In an update to the previous post on the EU Referendum Petition I noted:-

In a few hours 25,000 signatures have been added to one constituency – London and Westminster to 39,338. There are only about 110,000 people in the constituency, including babies and those not entitled to vote. There were only 57,240 (53,928 + 3,312) who voted for Remain on Thursday.

By 10.15 the votes had risen to 43,317, but at 14.30 it had reduced to 14,031.

Now the BBC Reports

Second EU referendum petition investigated for fraud

The House of Commons petitions committee is investigating allegations of fraud in connection with a petition calling for a second EU referendum.

Its inquiry is focused on the possibility that some names could be fraudulent – 77,000 signatures have already been removed.

Also

A House of Commons spokeswoman said the petition was created on 24 May. There were 22 signatures on it at the time the referendum result was announced.

Confirming my thoughts in the previous post

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says the petition has attracted a lot of attention but has no chance of being enacted, because it is asking for retrospective legislation.

Our correspondent says some referendums do have thresholds but those clauses must be inserted in legislation before the vote so everyone is clear about the rules.

You cannot simply invent new hurdles if you are on the losing side, our correspondent says.

The Petitions Committee has removed 77,000, of which at least 29,000 were from the Cities of London and Westminster Constituency. Where the are the other concentrated? At the foot of the petition there is Get petition data (json format). This I downloaded at 10.15 and 17.24 today.

From the twitter feed.

At 10.15 there were 40,031 signatories from the Vatican. By 17.24 this had reduced to just 45.

Also on the Twitter feed.

At 10.15 there were 24,372 signatories from North Korea. By 17.24 this had reduced to just 26.

From the petition data it is possible to calculate the non-UK signatories by deducting the UK total from the overall total. At 10.15 there were 597,354 non-UK signatories. By 17.24 This had reduced to just 128,384. With the 29,000 deducted from the Cities of London and Westminster Constituency that is over 498,000 petitions deleted.

However, there are still likely to be a very large number of fraudulent responses that have, as yet, gone unnoticed.

Kevin Marshall