Petition calling for reconsideration of Brexit referendum has an ironic origin
Much has been written about a petition calling for the UK to hold a second referendum on membership in the European Union in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the 28-member bloc.
But the petition, which has amassed 3.5 million signatures, comes with a pretty big ironic twist: It was originally created a month ago by a pro-leave supporter who was anticipating the remain vote to win.
As CNN noted, the man behind the original petition is William Oliver Healey, a member of the pro-leave English Democrats. Healey posted a statement on his Facebook page in which he said, "This petition was created at a time (over a month ago) when it was looking unlikely that 'leave' were going to win, with the intention of making it harder for 'remain' to further shackle us to the EU. Due to the result, the petition has been hijacked by the remain campaign."
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Read his entire statement below.
Healey's petition states: "We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum."
In the referendum, 17,410,742 voted to leave and 16,141,241 voted to remain — a difference of 1,269,501 votes with a turnout rate of 72.2%, meeting the desired requirements of Healey's petition, even if the sides are flipped.
Earlier Sunday, the Petitions Committee confirmed that it will consider the petition even as it announced that nearly 80,000 signatures were removed for being "fraudulent." But given the overall numbers, that discrepancy will make little difference in the total number of signatures collected thus far.
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The UK government is required to respond to any petition above 10,000 signatures. Parliament must consider for debate any petition that has 100,000 signatures, as happened earlier this year when a petition requesting that Donald Trump be banned from entering the UK earned nearly 600,000 signatures. (Trump was ultimately spared.)
The White House has a similar system for considering petitions.
Additional reporting by Liza Hearon
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Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
