There’s been a lifetime’s worth of angst since people in the United Kingdom voted in their Brexit referendum to indeed exit the European Union. To believe some online petitions, even millions of Brits who voted to exit now believe they’ve made a terrible mistake.

It looks as if it won’t be long before a great majority in Great Britain issues a “just kidding” tweet and tries to forget the whole thing.

This may be the referendum that puts to bed, once and for all, the notion that, “In a democracy, the people are always right.”

You hear it a lot on election nights. It’s what the loser says in an effort to appear to be humble, or a good sport. Greg Selinger said it a few months back when he was tossed from the premier’s office in Manitoba. Stephen Harper said it last year as he lost the keys to 24 Sussex Drive.

Losers can’t possibly believe the voters were wise to choose someone else, but it does sound like a noble sentiment.

The problem is it isn’t true. The people are demonstrably not always right.

Let’s quickly deal with the most obvious examples. The people elected Adolf Hitler. The people elected Robert Mugabe. They weren’t right.

In the United States, the people of the Confederacy fought a ghastly civil war because they believed slavery to be a cherished part of their society. And for at least another century, the people of the south elected ardent racists and segregationists every chance they had.

According to Gallup polls, in 1965 56 per cent of Americans supported Lyndon Johnson’s handling of the war in Vietnam. In 2003, 71 per cent of Americans said George W. Bush was doing a fine job with the war in Iraq. All that thinking was eventually turned on its head.

Look at all the things the people were right about in Canada:

Executing 23 Canadian soldiers for desertion or cowardice during the First World War.

Imposing a head tax on Chinese immigrants from 1885-1923 and then banning them entirely until 1947.

Turning away Sikh refugees on the Komagata Maru in 1914.

Turning away Jewish refugees on the St. Louis in 1939.

Putting Japanese-Canadians in internment camps during the Second World War.

Taking aboriginal children from their families and sending them to residential schools.

Some will argue these were all government decisions, not direct choices of the people. But where was the dissent?

Just last month the Toronto police force apologized for raids on gay bathhouses in 1981 and a raid on a women’s bathhouse in 2000. Humiliating homosexuals back then didn’t seem wrong to the people.

If politicians truly believed the people were always right, they’d be forced to just go home.

In 2011, we had a provincial election in Ontario where 48.2 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot. Put another way, most Ontarians decided they didn’t want to vote for anyone. Perhaps the logical outcome of that election was the shuttering of Queen’s Park.

Thanks to Rob Ford, the last two mayoral elections in Toronto both had turnouts above 50 per cent but in the three before that we didn’t reach 40 per cent. Who needs a mayor, anyway?

If the people are right about school trustees, we’d surely never have any. There was a TDSB byelection in January of this year. Turnout was 11.35 per cent.

We’re already hearing rumblings for a referendum if, and when, the federal government comes up with a proposal to change our electoral system. Proponents say it’s the only way to legitimize a new system. Even if it’s a bad system, we’ll presumably live with it because it was ratified by the people. Who are always right. Except when they aren’t.

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Correction- July 12, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the first name of former Manitoba premier Greg Selinger.

Mark Bulgutch is the former senior executive producer of CBC News. He teaches journalism at Ryerson University and is the author of That’s Why I’m a Journalist.

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