With the advent of the Internet, many people started playing around with tools to collect and aggregate online opinion. One of the more popular ones nowadays is the online petition. Online, petitions work similarly to “real world” ones: you just sign some list. Online, of course, “signing” the list is a matter of putting your name, and perhaps a few bits of other information, in a form and submitting it, thereby attaching you to the list of petitioners, indicating your agreement with whatever demand the petition stipulates.

On the plus side, this is very easy to set up and easy for people to participate in. And, a popular petition can garner what looks like a fair number of responses.

However, if you look at it from the standpoint of elected officials, it is easy to see why an online petition has big flaws as a means of reporting the public’s true position on an issue:

  • Petitions intrinsically depict only one side of an issue. There is no room for debate, no place for nuance (except, maybe, in per-signer comments, where available). The petition is the epitome of polarization: either you’re with us (and have signed) or you’re against us (and have not signed).
  • Petitions, therefore, give no indication of the size of the opposition. There are any number of reasons people might not sign the petition: they disagree with the petition’s position, they generally agree but have quibbles with the wording, they didn’t hear about the petition, etc. There is no way of counting that side, unless they run their own petition. Hence, if a petition claims 1,357 “signatures”, we have no way of knowing if that means public opinion runs 1,357-to-none, 1,357-to-1,357,924, or what.
  • Even if you decide to follow through on the notion that the opposition should just run its own petition, the framing of the two petitions may not be in proper alignment. For example, imagine two petitions, one calling for “control of Iraq to return to the Iraqi government, thereby restoring sovereignty”, and one calling for “troops to remain in Iraq until the job is done”. On the surface, these might be positioned as opposites, yet there are people who might well agree with both, because the definition of “the job is done” is itself debatable.
  • Online petitions infrequently have means to prevent the petition form of “ballot stuffing”. Nothing prevents somebody from signing up 10 times, 100 times, or perhaps even more. This too can distort the figures and put the merits of the petition in doubt. Furthermore, since few online petitions require any sort of ID, officials have no idea how many of these 1,357 signers are actually their constituents (or other affected citizens) and not “outside agitators”. This weakens the petition’s effectiveness, since elected officials can discount ones they feel may be tainted.

This is not to say that those who raise petitions and try to recruit signers are evil people. They’re just using the tools in front of them. We need to give them better tools, that both meet their needs (to try to convince The Powers That Be about the merits of some position) while meeting the needs of the elected officials (who need to feel comfortable with the legitimacy and completeness of their view of the public’s overall position).