Protecting a democracy from an influential few

Question

According to some opinions I have read, the recent referendum in the UK was won by a small number of men in politics and media, who immediately after the result disowned some of the major claims and promises of the winning campaign. Potentially their campaign might have lost if they were not able to make those claims and promises.

N.B. I do not necessarily hold that opinion myself, but for the purposes of my question I would like to assume that it is correct...

I wonder what measures any country has put in place in the past to avoid that specific situation. In particular such that: -

1. the system can still reasonably be called democratic.
2. the media can still be described as "free" by some metric most reasonable people would agree on.

For example, are there any systems where politicians and/or editors are held accountable for claims and promises made during campaigns?

Answer 1

Every politician can be punished by the people in a democracy if he do not keep his promises. For example, they could deny to vote for him the next time. But one must always take into consideration that a politician cannot implement all it's promises or visions because other politicians have also something to say.

In a democracy everybody can vote and do something (say get political active). Even if an election is influenced by a minority it is still a democratic decision; the majority could have voted differently (or voted at all). But if the majority do nothing the minority will dominate the political process in a democracy. Additionally we are living in the world of the Internet. This is a huge, multilateral source of information that offers each and everyone a fantastic opportunity to become an educated or politicized citizen. It has never been easier to get a differentiated overview of the political situation.

The freedom of press will always be in discussion (more or less); an active discussion is a vital part of a democracy.

Answer 2

By definition, the referendum gives the power to all the voters and 52% of them said "Leave". So it's just self-evidently incorrect to say that the referendum was "won by a small number of men in politics". It was won by the 17.4 million voters who preferred "Leave", outnumbering the 16.1 million voters who picked "Remain".

The voters have lots of reasons to decide in one way or another. Aside from the voters' values and interests, many arguments matter, sometimes completely accurate arguments, sometimes less accurate ones. The British voters were bombarded by an incredible amount of pro-EU propaganda by the EU and even the British government itself but most of them were able to see through these tricks. The media simply aren't omnipresent.

Concerning the numbered items:

1. A system is only called democratic when lame excuses and malicious insults of your kind are interpreted as an inconsequential whining of a sore loser – which is exactly how I interpret them. You are clearly singling out a side of the referendum that you disagree with while you would never dare to criticize the Europhiles for their lies, demagogy, fearmongering, threats, and downright blackmailing. A country where a referendum or elections could be questioned or annulled by the government's talking points similar to yours would be a dictatorship and indeed, the history has seen quite a few of examples.

2. Democracy and freedom are somewhat independent things. A free society guarantees the freedom of press – both pro-EU and anti-EU press (and similarly for every other question). But in a democracy, the press doesn't have any direct control over the political decisions. Again, a system in which someone stands "above the system" and has the power to invalidate people's decisions by some universal insults cannot be called a democracy, by any stretch of imagination.

If people, e.g. campaigners or anyone else, make an incorrect or misleading statement, the people on the other side or in the other campaign may correct them and it's up to the voters to decide who is right. If people make a mistake or decide according to a criterion that is found untrue or at least inaccurate after they vote, the only "fix" compatible with democracy is that the people may learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them or similar mistakes in the future.

The only exceptions are laws that regulate what kind of misconduct may invalidate elections and referendums. A campaigner's statement that is considered inaccurate a week after the referendum but couldn't have been disproven before the referendum cannot be counted as a factor that invalidates a referendum. And by the way, such inaccurate statements have almost certainly not played an important role, anyway.

To summarize, the "modifications" of the democratic system you propose are not really modifications. They would destroy the very essence of democracy.