Brexit: Petition calling for second EU vote was created by Leave backer

[Night Watchman]

Source: CNN

Updated 9:02 PM ET, Sun June 26, 2016

London (CNN) An online petition signed by more than 3.5 million people calling for a second referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU was started by a Leave campaigner who says it has been "hijacked" by unhappy Remain voters.

The petition, which has attracted millions of signatures in the wake of Britain's shock vote to leave the European Union last Thursday, calls for a second referendum on the issue if the result is less than decisive.

Another referendum should be held, it says, "if the remain or leave vote is less than 60 percent based a turnout less than 75 percent." In a startling result, the Leave campaign won Thursday's referendum with 52% of the vote, with 72% of voters turning out.

Disappointed voters have flocked to sign the petition in the wake of the vote, crashing the official UK government website on at least one occasion and generating more signatures than on any other petition on the site.

But the surge in interest has prompted its creator, William Oliver Healey, to speak out, saying that he in fact he had actively supported the Leave campaign, and had created the petition "with the intention of making it harder for 'remain' to further shackle us to the EU."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/26/europe/uk-second-referendum-petition/index.html

---

Healey claims he created the petition before the vote, when it looked as though Remain was going to win. At any rate, it appears that we're not the only country having a fucked-up political year!

[MFM008]

1. There should have been a % target

We have them for school levy they should have a 60% goal or no pass.
Revote. They would get 1 more chance.

[Travis_0004]

2. There was a target. 50%+1

[Yupster]

16. Let's just keep voting until

the side we want wins. Then we'll be done.

[captainarizona]

3. five stages of grief

The wealthy, the elite and the media have gone from the denial stage to bargining. Elitists and wall street here better take note. The media can keep third partys out of the polls ;but not out of the voting booth. See:2000 election.

[840high]

4. Yes. +1

[Frances]

5. Are you saying that Nader

gave us W, who took us into the war in Iraq, which led to ISIS, which created the huge migration of people from the Middle East that then caused Britain to leave the UK

Cause that's the way I see it

[840high]

6. Nader did not.

[Craig234]

13. Yes, Nader did.

It wasn't his intent, but it was a risk he was walling to take that happened.

Florida determined the election by one electoral vote, and the official count was a Bush win in Florida by 534 votes.

A lot of things could have changed those 534 votes but it looks like one was Nader not running and taking thousand from Gore there.

(Of course, later recounts found that Gore had won anyway, but those recounts were blocked by the Supreme Court on the legal doctrine that recounting the votes might harm Bush by casting doubt on his legitimacy).

[TiberiusB]

15. No, he didn't...

People chose to vote for Nader. He didn't steal their votes, suppress them, buy them, trick them, or in any way "take" them (that would be the GOP). All the "it's Nader's fault" narratives presume in some fashion that Gore, and by extension the Democratic party, were owed those votes, and Nader, by having the gall to think anyone should be able to run for President regardless of the depth of their pockets (stupid Democracy), spoiled the election and threw it to Bush. This ignores the Supreme Court's highly dubious interference, the voter suppression efforts by the GOP, one Katherine Harris, and a less than inspiring campaign by Gore that somehow convinced thousands of Florida registered Democrats to vote for the dim bulb, G. W. Bush. Can anyone really say with authority what would have happened had Nader not run? Anyone got a time machine they can loan me? We only know what did happen. We'll never know what might have been.

Regardless, in the end, you can only blame the voters who decided Bush was the guy they'd like to have a beer with. Enough people looked at that empty suit and pulled the lever to make the election close enough to steal. That's what you get when you mix Democracy with an uninformed polarized electorate. Of course, with the rise of electronic voting, you can manufacture all the consent your heart desires.

[Craig234]

17. He chose to run against the Democrat

You don't understand the concept of splitting the vote.

If Hillary had stayed in the election and run against Obama and got 20% of the vote, it'd have elected Romney. Nader did.

[Indydem]

22. Wrong.

McCain ran in 2008. Not Romney.

Being wrong on that huge detail means you probably don't know anything about 2000 either.

[Craig234]

25. Wrong.

It's called a 'brain fart'. Seeing your post I didn't think I'd written Romney until I checked my post.

I'd guess I might have looked at 2000 a hundred times more than you are likely to have. You need to quit the insults.

[TiberiusB]

32. Uh, yes I do understand splitting the vote

Last edited Mon Jun 27, 2016, 07:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Nader stayed in the election and didn't get anything like 20% of the vote. Don't fall into the trap of believing that anyone not sanctioned by the two dominant parties is somehow breaking the rules at best, or deliberately undermining our future at worst.

[Craig234]

36. No, you don't understand splitting the vote.

If you did, you wouldn't go on and on about "Nader, by having the gall to think anyone should be able to run for President ".

Your whole point is Nader having the 'right' to run for president, which no one is saying he didn't have.

The entire issue, which is absent from your post, is the issue of choosing to split the vote, not his 'right to run'.

That would be like Gore deciding to quit the race a week before the election, and when Democrats angrily blame him for helping Bush get elected as a result, you say 'no, he didn't help Bush get elected, he doesn't HAVE to run, and people could vote for someone else'.

Missing the point.

You also are having difficulty with analogies.

Trying to explain the idea of splitting the vote to you by saying an analogy, what if Hillary had stayed in in 2008 and taken 20% of the vote and caused McCain to win? Your response: Nader didn't get 20% of the vote, totally missing the point.

[Backwoodsrider]

18. Nader had not run on 2000 election Gore would of won

Pretty cut and dried,

The Nader action has already happened all we can do is try and manage but anybody who thinks Nader was doing anything even remotely positive is likely also living in a world based on a little moral denial than the average person.

keep coming back

[Indydem]

23. Assumptions

You make the bold and false assumption that those voting for Nader would have voted for Gore.

The Bernouts of today were, many of them, the "not a single difference between the two parties" people in 2000. They would have stayed home.

[Backwoodsrider]

24. right....

What you are saying is that if Nader had not run many of the Nader voters would of voted for a Bush instead of a Democrat or that the majority of Nader voters would not of voted otherwise? It has to be a majority of Nader voters either would of voted for Bush and or not shown up if Nader wasn't running as the way Gore could of still lost if Nader had not ran and that's not realistic.

For good or bad Nader and his misguided voters cost us the election of a progressive Democrat for pres on 2000 and look what we have instead, look what Bush gave us.

I have a gut feeling Nader was placed in the election on purpose and his face has to wear the consequence of living a lie, he has to wear that for the rest of his life. He deserves it.

[TiberiusB]

29. The problem here...

is that Nader only had any real influence on the election in Florida. That would be the state where you have to ignore:

-Katherine Harris' likely illegal interference in the re-counts and her subsequent certification of Bush as the winner.
-The Supreme Court's disastrous decision to back Harris and effectively hand the election to the GOP.
-Wide spread voter disenfranchisement and suppression of thousands of voters. Numbers on this vary, but even if you solely focus on those people wrongly identified as felons, you have 12,000 potential Gore votes. That's over 20 times what was needed to win.
-200,000+ registered Democrats who voted for Bush. Sway about .25% of those voters to stick with the team and you win Florida.
-A clearly hostile media that jumped at every opportunity to tear down Gore and puff up G.W.
-Gore's problematic (at best) campaign. The "I'm not Clinton" campaign...yeah. Gore lost Tennessee, his home state. Flip that, and you win the election.

-Republican 2,912,790
Democratic 2,912,253
Green 97,488
Natural Law 2,281
Reform 17,484
Libertarian 16,415
Workers World 1,804
Constitution 1,371
Socialist 622
Socialist Workers 562
Write-in 40

Why isn't anyone blaming the Natural Law party, or the Reform party, or the Libertarian Party, or Worker's World Party, or the Constitution Party, or the Socialist Party, or the Socialist Workers Party? That's 40,539 potential Gore votes. If you can be sure how Nader voters would have voted sans Nader, you can surely predict how all these people would have voted if they were stripped of their preferred choice...or at least 1.3% of them, which would have been all that was needed to win.

That's a lot of missed opportunity.

Green party voters choose Nader. You can blame them all you want, but you can't blame Nader without dispensing with the pretense that you support free and open elections where anyone can participate, or that people owe their votes to a candidate and anyone who comes along and persuades them to vote any other way is STEALING something.

[Backwoodsrider]

33. Enjoyed reading your post seemed well thought out.. but I still agree to disagree

[TiberiusB]

31. Really?

Believing that the 2000 election was the Dems to lose and the GOPs to steal and that little Ralph Nader's campaign, which barely drew a tiny percentage of the vote, shouldn't be demonized as the poison pill that gave us Bush is "moral denial"?

How can anyone ignore all the issues present in the 2000 campaign that cost Gore the election (many of which I address in other posts on this thread) and focus solely on Nader?

[padfun]

27. I think Gore lost on his own.

First and foremost, he picked Lieberman as his running mate. BAD choice!!

Second, he lost his home state, Tennessee. Maybe the blame should go there.

And most of all, since Gore/Lieberman turned off many voters, one could say that Gore is to blame for his own demise. Most Nader voters weren't going to vote for Gore. Not with Lieberman anyways.

[Craig234]

28. It'd be easy to list a hundred things each of which cost Gore 534 Florida votes.

The point isn't them - it's that Nader is one.

[TiberiusB]

30. actually, that is the point

Many of the hundred things that cost Gore the election were potentially (likely) illegal, such as all the various voter suppression efforts, or the direct result of partisan interference (Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court). Nader's "sin" was actively participating in our Republic. Yet he is the focus of so many Democrat's ire who feel that thanks to his amazing power to sway mortal minds, he stole votes that rightfully belonged to Gore. Those people didn't willingly make their choice, they wuz h-y-p-n-o-t-i-z-e-d! Curse you Nader!

[Craig234]

35. You're just wrong

The attack isn't that the votes rightly belonged to Gore. They didn't.

It's that Nader chose to run and split the votes that would go to Gore, and single-handedly caused the election of Bush by doing so.

I repeat: imagine that Hillary had a twin sister, and that she also ran in the general election and was just like Hillary, but voters split between them, and as a result Hillary's 60% was split to 30% each, and trump won with 40%.

The votes weren't 'owned by Hillary', but two 'good progressives' running and splitting the votes helps the other side win.

It's why we have primaries, to select one candidate. Nader chose to split the votes for Gore and risk it electing Bush, which it did.

[TiberiusB]

37. Let's look at this point by point...

So, belatedly, I make my final post to this thread...

The attack isn't that the votes rightly belonged to Gore. They didn't.

Well, we agree on that.

It's that Nader chose to run and split the votes that would go to Gore, and single-handedly caused the election of Bush by doing so.

Nader did choose to run, as was his right, and he ran as the Green Party candidate, not a Democrat, also his right, a right exorcised by numerous others who, it could be argued, won votes that might have gone to Gore. "Might have" is the important point being missed. When you say they would have gone to Gore, you are, in fact, making the argument that they "belonged" to Gore and Nader took them. The best you can say is that Nader split the vote among "likely" Gore voters. The only truly accurate statement that can be made is that Nader split the vote among possible Democrat, Republican, Green, Natural Law, Reform, Libertarian, Worker's World, Constitution, Socialist, and Socialist Worker's candidates. We can't know what might have happened had Nader not run, we can only make educated guesses. Who knows what the GOP might have done had Nader not been in the race. They played a crooked game and it's absurd to think they wouldn't have simply dug a little deeper into their bag of tricks to bring home the brass ring.

I repeat: imagine that Hillary had a twin sister, and that she also ran in the general election and was just like Hillary, but voters split between them, and as a result Hillary's 60% was split to 30% each, and trump won with 40%.

The votes weren't 'owned by Hillary', but two 'good progressives' running and splitting the votes helps the other side win.

Imagine that Hillary's twin sister split the vote with Hillary, one taking 5%, the other 47%, and Trump wins with 48%. Now imagine that before the actual election, Team Trump purged close to 100,000 voters from the roles illegally, knowing there was an excellent chance they might vote for Hillary. Still Hillary's twin sister's fault? What if there was a recount of actual votes and it was looking like just the "over votes" were enough to tip the election to Hillary, and the recount of those votes was blocked by the Florida GOP and the Supreme Court. Still the fault of the mythical twin? What if that same recount would have revealed a huge problem with butterfly ballots, too, still 100% the fault of the twin? What if Hillary ran such a poor campaign that she lost New York, her "home" state, and one which would have cemented her win easily, completely derailing any attempt to steal a close election in Florida. Blame the twin for clearly "single-handedly" sinking the election for Hillary? What about the highly biased media coverage? Can't blame the GOP, can't blame the Supreme Court, can't fault the Democrats. Gotta blame the twin.

It's why we have primaries.

Nader ran on the Green ticket, he played no part in the primaries. It's like saying that the GOP split the vote. Of course they did, they were the opposition, as was Nader.

Besides, it's likely Gore actually did win, and the election was effectively stolen, which the Dems were well aware of and chose not to challenge. They backed away from any legal challenges then, and again in 2004 when Kerry looked like he fell victim to the same scam. None of that can be hung around Nader's neck.

[Craig234]

38. The basic misunderstanding seems to be

That you are responding the position that Nader and nothing but Nader cost Gore the lection. That is not my position.

My position it that any one of a hundred things cost Gore the election as close as it was, and one of them was Nader.

Every one of those hundred things if any one was reversed, Gore was president.

So, Nader single-handedly cost Gore the presidency - but he's far from the only thing that did.

I agree that Gore really won - a separate issue.

[TiberiusB]

40. This is a touch contradictory

you are responding [to] the position that Nader and nothing but Nader cost Gore the election. That is not my position.

Okay.

Nader single-handedly cost Gore the presidency

But you just said this wasn't your position...

- but he's far from the only thing that did.

Wait, what? So he single-handedly cost Gore the election along with other things? That's kinda not possible. Just remove the whole "single handedly" thing and it makes a lot more sense.

Nader was one of many factors that made the election close enough to, in all likelihood, steal. The question is, looking back, what do we focus on and whom do we excoriate for their actions? I choose to blame an abhorrent and probably criminal GOP, a media empire largely driven by controversy and unconcerned with facts, a Democratic party in the throws of a poisonous "centrist" push into the arms of corporate America and away from its base, and an absurdly ignorant population that thinks the President should be someone you want to have a beer with and not someone at least vaguely competent.

The one thing I can't do is blame the Green party guy who played by the rules. Was he a tool of the GOP, a sap whose only real purpose was to drain votes away from Gore? Maybe, but none of that should have mattered. Nader without all those other factors would have been little more than a statistical blip. Practically a rounding error.

Anyway, that's where I'm coming from, but I think you get that by now. I'm out, peace.

[Craig234]

41. Gore "lost" officially by 534 votes in Florida

Therefore, anything that cost Gore 534 votes in Florida, single-handedly cost Gore the election.

Many things cost Gore 534 votes in Florida. Election machine settings in black precincts. Voter purges. Butterfly ballot. And Nader.

[iandhr]

8. Maybe you should read this.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/racist-incidents-feared-to-be-linked-to-brexit-result-reported-in-england-and-wales

There was a real racist element behind the vote.

[yeoman6987]

9. There may be but the not leave group should have voted instead of

Worrying about rain, a game and whatever else that kept them away. Democracy does not guarantee you get what you want 100 percent of the time.

[iandhr]

10. Agreed.

The poster was saying how this was a victory against the elites.


I was to correct a misimpression.

[Populist_Prole]

14. Bingo

The elite are just hiding the class war they're waging on us behind faux social issue BS.

[pampango]

19. Yeah the 'wealthy and the elite' will really be upset with the "neoliberal fantasy island" that

Boris Johnson dreams of if he indeed becomes the new Conservative prime minister. If British voters thought they were teaching the wealthy and elites a lesson with the Leave vote, they really did not think this through. Boris wants, in his own words, to turn the UK into a "hyper-capitalist island freed from EU regulation". Something tells me the wealthy and elite will not be too unhappy with that.

There is a reason that British unions, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders all supported the UK remaining in the EU - and it wasn't because they support the wealthy and the elits..

Responding to the unhappiness of your face by cutting of your nose is not an effective tactic.

[joshcryer]

34. Don't kid yourself, the wealthy are consolidating as we speak.

Soros is making billions from this.

And when all is said and done the UK will be even more beholden to the markets, as they have crap they need to sell, and the trade agreements are not going to be kind to them.

[captainarizona]

7. polls vs votes

The point I am making by keeping third party candidates out of polls to try and force people to vote for to major candidates given an inaccurate picture of electorate.

[Craig234]

12. That's why we need states to adopt ranked voting

Where voters can vote for whoever they want and still have their votes count.

But the two main parties are not going to want that improvement to democracy, voters will have to organize for it.

[Craig234]

11. That's how democracy works

49% are often unhappy with a vote.

But since this was an 'advisory' vote, it seems there's still some wiggle room.

[TomVilmer]

20. In Denmark they asks until we say YES

We elect very nice and fatherly governments, who always will make the right decisions for us. And when they very seldom asks us directly, they will patiently wait and ask again, until we get it right. When we the public was asked about a big expansion in 1992 of the EU called the Treaty of Maastricht, we got it wrong with a NO the first time. They gave us another chance. and this time we made them very happy by guessing YES should be the correct answer.

BTW, Greenland is part of our Kingdom, and they stubbornly left EU in 1984. By this example it should be difficult, but still possible, for the UK to leave but let Scotland and Northern Ireland stay in the EU.

[7962]

21. Using those standards, they'd be voting every month. Its silly.

75% turnout & 60+% either way? Get real!!

[Blue Idaho]

26. Imagine if 52% of Americans voted one way

And "the government" decided they got it wrong and refused to follow the will of a majority of the people?

[forest444]

43. It did indeed happen.

Bush v. Gore.

The percentages weren't exactly the same; but the effect certainly was.

[Monk06]

39. Brexit was passed because of working class racism outside the City of London

I originally thought it the revolt was economic until I started seeing videos like this

The words Nig Nog and Black Bastard are used often in this three on one attack by Glaswegan working class bigots against one lone busker who was hurting nobody and tried everything to avoid a fight

The suburban working class white lumpen proletariat of Britain want their shitty lives on the dole all to themselves without having to share with the WOGs

[AntiBank]

42. ancient news, this was reported a couple days after the vote