An Internet petition is a form of petition posted on a website. Visitors to the website in question can add their email addresses or names, and after enough "signatures" have been collected, the resulting letter is emailed to the subject of the petition.

Pros and cons

The format makes it easy for people to make a petition at any time. Sites like petitiononline.com and others allows anyone with computer access to make one to protest any cause, such as stopping planned development of a wetland or closure of a store.

But the ease of such a format leads to problems. Because it is easy to set up, it can attract frivolous causes, or even joke ones.

For example, one could make a legitimate internet petition on having Jack Thompson's license to practice law in Florida to be pulled because his actions against the video game community are unethical and don't serve the written laws of the land nor the public good. Likewise, someone else could easily make a frivolous petition to have Jack Thompson's citizenship status in the USA to be revoked, and have him deported to Russia (which would be technically and legally impossible). One example of an online petition intended to be taken as a joke is the "Demand that petitiononline.com be shut down" petition, which demands petitiononline.com itself shut down.

The people who electronically sign the petition can also come into question and may invalidate the legitimacy of the petition itself. Without verification via a confirmation e-mail or some other form of verification that can be looked at and confirmed, one could easily pad a petition with false names and e-mails. To compare in the real world, a local government may require of a protesting group tackling a problem to not only require the signatures of people who sign their petitions, but also their printed name, and a way to verify the signature (either with a phone number or identification number via a driver's license or a passport) to ensure that the signature is legitimate and not falsefied by the protestors.

Many legitimate NGOs shun online petitions for various reasons. Amnesty International reputation is based on the written letters its members write to help people all around the world. The track record of online petitions is also another reason why many NGOs shun them, as there are very few examples of this form of petition achieving its objective, and critics frequently cite it as an example of slacktivism.

E-Mail petitions

A similar form of petition is the e-mail petition. This petition can take one of many forms:

• The petition can highlight some action that must be taken, and the recipeient must collect a certain amount of signatures (Common numbers fall below 1,000 signatures, usually between 100-500 signatures, supposedly an easy number for an individual). After the amount is collected or exceeded, it is forwarded to an e-mail address (either a corporation or a well-known public figure, like the President), presented as a "legitimate" petition.
• The e-mail asks that the recipient forward the e-mail itself to everyone in their address book. This results in an e-mail that slowly degenerates into a mess of data with various e-mail address headers from those that decided to forward the e-mail, and a message that is altered to accommodate the extra data in the e-mail from the forwarded e-mail accounts.
• Taking a cue from a common Amnesty International tactic, an e-mail will contain a short message about the problem, and a form letter after that where the recipient can fill in the blanks, and send it to the noted e-mail or postal address. Then, the recipient forwards the e-mail to others.
• The e-mail will contain the message, and a link to an offsite online petition where the recipient can "sign" the petition.

Usually, the e-mail petition focuses on a specific cause that is meant to cause outrage or ire, with common themes such as:

• Religion
  • Removal of God or other religious references
  • War on Christmas
  • Pledge of Allegiance usage of the word "God"
  • School Prayer
• Medical
  • Abortion and Women's Rights
• Judicial/Law
  • Overturning a controversial bill before it comes into law or has already become law
    • Gay Rights
    • Separation of Church and State
  • Support of a female in another country due to a barbaric death sentence (Stoning)
• Computer
  • Removal of free e-mail in favor of pay services
• Environmental
  • Destruction of a habitat
    • Rainforest
    • Tundra
• Boycotts
  • Religious
  • Economical
  • Governmental

Snopes.com has a number of examples dealing with e-mail petitions, mostly archived in the Inboxer Rebellionhttp://www.snopes.com/inboxer/inboxer.asp Snopes.com Inboxer Rebellion section of their site.

References