Internet petition
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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 may be delivered to the subject of the petition.
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[edit] Pros and cons
The format makes it easy for people to make a petition at any time. Several websites allow 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. One example of an online petition intended to be taken as a joke was the "Demand that petitiononline.com be shut down" petition.
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 falsified by the protestors.
Many legitimate NGOs shun online petitions for various reasons. Amnesty International's 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.
In February 2007 an online petition against road pricing and car tracking on the UK Prime Minister's own website attracted over 1.6 million e-signatures from a population of 60 million people. The site was official but experimental at the time. Shocked government ministers were unable to backtrack on the site's existence in the face of national news coverage of the phenomenon. The incident has demonstrated both the potential and pitfalls of online e-government petitions applied to a mid term government. It remains to be seen if policy will be permanently affected.
A less serious example of an arguably successful online petition occurred in the year 2000, when Stockwell Day, then-leader of the Canadian Alliance, promised that if elected his government would hold a referendum on any issue if presented with a petition signed by at least 3% of the electorate. Comedian Rick Mercer responded by launching an online petition which would force Mr. Day to change his first name to "Doris", and by the end had collected nearly 1 250 000 signatures, which was well over 3% of the Canadian electorate at the time. Tragically, Mr. Day lost the election, meaning no change of name occurred.
[edit] E-mail petitions
A similar form of petition is the e-mail petition. This petition may be a simple chain letter, requesting that its users forward them to a large number of people in order to meet a goal or to attain a falsely promised reward. Other times the message will contain a form to be printed and filled out, or a link to an offsite online petition which the recipient can sign. Usually, the e-mail petition focuses on a specific cause that is meant to cause outrage or ire, centering on a timely political or cultural topic.
