Oscar Mifsud (January 31) claims that 28 per cent of the electorate did not show up to vote in the divorce referendum because they “did not like the idea of divorce, otherwise they would have voted in favour, and since they are not in favour, it is safe to assume they are mostly against”.

This argument won’t win any rewards for intellectual rigour, and is in fact an example of two separate logical fallacies, argument by false premise and non sequitur.

The false premise is in claiming that the absentee voters were all closeted anti-divorce sympathisers. Their orientation is an unknown quantity and any argument to the contrary is either invention or extrapolation of statistical data. Practically speaking, and considering how rabid and vocal the anti-divorce group made itself to be, it is highly unlikely that it would have missed out on a vote this crucial to the preservation of their ego.

The non sequitur fallacy lies in arguing that the No camp would have prevailed had the 28 per cent shown up to vote. The opposite might well be the case – that the same people never showed up to cast their ballot because they feared the outcome was already a done deal in a terminally Catholic country such as ours.

What this means in the real world is that the substantial six per cent gap which ushered in divorce legislation could have been a lot wider had more people shown up to vote, turning Mr Mifsud’s spiel against voter abstention upside down and inside out, and turning it against its maker.