Online Petitions
November 26th, 2009 at 11:00 am by David FarrarThe SMH reports:
Politicians are tweeting, blogging and poking, but most remain out of reach when it comes to receiving petitions over the internet.
But all that will change if the Australian Government accepts a recommendation from a parliamentary committee that the House of Representatives should treat electronic petitions the same way it treats those delivered on paper.
What a good idea. No 10 Downing Street allows this, as does the Australian Senate. Would be a good initiative for New Zealand Parliament to also embrace.
Related posts:
- More on electoral petitions
- The Australian online campaign
- TVNZ Content online
- Hansard online quicker
November 26th, 2009 at 11:09 am
online petitions are bullshit. too easy to get a bunch of signatures.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Vote early & vote often!
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 11:27 am
A petition is nothing without signatures. Sorry, hard copy the only way to go.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 11:35 am
The most this idea should do is allow for actual, real, physically collected signatures to be stored and delivered digitally.
We just are not advanced enough to comfortably collect genuine petitions online. Online petitions are also naturally restricted to those with internet access and savvy. Physical petitions are more likely to represent a broader cross section of society.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 11:41 am
No point anyway as John Key completely ignores the will of the public (especially those who put him in).
Bitterly disappointed with this National led government and will not be renewing my membership of the party.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 11:43 am
NZPA–The Clerk of the House announced today receipt of an online petition concerning a change to New Zealand’s national anthem. Over 2.4 million people — more than voted in the recent “smacking referendum” — signed the online petition calling for _God Defend New Zealand_ to be replaced by pop singer Rick Astley’s _Never Gonna Give You Up_. The petition will be tabled in parliment at 2pm today and the National Party is expected to introduce a bill in the coming weeks.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
The more direct our democracy the better.
That’s why I like Amy Brooke’s call for a Swiss-style system where voters have 100 days before a law is ratified to collect, say, 30,000 signatures to force a referendum.
And that referendum would be binding.
Online petitions would be fine if you could verify identities and prevent multiple signings. How might we do that?
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
A tottaly pointless exercise, DonKey and his sheep don’t listen to the people.
Vote:The only time you hear from our braindead politicians is every three years when they want you vote.
November 26th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
On a more serious note — one of the benefits of petitions is that they’re difficult. It takes a reasonable amount of effort to go out there and collect signatures, and it even takes effort to go and sign one. This means the politicians know that people really care about the issue.
Whereas an internet petition would be passed around by email and signed by bored office workers in their tea break — the same bored office workers that forward around pictures of lolcats and join facebook groups calling for “Jedi” to be an “official religion”.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Lets hope that whatever the implement can work a little better than the stuff.co.nz polls which last year had reasonable things like 150000 people vote in a hour that Helen Clark was our greatest ever leader and so on. Perhaps labour could provide some consulting services on how to make them more secure.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Maybe not. Just a different cross section.
I have rarely if ever signed a petition on the street. Seems to be too much pressure to just sign without considering it properly. I’m much more likely to do it at home after I have researched it and decided unpressured.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Would that mean the petition for the SCIFI Channel (which was launched a few years back) would be binding?
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Back in May of 2007, the Campaign for Better Transport presented a petition for electrification of rail in Auckland to Parliament. Over a short period of a few weeks we got 4,000 signatures together, some of which were signed online via our website. We printed these off and submitted them along with the hand written signatures. This was accepted by Parliament.
So the precedent has already been set.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Perhaps the threshold for an online petition should be a lot higher than for a paper one.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
If it is being done online I think polls with verifiable voters makes more sense, best to get both (or multiple) views counted.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
The concerns above re the validity of internet petitions can easily be solved by introducing a national electronic voting system wherein we’re all given a PIN number (or for those familair with them, a digital certificate) to log in to a government portal.
Petitions, referenda, even voting could occur on such a portal (though we’d need to have alternative methods available into the foreseeable future for those without net access and technophobes).
Logging in adds an air of gravitas that simply adding your name to an online petition doesn’t.
@John Ansell:
When was the last time the b**tards paid any attention to a paper petition anyway, so it hardly matters :-/
OTOH the threshold for referenda is already ridiculously high, part of the excuse being the cost of holding one. If anything it should be somewhat lower if we move to electronic means, surely?
@ DRHILL
Not only binding, but I’d support the reintroduction of capital punishment solely to deal with those who refused to implement it
We can never have too much democracy, folks!!
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
“we can never have to much democracy”, Rex the jolly joker. The only part of democracy the present assortment of jellyfish understand is the middle bit, “mock”, as it is the bit they are best at when it comes to democracy.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
One thing you could do with online referenda is give each side space above the voting section to state their case.
There’d be a huge incentive to express their views with maximum clarity, since the other side’s case would appear in the next column.
This information could stay on the voting site for some time, and could be amended to take into account of emerging arguments.
Then on polling day, may the best-argued case win.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Sounds good John, it could be sort of like an evolving blog summary culminating in a vote.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
I have done 2 petitions to Parliament (On the issue of organ donation) These have been electronic. (and supplemented with paper ones.) They were excepted by Parliament. As My first petition was in 2002 would I have been the first in NZ to have had electronic petition accepted?
The whole point though is it does not matter if they electronic or not. A petition is not like a referendum. A petition can have only one signature and be accepted by Parliament and be enough to have the petition referred to a select committee. The actual number of signatures is not important, the merit of the basis of the petition is what will be discussed. 95% of the submissions on my petition were in my favour but the select committee still chose not to go with it. (That a persons wish to be an organ donor or not should be legally binding and that other busybodies can not overturn your wish.) Not only did the select committee go with that they introduced more people on more grounds who can overturn your wishes. (On spiritual, cultural and distress grounds.)
So the number of signatures be it one or a million has no effect (Unlike triggering a referendum.)
Vote:There is an online (Free) petition company that I used, it also blocks more than one signature from the same IP address to help prevent mass voting from one computer.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Yes Pete George. I call it trial by clarity.
Take global warming. You and I don’t see eye to eye on that, but we’re both making a sincere attempt to form a view.
Part of the reason we don’t agree is that we’re basing our views on different sets of facts – facts each of us has come across in all sorts of different places (rarely the mainstream media).
Our sources are different, so not surprisingly our conclusions are different. (And of course we also bring our political biases into the equation, based on other sources of information about other issues.)
We do our best to get all the facts, but it’s nigh on impossible to be sure we’ve succeeded.
However… if there was a central site where the best people from each side (the best communicators distilling the views of the best scientists) had an incentive to put their best facts IN THE CLEAREST POSSIBLE WAY – and that’s absolutely crucial – then everyone would trust that site and have the debate there.
How to give the two sides the incentive to give it their best effort? Make it the official site that ordinary people would be reading just before they voted on the issue.
I think trial by clarity should be used on all issues. It would be survival of the clearest.
Gareth Morgan tried to get to the bottom of global warming by commissioning experts from both sides, but the resulting book is too complicated for most people to know whether he succeeded or not. It needs to be boiled down further, and the arguments conducted point by point, side by side.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Yes John, it makes sense to work in the same direction for a common purpose rather than pulling against each other. I like the idea of competing arguments side by side, it takes out the media interpretation from it.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
I also think trial by clarity should be applied by political parties to their own policies.
If they’re smart, their manifestos would list all the pros, but also all the cons (all of their opponents’ arguments), before explaining their reasons for preferring one over the other.
This would show us that they are at least aware, and at most understand, both sides. That would reassure people who resent the one-sidedness of political debate, partly because it’s unedifying and partly because it forces them to go searching for balance.
That’s what I was trying to do with the red and blue Nat billboards in 2005: present both sides of the argument in the one place… “This is what they reckon; this is what we reckon; what do you reckon?”
It would be a great public service if parties would do that, and a healthy process for those parties to go through.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Yes Pete, the media’s incentive is to preserve the conflict, not resolve it.
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Some people only ever want to read once side of the argument but enough would spread their research and ideas. Same as here on the blog, some will never consider alternatives, but often with discussions I have persisted with I have ended up learning and modifying my ideas, there is a tendency to meet in the middle somewhere if minds are open.
The smacking thing was a prime example, most people actually disagreed on very little but were polarised. But when it came down to the nitty gritty I agreed 90% with 90% of the people.
The politicians could do with the same sort of system
Vote:November 26th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Re the media, I don’t think the deliberately try and stoke conflict, it’s just that their method tends to accentuate it. It would be good to cut them out of that equation.
Vote:November 27th, 2009 at 3:57 am
Sorry, returning late to this debate, but did want to mention my endorsement of, and admiration for, the outline sketched by John Ansell (and Pete George) above, moreso than a simple “thumbs up” could do.
That’s exactly the kind of refinement that, provided its explained, debated and accepted by those who are expected to use it, which will make such things workable.
I just wish someone would fund some development work!!
Vote:November 27th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Good to have you two on board at least (not sure if anyone else is reading this).
It is interesting Pete that you and I, who have disagreed on the global warming issue, can agree on the way to resolve the disagreement.
That suggests we are both open-minded and prepared to change our minds the instant we are satisfied that we got the wrong end of the stick.
I cling to the belief that most people are like this. That a clarity-based forum that used my proposed ‘debate grid’ would allow light to replace heat as the debating medium of choice.
Vote: