In many respects I agree with you there, I almost went with softer language. The fact remains that it appears people were deceived. All of the advocacy pushing the referendum only focused on the first part. To this day I find people who are amazed that it mentioned hard labour and and that they voted for it.

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I guess think of it in terms of a vote that you had discussed and decided upon before you voted. Could you honestly say that you would read every word of the question or would you just look at the start of it to establish that it was the question under discussion and then trust that the discussion accurately represented what the question on the form would say. The length of the question, was I believe specifically designed to be long to prevent the frequency of its full publication.