Evidence - Fair Vote Project

We’ve seen and heard disturbing evidence that suggests Vote Leave, the official referendum campaign, may have cheated in the last referendum.

They may have done this by spending up to a million more pounds then they were allowed to, coordinating with a “separate” campaign group which is strictly forbidden by the law. Upon announcement of an investigation – a senior Vote Leave staff member, Victoria Woodcock, went through a drive shared by Vote Leave, BeLeave and AIQ restricting access for herself, Dominic Cummings and Henry de Zoete from hundreds of documents. Was this an attempt to preserve evidence, or to delete it? Some of the other people involved at Vote Leave are now top advisers to Prime Minister Theresa May.

All the senior Vote Leave officials mentioned, and Darren Grimes, have specifically denied behaving unlawfully in the EU Referendum.

According to the Electoral Commission, campaigns are “highly likely to be working together if:”

01 You spend money on joint advertising campaigns, leaflets or events

02 You coordinate your spending with another campaigner

03 Another campaigner can approve or has significant influence over your spending

And what appears to have happened?

01 Vote Leave and BeLeave appear to have coordinated with the same digital strategy vendor, AIQ

02 BeLeave appears to have been assigned specific responsibility for youth audiences by Vote Leave

03 BeLeave was based at Vote Leave HQ, and appears to have reported to Vote Leave directors and shared all information with their staff

Claim One

Vote Leave created and closely managed BeLeave

New whistleblower evidence suggests BeLeave was overseen by and integrated with Vote Leave. It operated out of its headquarters throughout the referendum period and advised on bank account set-up and campaigning tools creation. It also appears the Vote Leave lawyer drafted the constitution for BeLeave. The evidence is clear that these two organisations were very closely coordinated, but what about after the donation was made to AIQ?

There’s nothing wrong with campaigns coordinating if they share a spending limit. According to Electoral Law, money spent in a coordinated campaign should all be declared by the designated group. In this case, Vote Leave.

Claim Two

Vote Leave coordinated their work with BeLeave both before and after the payment to AIQ

The whistleblower evidence suggests Vote Leave coordinated their work with BeLeave and AIQ, the company closely linked to now disgraced Cambridge Analytica. BeLeave team members sought approval for activities, BeLeave team members and AIQ staff worked from Vote Leave headquarters and BeLeave team members took part in Vote Leave campaigning activities.

This letter, submitted to the ICO by Darren Grimes, Director of BeLeave, states “I did not undertake any working together with Vote Leave Ltd, I had no involvement with Vote Leave Ltd’s work with AggregateIQ Data Services Limited or any other companies.” It also suggests BeLeave’s ad campaign with Aggregate IQ only produced the collection of 1,164 email address. That’s £580 per email whereas Dominic Cummings, Campaign Director of Vote Leave, said their program with AggregateIQ brought in 350,000 emails, which works out to £10 per email signup assuming their declared payment to AggregateIQ of £3.2 million is true. How could this cost be so different if they were using the same supplier?
This letter exchanged between BeLeave staff and the Electoral Commission acknowledges that £625,000 went to AggregateIQ from VoteLeave as a payment for “digital marketing work you [BeLeave] had engaged them to undertake.” Since the evidence confirms they used the same data supplier, there is a suggestion that the payment to AggregateIQ was used for both Vote Leave and BeLeave campaigns. If so, Vote Leave exceeded its spending limits by a very significant amount.
This is a screenshot of conversations between BeLeave volunteers and AIQ staff member Zack Massingham. Shahmir Sanni believed that “hard stuff” referred to Vote Leave’s more direct messages aimed at traditional Leave supporters compared to BeLeave’s softer tone aimed at young progressives. Does this mean they were assigned specific responsibility of certain audiences?
This is a screenshot of conversations between BeLeave volunteers and AIQ staff member Zack Massingham. In it Zack says “it’s actually better to target based on interests.” If BeLeave had very little data, where was AIQ getting this knowledge for targeting?

Claim Three

Vote Leave’s alleged overspend went to AggregateIQ, which is closely linked to Cambridge Analytica

Vote Leave paid AIQ £625,000 –– supposedly on behalf of and as a donation to BeLeave. But how could that amount of money, the biggest single expense in the campaign, have all been spent on a tiny youth group’s social media campaign in the last 10 days of the referendum?

Claim Four

People involved were less than truthful when the authorities started to investigate

After the authorities started to investigate, emails were deleted, the young volunteers were instructed what to say, and a senior Vote Leave staff member, Victoria Woodcock, went through a drive shared by Vote Leave, BeLeave and AIQ removing access for herself, Dominic Cummings and Henry de Zoete from hundreds of documents. We don’t know why she did this. Was this an attempt to preserve evidence, or to delete it?

This animation shows the hundreds of files that Vote Leave senior staff member Victoria Woodcock removed access to for herself, Henry de Zoete and Dominic Cummings, Campaign Director of Vote Leave. The date stamp indicates this occurred a few weeks after the Electoral Commission started to investigate. Is this an attempt to preserve evidence or delete it?

Third Whistleblower Evidence

New Vote Leave whistleblower reveals his coordinated work across campaigns

New material provided by a third whistleblower and published by the Fair Vote Project makes clear just how intimate the relationship between Vote Leave and BeLeave was as well as how Vote Leave came to know of AggregateIQ (AIQ), answering a key question that had yet to be answered.

Read the accompanying statement.

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See all of it for yourself

We believe the evidence speaks for itself. So we encourage you to download the entire package, read through it, and share it with anyone who is interested in understanding the truth for themselves. We’ve included a guide that will be useful in discussing it with others so that we can all be sure nothing like this happens again.

Download all the evidence

Do you have more evidence?

Cheating is wrong no matter who does it. What we know so far suggests Vote Leave may have cheated to win the referendum. If you have other evidence about cheating on either side, please reach out to us and share it. We will work to get it to the appropriate institutions. We take this responsibility very seriously.

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