system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: a second brexit referendum would not be undemocratic

As the date for Brexit nears, there is increasing talk of holding a second referendum, to go back to the people and ask for final confirmation. Some say that would be undemocratic, the people already spoke and to ask them again would simply be a demonstration that our democracy is broken- we would not be asking this question today had we voted remain, we would simply have remained.

However, my view is that the 2016 vote was really just a mandate to negotiate. The choice was between remaining, which had total clarity on what that would actually mean, because we already knew the terms of EU membership. On the flip side, nobody actually knew, or could possibly have known, what the terms of a negotiated settlement would actually be. There were a lot of assertions about what it would mean but by definition no certainty and as a result the people voting, could have no way of knowing what they were voting for.

If the choice had been "remain" or "severe all ties and leave the union" i would have to swallow the pill and take it because that is a clear binary, but we have no way of knowing what the majority of leave voters actually wanted. Did they want a hard leave or a negotiated settlement?

To me it seems not only prudent, but democratic, to return to the people and present to them the exact choices we now have- the deal negotiated by Theresa May, "no deal brexit" or remain.

If it's not already clear, my declared bias is that I voted remain and would do so again in a second referendum

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TL;DR a second referendum is not undemocratic because there is no way of knowing exactly what nature of brexit the majority of leave voters wanted was and because we now have a solid and negotiated deal with the EU that can be compared like for like with the other two alternatives, which we didn't have before.
gpt
Simply holding the same referendum again and again is a bad precedent because it allows a ruling party to keep on posing a referendum until they get the result they want. However what is being proposed with Brexit is that a referendum is held on the terms of the exit. And the problem is that there simply isn't enough time. There wasn't enough time for a smooth exit even without a second referendum. Democratic processes require enough time to enact and a second referendum would push us over the leaving dead line by years. May's government should have negotiated the leaving conditions and put them to the electorate before enacting the article and should have been clear about her reasons for doing so but there just isn't enough time for that now.