WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

We now know – beyond a reasonable doubt – the EU Referendum was rife with illegal activity and cheating. We cannot stand idly by while our democracy is being attacked. If you rob a bank and get caught, they don't let you keep the money.

We ‘the people’ cannot be expected to accept as legitimate the decisions reached by the executive and Parliament on the basis of an advisory referendum if that referendum was subject to serious and intentional breaches of the law, aimed at procuring a particular result. The time to act is now.

Central to our democracy is that elections are free and fair. There are strict limits on how much each campaigning group can spend and publicly available records of who spent what. These rules apply both to elections for political office and to referendums.

















WHAT HAPPENED?

The Electoral Commission has the task of enforcing these rules at the first instance. It has found that the official campaign for leaving the EU, Vote Leave, improperly channelled £675,315 through the tech firm AggregateIQ to get around election spending laws. This firm used Facebook profiling to target individuals with specific messages. According to evidence heard by the House of Commons Committee in March 2018 the profiles were built without the consent or knowledge of UK voters. The amount of money improperly spent would have enabled hundreds of millions of Facebook advertisements to be posted. The result of the EU Referendum was certainly influenced by this.

The Electoral Commission has similarly found that another Leave campaign, Leave.EU – fronted by Arron Banks - also committed offences.

Additionally, it appears involvement of Russian state actors were promoting content that would influence UK voters. 260 anti EU stories prepared by Kremlin-backed media were shared 134 million times online, according to research put together by 89up – a communication and social medical analytics company.

DO WE REALLY KNOW THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE?

The “will of the people” is a phrase that is often repeated to explain the chaos we find ourselves in. Since it is now clear that the referendum result was procured on the basis of criminal offences as found by the Electoral Commission, what the will of the people truly is has got to be questioned.

WHAT DO WE WANT TO DO?

Fair Vote is taking legal action to demand truth and accountability about the Referendum. We are challenging the Government decision not to hold a full public inquiry into the Referendum. We now know that the designated campaign body Vote Leave cheated and overspent by a huge amount; that there were suspicious and opaque donors to the Leave campaign; that Russia is implicated in social media campaigns intended to sway the vote and that foreign data companies using questionable tactics were deeply involved along with senior politicians and political advisors in the UK. All this has led to such significant public concern that only a Public Inquiry headed by a judge with formal powers to compel witnesses can find out what truly happened. The UK urgently needs its own Mueller investigation. Please help us to fund this urgent and important legal challenge.

THIS IS BIGGER THAN BREXIT:

It is vital that all our votes and especially those with fundamental constitutional implications, such as the EU referendum, are conducted freely and fairly if ‘the people’ are to respect the democratic process. It is a legitimate and necessary part of our democracy that the courts are able and willing to consider the legality of the process and we believe that they will be willing to do so as guardians of the common law.

WHO AM I?

I am Kyle Taylor, the director of Fair Vote UK. I believe it is vitally important that we - at this moment - fight with everything we can to defend our democratic systems and rule of law. We cannot let cheaters and law-breakers get away with undermining our very way of life.

WHO IS FAIR VOTE UK?

Fair Vote UK is a democracy and transparency organisation set up in the wake of revelations that Vote Leave cheated in the referendum.



















