AN ONLINE PETITION that calls for Brexit to be cancelled by revoking Article 50 has gathered 3.7 million signatures.

The petition, which was launched on Wednesday, says a “second Brexit referendum may not happen – so vote now”. 

“The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ‘the will of the people’. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People’s Vote may not happen – so vote now,” it reads.

At the time of updating this article, the petition had over 3,786,000 signatures. 

The British Parliament’s petitions committee tweeted that the rate of signings is the “highest the site has ever had to deal with”, after the website briefly crashed earlier. A House of Commons spokesman said the technical difficulties on parliament’s e-petition website were caused by “a large and sustained load on the system”.

Since then, the committee has also attempted to tackle claims that the huge interest in the petition is not fraud, and has claimed that 96% of the signatures to the petition are from the UK.

A few people have been talking about fraud and overseas signatures. As of this afternoon, approximately 96% of signatures on the petition were from the UK. That’s broadly what we’d expect for a petition like this.

“We don’t comment in detail about security measures. We use different techniques – automated and manual – to identify and block signatures from bots, disposable email addresses and other sources that show signs of fraudulent activity. We also monitor signing patterns.

The House of Commons pledges to consider all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate in the chamber.