what is petition?

Answer 1

In general, a petition is a document in which someone states a request to someone in authority. The person who starts the petition tries to get other people to agree with the content of the petition and to signify that agreement by signing it.

Sometimes they are presented to governing councils, zoning boards, school boards, etc. Sometimes employees offer the petition to management. In both cases, they are a forma way to air ones grievances.

Example: Wal Mart wants to take over a shopping center and redevelop it, but to do so they must get the zoning board to change the zoning of the parcel of land. Disgruntled residents of the surrounding neighborhood circulate a petition to the zoning board to deny the request. If they get enough signatures, the zoning board will think twice before caving in to Wal Mart. (Because if they cave in anyway, the citizens can call a vote to overturn the zoning board's actions and/or vote them out for failing to properly represent their consituency.)

Example: A county commissioner's council was going to make a decision. A group of concerned citizens wants to put it to a vote of the people rathern than let the commissioners make the decision. Some citizen writes the request and gets enough signatures on a petition that they feel they can give it to the council requesting that the matter be put to public vote. If the council knows what's good for it, they will honor the petition.

It should be noted that unless there are specific laws governing petitions in the area where one is presented, there might be legal precedent to ignore them. But politicians who ignore too many petitions don't get too many votes at the next election.

It should ALSO be noted that presenting a petition to your boss is not a good idea unless you are ready to find another job. However, a really GOOD manager would notice that if someone got a lot of signatures on a petition, it is just barely possible that he did something that needs fixing. Because again, the petition might not carry the weight of law.

Answer 2

Someone wants some change in government or a private organization. They write up a proposal as to why this change is a good idea, then circulate it to have lots of other people sign up that they agree this should be done.

For example, in a neighborhood, the traffic is getting more and more congested, so some parents want a cross walk, or traffic light, or some way for it to be safer for children to cross the road on the way to school. So they write up a petition asking the city to take care of this. They make copies of the petition available on bulletin boards of local residences, grocery stores, other stores, school system, and lots of people think this is a good idea, and they also sign it.

Then when the request goes to city government, it has got thousands of signatures of people who think this is worth doing, and join the request of the parents.

Answer 3

A document signed by a certain amount of people to campaign for a change.