Oxford Union 'attempted to rig' no confidence vote against George Abaraonye with 'forged' student ID cards

Mr Abaraonye, who became president-elect of the historic debating society earlier this year, lost his confidence vote earlier this week by 1,228 votes to 501.

Mr Jones-Lyons said he had personally inspected about 60 ballots as part of the voting process and saw at least six which had been doctored - including by using Tippex to change the name on the card.

The psychology and philosophy graduate, who represented Mr Abaraonye during the voting process, told GB News: "Some of the membership cards were just blatantly forged.

"There was a series of membership cards that all followed the same pattern. They had, for example, instead of the printed-on name, there was text written over it.

"Someone had Tippexed out whatever was on it and they had written over the name that they were purporting to be.

"Then also the image - the way that they did it was they had a 3D imprinted image over it so you had an image clearly visibly printed over.

"When I inspected those, at least six ballots that fit that pattern, they were all the same.

"They all had the exact same structure and the only reason they were admitted was because one of the reps said 'Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure we did membership cards like that once'."

The 22-year-old, who has been involved with the Oxford Union for around four years, said there had been a "number of theories" as to why the allegedly forged membership cards were there.

"Some of them related to people who were on the disciplinary lists so there was some concern that perhaps this was to cast doubt on the integrity of the people who would hear the cases relating to this poll," he said.

"I think that's a little bit far-fetched, personally. They all cast their ballots the same way. They all cast their ballots 'Yes' [in answer to the question 'should Mr Abaraonye be removed as an officer of the society']."

Mr Jones-Lyons said while he "didn't know" if this was an attempt to rig the vote, "there was an "active attempt to rig" it through the use of proxy votes.

He explained: "They were very clearly motivated with the intention of being used by one side, not the other. [Proxy votes have] never been done before.

"The last time that something similar was done was we had online voting for one election during Covid.

"The concern that was raised then was that 500 votes had came from two IP addresses. And in this election, we saw one individual cast 130 proxy ballots.

"So there's something not smelling right, frankly, about the whole process."

"I think it has been a total mess. It was completely unnecessary," he added.

"It's just patently wrong that we go through a process that has never been tried or tested with only 24 hours to prepare."

He said in order to verify Oxford Union memberships linked to voters, representatives were looking at the names displayed on the walls in the building to check if they appeared.

"For context, Yasser Arafat appears on the walls. I don't think anyone reasonably believes Yasser Arafat to be a member," he told People's Channel.

"There was some really quite concerning methodology that was being used to essentially validate yes votes for the no-confidence in George Abaraonye."

An Oxford Union source said for people to "undermine the idea of proxy votes was ridiculous".

They told GB News proxy voting had been "the precedent set" by a previous no confidence vote and is used due to the short notice between when a no confidence vote is announced and the poll being opened.

The source explained a no confidence vote requires 150 signatures to be triggered and voting follows just four days after, leaving little time for members of the union to travel to Oxford and vote in person.

They said: “It’s something as simple as this - this is a part of a long big campaign to overturn every single part of the process.

"Even the fake ID cards.There have been people who poll collect for us and they have counted elections in parliamentary elections in the UK, they have genuinely done real elections and they all tell us our elections are safer than the general elections."

The no-confidence vote was sparked following comments Mr Abaraonye made in relation to the shooting of Conservative activist and Donald Trump ally, Charlie Kirk, at Utah Valley University in September.

The leaked messages showed the 20-year-old writing: "Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f**king go."

A separate message read: "Charlie Kirk got shot loool" - an elongated version of the "laugh out loud" acronym.

Mr Jones-Lyons admitted the messages were "inappropriate" and said the former president-elect "should have known better".

In a statement last month, the union condemned his remarks and said complaints filed against Mr Abaraonye had been forwarded for disciplinary proceedings.

A second no-confidence vote has been held this week against the President of the union, Moosa Harraj.

The motion of no confidence however failed.