Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

More than 3 million people have signed an official online petition calling for a re-do of the Brexit referendum, generating so much traffic on Saturday that Parliament's website temporarily crashed.

The official UK Government and Parliament petition follows Thursday's shocking referendum in which 51.9% of United Kingdom voters supported leaving the European Union. It passed with a turnout of 72.2%

The newspaper The Telegraph called the feverish online response "the biggest surge of support Parliament's website has ever seen."

The text of the petition is succinct: "We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based (on) a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum."

According to the Express newspaper, however, the author of the petition — who submitted the petition a month ago — is not upset over the outcome of the referendum, rather he had submitted it in the expectation that the "remain" forces would prevail, and wanted to set up a second bite of the apple.

De Montfort University activist William Oliver Healey tells the Express that his strategy "has been wrongly hijacked by the remain campaign."

The Parliament's Petitions Committee, which considers whether such submissions should be taken up in the House, will hold its next meeting on Tuesday.

Theoretically, the government could ignore the referendum, which is not legally binding. However, Prime Minister David Cameron, who announced his resignation in the wake of the vote, said the government would honor the results and take steps to leave the alliance.

Labour legislator David Lammy says Thursday’s national vote was non-binding and “our sovereign Parliament needs to now vote on whether we should quit the EU.”

He says some “leave” supporters now regret their votes and Parliament should vote on Britain’s EU membership. He said “we can stop this madness and bring this nightmare to an end. … Let us not destroy our economy on the basis of lies and the hubris of (’leave’ leader) Boris Johnson.”

Constitutional experts say Parliament cannot easily ignore the will of the people. Alan Renwick, deputy director of University College London’s Constitution Unit, says “in legal theory that is possible. In practice, that is absolutely not possible.”