>we also voted to ban minarets for instance, which definitely wasn't very rationally based

Of course it was. The law itself was stupid, but it highlighted a real issue. Notice that after that vote France, Sweden and a few others looked at the Muslim integration problem (i.e. a large portion of the Islamic community simply don't) as well.

There is an issue here that needs to be addressed, it was just the way they chose to do it was silly but the people didn't let that stop them from using it to voice their opinion.