit vote actually happened and got a majority, IIRC something like 88% of the UK electorate had wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, but it's not as if their opinions mattered or anything. Then again, that's probably why the French, UK and Denmark governments chose not to have a referendum the 2nd time: they didn't want to risk having those little peasants getting the wrong answer again.

IMO this was not a "status quo" referendum, since there wasn't any real democratic legitimacy in the UK's signing of the Lisbon Treaty to begin with. And we're not talking ancient history here - the Lisbon Treaty was signed less than 10 years ago. If the government had campaigned on signing it, won the election, the proceeded to sign, sure you could argue there was democratic legitimacy there, but that's not what they did. I'm not really surprised at the eventual backlash either - IMO it was bound to happen eventually.

[Grumman]

And if I were voting to, for example, recall a bad politician, a 60% majority would seem excessive.

Is it? Using a 60% disapproval rating as a threshold means three US Presidents in the past fifty years would have been at risk of removal if the vote happened at the wrong time: Truman, Nixon and GWB. Make it 50% and that increases to nine.

Having 51% of the population want somebody else to be boss is a "wait for the next election and vote someone else in" scenario, not "drop everything and overturn the government".

[Simon_Jester]

What it comes down to is that we can endlessly bicker over whether 60% is too high a bar to set (say, to pass a relatively routine legal measure, or for removing a president who stands accused of abusing his office), or too low a bar to set (say, if you're talking about agreeing to sign over all national sovereignty and be ruled by alien lizard-men for eternity).

It's not a number we can standardize on and have universally accepted as 'fair' any more than 50% is.