Animal Advocacy Petitions: Do They Work?

[Lord Snot]

This thread is not intended to dampen the efforts of people posting about petitions. I hope it won't be taken that way.

I am not convinced that signing petitions does any good. I haven't seen any occasions where a petition alone has worked, you have to combine it with other activity. And I'm sure serious activists do that, but a lot of people feel like their work is done if they sign a petition. They get a warm glow of satisfaction and never think about the issue again.

Are there any examples of where petitions alone have accomplished some real change? Are they even useful for awareness?

 

[SummerRain]

Hmm this is an interesting question. I always sign petitions if there are people in the street if I agree, but I never really think they do any good - I think I do it more to cheer up and help out the people with the petitions. In particular with online ones, I always think they wont work. I'd love to know of cases where they do.

 

[Forster]

Depends. If it is a petition to get something on the official state ballot (my state allows this) then yep. If it's a public relations type campaign, then in my cynical opinion, nope.

 

[Lord Snot]

^ For a while we had a website here for petitions, set up by the government. If it got enough signatures it had to be discussed in one of the parliamentary places... house of commons I think. But the Con-Dems scrapped it.

 

[Forster]

Our ballot initiatives change state law. We have both ballot initiatives to pass new laws as well as those to amend our state's constitution. Get enough signatures and it goes to the voters in the next election cycle.

 

[Muggle]

I remember a massive petition on the number 11 site (that's the one LS mentioned) that got

^ For a while we had a website here for petitions, set up by the government. If it got enough signatures it had to be discussed in one of the parliamentary places... house of commons I think. But the Con-Dems scrapped it.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/

They stopped it for a year... I think it's been changed to petitions with over 100,000 signatures have the possibility of being debated, whereas before they definitely would have been.

 

[Lord Snot]

Ahh, it's back. But animal-related ones won't get far if the Conservatives have any say in the matter

 

[Muggle]

Ahh, it's back. But animal-related ones won't get far if the Conservatives have any say in the matter

Or they will only take notice of idiotic ones like this one http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/26208

 

[Lord Snot]

So much wrong with that...

 

[AeryFairy]

I don't think they work in the way some people believe they do. But I do think they work to a degree; they can be useful for showing the amount of support for an issue, and when combined with other methods, they can facilitate change. It obviously depends on the system the petitions are going through; on a local level, they work quite well. On a national or global one, less so. But, say there's a certain political issue arising that MPs are going to discuss/vote on... a petition is a good way to show how much support or opposition to the issue there is within their constituency, and the MP might bear it in might. It's not a surefire way of getting things done, but I think it helps sometimes.

 

[Digger]

I don't think that signing a petition is directly beneficial to a particular cause, but it at least demonstrates public sentiment, which is important.