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Comment by wildmusings | Hacker News Reader

Over half of the population chose not to participate in an illegal vote that the police were lawfully shutting down. Clearly, it's only the supporters of independence who would be motivated to turn out anyway. People who respect the legal authority of the Spanish government all stayed home. This has no legitimacy.

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I would say that the illegitimacy is on the part of the Spanish government and the police who used violence to prevent a peaceful political statement by the people.

The majority stay home for most elections, that says little.

Granted your argument would have more weight if say 10% of the population voted, but with 40+% of the population voting you need to accept many yes and no voters stayed home out of fear.

Or more widely if their where much doubt the government would have let a vote take place secure in the knowledge they had popular support.

There are reports of people voting 4 times, and of people from another region voting after presenting an id from another region. There were no election observers from neutral or "no" political forces. The "international" observers were secessionists from other regions of Spain. I don't believe the 40%. I don't believe anything. This vote was a joke from its inception. As much as it was horrible from the national government to beat people, it's as horrible to push people to go out and fight riot police for a sham of a referendum.

> There are reports of people voting 4 times

Who is making this report, why should I trust them, and do they have evidence this is a statistically meaningful problem?

Several people and they provided pictures and testimony. There are more facts, like that the organization changed the methods 15m before starting and lost internet access and had to resort to writing people's names manually without checks are not even disputed by the Catalan authorities. They breached ~50% of their own electoral law, that they made up for this event alone. You are not going to find a statistical study of the elections, obviously. But nobody who was watching impartially has any doubts as to the fraud guarantees.

All thanks to the spanish government.

I hate to tell ya but you are making the mjnority argument here. Nobody in their right mind would support what the Spanish police are doing to people casting votes - legal or not.

The national government being wrong does not mean that the regional government is right.

I'm not justifying the police actions, just saying the referendum was a farce. In fact without the police action, it would have been a farce too, which makes you wonder why they needed to stir the pot with so many police but anyway.

Among other measures, Abraham Lincoln had state legislators arrested to prevent them from voting for secession. He ended up waging the deadliest war in US history to force the seceding states to remain in the Union. Today, Abraham Lincoln is a hero. And before you bring in slavery, I think it's very clear from Lincoln's writings that he would have done the same no matter what the basis for secession was (and before the war, he was also in favor of continuing slavery if it would have kept the Union together).

That may be true, or even possibly a significant issue.

However, the exact same thing would be reported if it did not happen making it somewhat meaningless observation.

PS: I really don't trust the 90% yes either. But, vote suppression IMO is a sign the people in power expect the vote to go counter to their desires.

The 90% is plausible, since only the people voting yes were mobilized. What is doubtful is the 40% participation. What there's no doubt about is that it's not representative of the general population and there weren't enough guarantees to take the result seriously.

The chance to make it more representative was yesterday, and the spanish government chose not to.

No, yesterday was a process born dead. If there's no representation of all the factions and a legally binding agreement to vote on, it's useless. The Spanish government could have done nothing yesterday, maybe they should have, and we'd be in the same place now, a illegitimate result with pretty much the same numbers.

The Spanish government has had years, if not decades, to accommodate the aspirations of the Catalan population, but it has chosen to either ignore them or to actively work against them. This process is a consequence of a flowing society crashing against inflexible institutions.

This is going off topic a little bit but it's interesting. Do you actually know what those aspirations are? Are you able to read original sources in Spanish? it might come as a surprise to you but this whole thing is built on extreme in-solidarity and those aspirations amount to "we want to contribute less tax to poorer regions" or "we didn't like that our unconstitutional law was declared unconstitutional". The central government actually ceded to those aspirations for 25 years and it was when they got too unjust for the rest of the country when they said no more.

Sure I can, I am Spanish and Catalan, so I can read the Catalan version too (not particularly interested in any of both versions). Whatever the Truth behind all those complex questions is, at some point this becomes a matter of opinion. And opinions are measured at the voting booth.

Modern societies should be flexible enough to allow for friction-less changes: there are no holy cows.

There is part of it that is indeed opinion and "feeling". The cultural part, the "hecho diferencial", whatever you want to call it. But there's also the part where Montilla's government called inaceptable and "a grave offense" a completely reasonable and correct ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Catalan estatut. Thousands of people marched in Barcelona that day against Spain when in fact that ruling was fair and equitable and didn't touch much, just clarified economic assimetries are not cool, etc.

The first part, the feelings, I can't share but I can respect. I don't think it makes for a significant part of Catalonia though, maybe 20-30%? The second part, the in-solidarity, I can't have simpathy for and I think Spain is right in staying put. And if that's the part that is really moving so many people to independence (and it seems that way), then I don't think this is so much a matter of opinion as it is of not knowing or not respecting the facts.

I am really not qualified to give my opinion on fiscal issues - as most people are not. For details on these complex problems we must trust (interested) third parties, so our perceptions are necessarily biased. I do not follow neither Spanish nor Catalan news, so I have no strong opinion about these matters.

But this is not the only issue: the situation in Catalonia is complex, and ultimately should only be decided by Catalan people. One of the most common arguments against the referendum, namely that people are being "brain-washed", assumes three things wrongly:

1) That brainwashing happens only in one sense.

2) That people are easily brainwashed.

3) That brainwashed people have no right to vote.

The Human Right of auto-determination does not only apply to societies we are not directly related to, but specially to the cases where we have an interested stake, since that shows that we are actually committed to those rights, and not using them abstractly to control remote regions by UN proxy.

The general principle applies: "I might not agree with you, but I will always defend your right to voice your opinion"

Well, you don't need a PhD to see for yourself what was done in these laws and to recognize the political intent. You kind of need to be able to, in fact, if you want to know what's happening around you and take decisions as an informed adult, and interested third parties might be biased, it's better to check and form an opinion by yourself. We can't turn any discussion of fact in "I'm not qualified so it's an opinion, so I'm entitled to mine, this is just a matter of opinion". The fact is, the demands from the Catalonian government were rightfully unconstitutional.

edit to attach the sentencing in particular, it's perfectly legible (only 14 articles eliminated), and the reasons why they were excessive easy to understand.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencia_del_Tribunal_Constit...

Yes, we all remember the time Hungary and Czechoslovakia behaved illegally. Quite right that the Soviets lawfully, according to their own laws, shut that down.

I'm not making any claims about what the Spaniards should or should not have done, only about what they did accomplish: undermining the legitimacy of the referendum.

But by arguing/accepting that you're essentially saying all a state has to do to prevent a secession (however popular) is disrupt the election/referendum process.

It is frequently quite popular to violate people's rights. Holding polls are not the final word in a free society, they are only one leg of the stool.

Why the need to "lawfully shut down" a vote with force? Why can't Spain just… ignore the results?

Pretty difficult since a unilateral declaration of independence is due in the coming days / weeks.

So? Ignore the declaration of independence. Let Catalonia decide what that means. Whatever action any person (civilian or official) in Catalonia takes under the guise of "independence" – be it non-payment of taxes, or eviction of Spanish military – presumably there are laws against that.

Criminalizing a vote – to the point of beating people – is beyond stupid. It strengthens the cause for Catalonian independence. It only makes rational sense if the Spanish government is very afraid of what a "legitimate" vote says.

What are you doing here with common sense? Get outa here!

Things could get out of hand very easily: the Catalan government has been supportive (organizer) of the whole process, and will probably be willing to clash with the Spanish government (hopefully not violently) to defend the newly formed republic.

Clearly a ton of people supporting independence stayed at home to not get their heads bashed in by police and hired thugs. It evens out.

I suspect you don't know many Catalans. They are not cowed that easily and always ready to take to the streets. I saw a marvellous clip earlier of a white haired little old lady of about 90 going for the throat of one of the state stormtrooper wannabes

No such thing as an “illegal vote.” Natural law and all that.

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