Traditionally one would collect signatures from people door to door and submit the petition formally. It also lessens the chance of fraudulent submitions. Why would our government accept a computer generated list of names with no proof of origination? Anyone can type a list of names.....I do not think it would be given a second look once it reached its destination.
2007-02-09 04:25:52 · 4 answers · asked by shedogoflaw 1 in Politics & Government ➔ Other - Politics & Government
Well, there are "formal" petitions (like petitions to get people on ballots, or to get citizen initiatives on ballots in certain states) and there are "informal" petitions -- those that are used entirely to persuade someone to do something. The former are highly regulated (who can gather the petitions, who must sign, what must be included in the signatures, how they can be verified). So no, for those types of petitions, that are an actual prerequisite to governmental action, unveriviable, online petitions will not and cannot be accepted.
The latter aren't regulated at all -- they're just meant to be persuasive. Thus, if you show up at your senator's office and say "I have 50,000 signatures from your state saying you should oppose gay marriage" and the first 100 are legit and the next 49,900 are the same guy signing "godhatesfags", then that's not very persuasive.
Similarly, people have online petition drives all the time... and the government official (or TV station, or person with decisionmaking authority) can look through the petition to see if it's legit or persuasive or not. So they can certainly be accepted by a public official, but that doesn't mean that that official will believe in that petition.
2007-02-09 04:32:58 · answer #1 · answered by Perdendosi 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Over 200,000 in my group sent GW Bush and Congress a letter protesting the escalation of the occupation of Iraq. Those were all real people with real IP address's and real names. All of us could also supply a real S.S. number, if asked to do so. Which would match the IP address and Zip code of origin. The only problem i see with this is that the CIA/NSA also has this information now.
2007-02-09 12:35:58 · answer #2 · answered by jl_jack09 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Same goes for the E-voting but as credit card & banking systems have tightened up the security so can the computer networks!
2007-02-09 12:31:55 · answer #3 · answered by bulabate 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Thats a good point. We use electronic signatures all the time for such things as doing taxes, even buying groceries. How is that any different?
2007-02-09 12:31:20 · answer #4 · answered by tchem75 5 · 0⤊ 2⤋