Stop Brexit: 700k sign UK petition to stay in EU | Hacker News Reader

Stop Brexit: 700k sign UK petition to stay in EU

reuters.com

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The petition is here. Looks like it just crossed 1,000,000. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584

Only 16m more to go

Assuming everyone on the internet respects the "I am a British citizen or UK resident" checkbox, which is doubtful.

Almost certainly not.

Can we then have a 2nd petition, just in case anyone has changed their mind?

I support a 3rd petition too. In fact why don't we just repeat all elections and referendums until we get what we want?

the 2nd one would be about which deal. not the same thing.

If they have a 2nd petition I'm sure it'll include an option to say "I want to stay in the EU", which would be the same thing: repeating a vote until we get what we want.

So instead you advocate we don't get what we want because all decisions are meant to be final?

"I'm sorry, you cannot return this jumper you bought online because even though it doesn't fit you, you've already decided to buy it and all decisions are final".

Easily solved with instant runoff voting[1] for the entire spectrum from Remain to No Deal.

No one wastes their vote voting tactically, everyone gets their voice heard, and we get to choose exactly how we shoot ourselves in the foot when Leave wins a 2nd vote.

I mean how could Leave lose? It was the will of the people, they'll clearly vote the same again. /s

Better than the current game of 3d chicken we're playing right now.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

Sorry, IRV is Not British. Only First-Past-the-Post is simple enough to be understood by good upstanding British voters. We had a referendum on it.

This has been May's strategy with parliament. We're soon going to have a third vote on the same deal.

With the referendum it's more justified. There were financial irregularities which would have rendered the result void but the vote was non binding so the Electoral Commission advised it can't intervene other than to fine some of the guilty.

Pretty sure we already do that every 5 years :D

That's what the parliament is doing anyway.

That is literally how democracy is supposed to work. You have regular(ish) elections to appoint your "representatives" in parliament (representatives in scare quotes because they seldom represent the people).

Even the 2016 EU referendum wasn't the first we've had. As the voting populous grows old, new voters come of age, and the relationship with our EU partners change, it makes total sense to revisit past decisions.

Nothing in democracy should be closed to re-evaluation for all time in the future just because some people made a vote once.

I was wondering what percentage of those would of been eligible to vote in the referendum originally. As some insight, 971885 of that total are located in the UK and the rest from other countries. Now that does not clarify if they qualify to vote in the referendum or not, but does somewhat raise that aspect of people who have no say in a country, interfering in its democracy.

After all, these are just names of people, sure they may check against an election role register and that does somewhat depend upon no ID-fraud, of which the site offers no protection against whatsoever.

Well worth looking at how this progresses via the data available :- https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584.json

I believe people who have a permanent residency outside of the UK but held British citizenship were allowed to vote in the referendum.

However I'm not suggesting that all those anomalous votes in that petition are ex-pats.

You are correct about voting eligibility and expats and I equally share your stance upon that. We just don't know and given the checks (lack of) involved, may never know.

Had we had a national ID card, such systems might take on more credibility, alas such ID cards in the UK are often disdained by a vast majority for various reasons of self-privacy. Yet such ID cards are most common throughout Europe. Indeed, some countries (Brussels iirc as one) have a law that makes not voting in an election a crime, so they get close to 100% turnout, they also have ID cards.

However, 17,410,742 voted to leave

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...

That was only around half of voters. Right on the knife edge.

They tend to quote the raw number, and not the percentage, so it makes it sound like it's the entire population that voted for the current situation.

You can't really compare an internet petition with a government operated referendum.

The point of petitions like these are to poll for public interest in lieu of a government sanctioned response.

People have a feeling of being dragged against their will at the moment; there is no consensus, and that's mainly the fault of Theresa May who, by not reaching a consensus across the house and the different positions on Brexit, has just created a situation where no one is satisfied by the outcome of the negotiations. She should have reached across the house and the political spectrum, across Leavers and Remainers, to reconcile the country and reach a compromise that was acceptable for everyone; instead she defined extremist red lines that haven't changed since the first very day she took office, assumed these red lines were the redlines given by Leave voters, and ignored the rest of the electorate... She does not even respect the votes of the Parliament, and comes again and again with the same deal with a single strategy: running down the clock.

At the end of the day, the country is now more divided than ever, and for some (including myself), the only voice we have left against this nightmare is to sign a petition.

It was never possible to reconcile those differing opinions. This isn’t like trying to agree which pub to drink at or restaurant to eat at - where people agree on a fundamental point of going somewhere but are in the mood for different specifics. This is topic where people have fundamentally contradictory core beliefs.

This kind of tribalism is at the sort of level where people discuss religious beliefs or football clubs (man does that cause so many pointless arguments)

Those 17 million voted for many different versions of leaving, different sets of changes to our relationship with Europe (many of those were impossible or illusory -- based on lies). All those who voted to remain voted for essentially the same thing, to maintain our current relationship with Europe.

After 1995's near disastrous referendum in Quebec, the Canadian federal government added requirements that a clear majority on a clear question was required for secession (known as the Clarity Act).

Even though it is a Canadian law, I cannot help but see Brexit through it's lens. It is a lesson that I wish the UK learned through our experiences rather than their own.

Isn't this how most of democratic elections work with many different faces of leader and their different set of plans targeted to different groups of people. Does the burden to separate lie and misinformation from truth along with the responsibility to choose the best not lie with electorate?

The difference between an election and a referendum of this type is that in four years there'll be another one, so even if everyone realises they were wrong an opportunity will be along in not too long to reverse that decision.

And 16,141,241 voted to stay. It's very close that some of `yes` voters might change their mind after the disastrous Brexit process.

I'm not British, so I have no real horse in this race. I'm generally in favor of Brexit, and think that long-term it will benefit the UK far more than it will hurt them short-term.

That said, I don't think it's "undemocratic" to hold a second referendum. Parliament is clearly not on board with the whole idea, and the EU isn't really inclined to make a graceful transition. So let the voters make another statement, given what we now know.

If Brexit carries the day again, then Parliament will hopefully become a little more flexible, and the EU, for fear of alienating an important trading partner, will likely stop with the game of chicken as well.

And if Brexit loses then everyone can kiss and make up, with the new knowledge that actually pulling off an exit from the EU is harder technically and the full implications are more daunting than the voters anticipated.

EU parliament defends the interests of EU countries, including the Republic of Ireland. Europe is protecting its interests; politicians in the UK assumed that the EU would bend to their will, they were wrong. With Theresa May's hard Brexit and red lines, it was impossible for the EU to do more; I actually think they did some compromises in the current May's deal. The problem is that May's deal is not what was sold to voters, far from it, that's why no one is happy about the current situation.

Europe just said: You cannot have your cake and eat it.

> Europe just said: You cannot have your cake and eat it.

Yeah, sure. But they _could_ have just said: You can have your cake and eat it. Why exactly is it "impossible" -- UK exceptionalism was already the norm.

let the UK have their cake and eat it. How much of their intransigence is a matter of principle vs. a game of chicken (hoping that the UK will give up on Brexit) is something that I don't know if we can really know unless push comes to shove.

Where's the competing leave the EU petition?

It was held just over 2 years ago.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/229963

If there isn't one already then you're free to create one yourself. Nobody is denying the right for one to exist.

This site tracks both of them: https://brexit-petitions-count.now.sh/

Can someone make a petition for those who want to leave.

We had one already.

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