Sign Here and Forward
Over the last 20 years, social and political scientists have theorized that advancing technology would make democracy more democratic. But governments today are having a hard time keeping pace with online citizens. Last year members of the U.S. Congress received some 80 million e-mails. A spokesperson for Sen. Dianne Feinstein says the office receives 3,000 ...
Over the last 20 years, social and political scientists have theorized that advancing technology would make democracy more democratic. But governments today are having a hard time keeping pace with online citizens. Last year members of the U.S. Congress received some 80 million e-mails. A spokesperson for Sen. Dianne Feinstein says the office receives 3,000 to 4,500 e-mails weekly. "It's growing," he says. "We've had to dedicate more staff resources to responding." The Congress Online Project takes the complaint a step further, calling the e-mail situation in Congress a crisis. "Rather than enhancing democracy -- as so many hoped -- e-mail has heightened tensions and public disgruntlement with Congress," concluded a recent report by the organization.
Over the last 20 years, social and political scientists have theorized that advancing technology would make democracy more democratic. But governments today are having a hard time keeping pace with online citizens. Last year members of the U.S. Congress received some 80 million e-mails. A spokesperson for Sen. Dianne Feinstein says the office receives 3,000 to 4,500 e-mails weekly. "It’s growing," he says. "We’ve had to dedicate more staff resources to responding." The Congress Online Project takes the complaint a step further, calling the e-mail situation in Congress a crisis. "Rather than enhancing democracy — as so many hoped — e-mail has heightened tensions and public disgruntlement with Congress," concluded a recent report by the organization.
Kevin Matthews, the founder of Oregon-based PetitionOnline, and others may have stumbled upon one solution to that problem. Matthews is quick to distinguish the petitions on his site from the e-mail petitions that clog government offices. The site does not generate e-mails. Rather, any citizen in any country can author and post a petition for fellow citizens to sign. Though it hosts the petitions for free, PetitionOnline makes clear that delivering them "is at the discretion and by the hand of the petition authors," and it can validate signatures — for a fee. "It’s a way to let people get their voices heard," says Matthews, who calls massive numbers of e-mails "problematic."
Matthews isn’t alone. Other e-petition sites include www.petitions.org, a visually simpler site that boasts e-petitions from countries including Iran, Israel, and Russia. Issues addressed on both sites cover a wide range — from politics to religion to the environment. One is a plea to the United States and Russia to abolish nuclear weapons. Another is a demand that China establish an independent state of Taiwan.
There’s little question that these sites are popular. PetitionOnline, for instance, hosts more than 5,000 petitions from dozens of countries and has about 30,000 visitors per day. In the last 18 months, the site has collected over 3 million signatures. Numbers matter, but the effectiveness of online petitions is difficult to judge. "The bottom-line level is they get results," asserts Matthews, pointing to a petition that received an official response from corporate giant Microsoft. But as of yet, he has not received any communiqués from world leaders.
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