Important:

This petition was submitted during the 2010-2015 parliament

Rejected petition Allow a referendum by popular demand

More details

As a democracy, the British have been afforded the option to vote on a referendum only 11 times since the first in 1973.

Outside of referendums, the British people are given their democratic 'choice' in general elections. If two parties have exactly the same standpoint on an issue, there is no option available to opposition, regardless of the number of people opposing it.

The Swiss government allows 2 types of popular referendum, which occur following petitions:

Optional referendum - a vote on a law passed by the government.
Federal Popular Initiative - vote on a modification of any law/to create a new law.

These referendums need 50,000 and 100,000 signatures on a petition respectively to force a national referendum.

The undersigned propose that these initiative are introduced in the UK, but with a proportional increase in the number of signatures (for example 750,000 and 1.5 million).

This would offer a true democratic option to the UK population.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

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