The Internet petition circulated here several times has no value
Internet petitions do not work. If you care enough to make a difference,
you must write a personal letter.
Sending an internet petition has two effects. It makes the person who signs
it feel as if he or she has done something of value for a cause he or she
supports without doing anything for the cause at all. It takes up time and
fills up space, in this case Fluxlist.
To make petitions meaningful requires an understanding of petition protocol.
The issue is not the validity of the idea, but the validity of the
petition. To show that thousands of people or millions of people support a
petition, it is necessary to document their participation. Since there is
no way to document or to assure the validity of Internet signatures at this
time, Internet petitions are not valid.
Further, since Internet petitions spread through different lists and move
through different chains, the same names appear dozens or even hundreds of
times. There is no way to establish whether a final petition has the
signatures of many different individuals or far fewer individuals whose
names occur repeatedly. If a petition arrives with 12,863,436 signatures,
there is no way to know whether this is 12,863,436 separate individuals or
189,932 individuals whose signatures have crossed and multiplied through
different chains. To find out which is the case requires expensive staff
time that no agency can afford, and there is still no valid documentation
of the signatures.
A legally valid petition in most cases requires 1) a signature, 2) a
printed name, 3) an address or location. While some public opinion
petitions neglect the third, all three are required for a petition have the
kind of legal standing required to place a political party on the rolls or
to invoke a plebiscite. One may argue that this is merely fastidious
rhetoric. It is not. This principle goes to the core of democratic
participation in government decisions. Governments must know that citizens
are actually speaking before acting on civic will spoken through the
collective voice of a petition. International petitions must reasonably
represent a large, global constituency to be impressive, and this means a
record of valid signatures.
The format of the Internet petition offers merely a list of names. There is
no assurance that any named individual actually signed it. Paper petitions
are routinely refused or invalidated for lack of valid documentation.
Some believe that that the purpose of Internet petitions is simply to draw
attention to issues. This is only partly true. Internet petitions draw
attention to issues, but they are not a particularly useful way to do so.
Debate and informed conversation draws attention to issues. Invalid
petitions merely waste time. In this case, bombarding a government ministry
with the same petition along multiple routes is a guaranteed way to annoy
the appropriate ministers rather than educating them. By now, all these
ministers have shifted their email accounts for current business or set
filters to sweep these petitions into the garbage unopened.
Rather than circulate Internet petitions, it is far more effective to ask
those who would sign such a petition to write a proper letter and email it
directly with their own signature bock including a return address. While
validation is still an issue, the fact of a properly signed letter with
name and return address in the signature block can be checked. To make it
easy to write such a letter, those who propose the petition can write a
sample letter than can be pasted into the body of a new email document and
signed. In this case, filters and fax blockage probably mean the only
effective way to deliver such a letter now is by old-fashioned paper post.
A cause that deserves support requires that you take the time to write a
letter and send it personally. If you care enough about the Johannesburg
Biennial to do something, write a letter or send a personalized email.
Ken Friedman
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