Daniel Dearnley

Petitions
Petitions have been a tool for change for a very long time. This article looks at the basics of petitions: What are they? How to write them, effective ways to use them, and the rules of petitioning. This article also looks at how the internet can be used for petitioning.

What is a petition?
A petition is, in basic terms, similar to a complaint letter. It is a document containing a statement of views/concerns/grievances/etc. about an issue. It is addressed to a target person or organisation. The key difference is that petitions are signed by multiple people, rather than just the writer. More signatures, of course, means more impact and more chance for change.

How to write one
For a simple step by step guide:

• 1) Decide what the aim of the petition is — what do you want changed and how?
• 2) Decide who to petition — who is able to cause the changes you want and are they likely to respond? Or do you want to generally express views and raise awareness?
• 3) Write it — tips on this later.
• 4) Collect signatures — this can be either physically signing a piece of paper, hosting an online petition on a website for people to sign’ (often with email addresses etc), or providing documents or text that individuals can sign and then post or email. (See the take action guides on awareness campaigns for ideas on how to promote.)
• 5) Send it.

Here are some tips for writing effective petitions
Have a clear statement about your concerns and specific demands — PR people love vague and waffling language. If you have an unclear demand it is too easy for the petition target to simply make it seem like they’re moving in the right direction, while not doing anything significant.

• Be polite (but firm). Being disrespectful or rude is unlikely to get people on your side. If you’re seen as extremist some people will be unlikely to listen to you or support the petition.
• Make concise statements based on fact. If possible reference what you say. Concise, clear, intelligent, factual statements often have more impact than an extended rant.
• The demands should be practical — otherwise they will likely get ignored.

Who to petition
This depends on what you hope to achieve with the petition. If the petition wants to create specific change then it probably needs to be sent to a person/organization with the ability to cause the change, and one that is likely to listen.

Common targets for petitions are:

• Governments — Governments often have a lot of power and influence so they can be well worth petitioning. Democratic governments are answerable directly to public opinion, so they do have to respond to petitions in some way.

However, there is a very complex formal process to submit a petition to a government, which must be followed to validate the petition. This varies depending on which government is being petitioned.

To look at the process required for the NZ government go to their website and follow the petitioning the house of representatives’ link.

Petitioning individual politicians can also be effective and there are less strict rules. Sometimes it can also be effective to petition city councils.

• Companies — Sometimes people petition companies/corporations asking them to change business practices, etc. This can be effective as companies often have a lot of influence on issues (e.g. McDonalds would have an ability to fight childhood obesity if it wanted to).

The trouble with petitioning companies is that their bottom line is profits, not popularity. Unless a company feels that loss of image will lead to loss of business, all that petitioning is likely to achieve is a nicely worded explanation by the companies PR staff.

Petitioning can be effective as companies generally consider public image important (think of all the money spent on advertising). If a petition to a company hints at a possible boycott, etc. it is likely to be more effective.

• Individuals - In some (rarer) cases, individuals or non-corporate organizations can be petitioned. As with petitioning companies, petitions will probably be more effective if the target is given good reason to care about what you think.

Online petitions
The Internet has brought about a new trend of online petitions — a petition can be hosted as a website (googling online petition’ will likely bring up a million hosting sites), where people can sign it by entering email addresses (or other details) into an online form. Or people can be asked to sign and send a copy of an email individually to the target.

• These can be very convenient ways to collect signatures, however there are some drawbacks:
• Verifying identity is difficult on the Internet. This means online petitions are less trustworthy and generally have less impact.
• If a formal process has to be followed for a petition to be accepted usually physical signatures are required, thus online petitions are invalid.
• Serious petitions are often lost among silly ones. For instance a petition that Ashlee Simpson should shut up received over 50 times as many signatures as a petition to the music publishing association not to sue websites offering transcripts of modern songs for the purposes of teaching music.

So how effective are they?
There are some success stories advertised on the various petition hosting websites, but not many. Petitions can be an effective tool for drawing attention to an issue and awareness raising, but more often cause minimal change and are simply stating a viewpoint, which is essentially all a petition can do.