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Find me petitions, please!

Oystein

Penultimate Amazing
Joined
Dec 9, 2009
Messages
18,903
Hey everybody,

do you know of, and can link to, petitions that have gathered more than 15,000 legitimate signatures from the general population, or more than 1,700 from defined subsets of the population (such as college students of the humanities, entrepreneurs, homeless...)?

Could be about anything - to save a local pet shelter, protest a raise of bus fares, demand an end to new surface lifts in a ski resort, call for secession of territory or the introduction of psychic healing to the things covered by health insurers. Actually, the funnier or weirder, the better. Local, regional, national or worldwide petitions equally welcome.


I want to compile a short list of petitions that gathered more signatures in much less time on a much smaller budget and for more obscure or localized causes that Richard Gage's ae911truth petition, which reached such a
ridiculously low percentage of its target population despite lobbying for nearly 5 years now with funds approaching a million bucks.
 
Here you go: 48,000 signatures requesting a hospital to allow a kidney transplant for a developmentally disabled girl.

You can find many others by browsing change.org. Trayvon Martin's petition is at 2.25 million (but of course, that case has had a lot of publicity). On the other hand... 108,000 signatures for wild burros in Texas. 120,000 to ban horse carriages in NYC. 111,000 to free dolphins in Singapore. 14,000 for posthumous honorary degrees for seven gay students persecuted by Harvard nearly a century ago. 68,000 for rain-forest-safe Girl Scout cookies. 64,000 for a boy who wants to grow his hair contrary to his school policy, to be able to donate it to Locks of Love.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
I like the various "petitions to ban water" (aka: dihydrogen monoxide or hydrogen hydroxide).

I don't know about tallies, but this video by Penn & Teller is hilariously close to Gage's claims about converting people at his talks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
 
Excellent, all of you. So far I like
 
I'll have to look it up later but over on the auzi skeptic forum there was a post regarding a UFO petition that got I think 17000 signatures for the US government to officially confirm or deny the existence/contact with UFOs. I'm a bit busy at the moment to go find it, Orphia maybe you can grab the details?

Edit: looks like I had more time than I thought;

http://australasianskeptics.info/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=865
 
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Any good?

Here's a link to petitions submitted to Salford City Council

http://www.salford.gov.uk/petitionsreceived.htm

Only a few hit your 1,700 mark - they might be considered a subset, being Salford residents and those who work in the city. There is also an addendum from the Council showing what action, if any, was taken.

The unsuccessful petition that failed to halt my redundancy is also on there - "Connexions"!
 
Here's a link to petitions submitted to Salford City Council

http://www.salford.gov.uk/petitionsreceived.htm

Only a few hit your 1,700 mark - they might be considered a subset, being Salford residents and those who work in the city. There is also an addendum from the Council showing what action, if any, was taken.

The unsuccessful petition that failed to halt my redundancy is also on there - "Connexions"!

Solid!
City of Salford: 229,000 inhabitants.
Petition: Funding cuts to specialist education services for deaf children
Received: 2 February 2012
Petitioners: 5,186
Outcome: To be considered.
...
This page was last updated on 24 February 2012
Not bad - reached 2.3% of target population (and more, if you discount children) in 22 days. So this was a hundred times more successful than Gage was with Professional Engineers in about 1800 days. Cool.
 
On April 24th, and over at 911Blogger, twoofer "kawika" (irl David ...?) tried to promote a petition on building 7 at http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/
Wanted this to spread virally, but the petition was soon (april 26th) taken offline by Avaaz:

http://911blogger.com/news/2012-04-24/million-signatures-be-sent-nist

Seems like this Mark Graham fellow was the initiator of that petition.

From Avaaz's About-page:
Avaaz is a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.

...

Each year, Avaaz sets overall priorities through all-member polls ..., and campaign ideas are polled and tested weekly to 10,000-member random samples—and only initiatives that find a strong response are taken to scale. Campaigns that do reach the full membership are then super-charged by, often, hundreds of thousands of Avaaz members taking part within days or even hours.​
Perhaps the members didn't really root for da Twoof, and the motion was ditched ;)
 
Westminster London pop. 236,000 (2008)

Petition: "We are against Westminster City Council’s new parking regulations"

Signatures 9755

From HERE

Petition opened: Aug 12, 2011
Petition closed: Jan 25, 2012

Westminster City Council has passed new parking regulations which will be implemented by 1st December 2011; these new regulations will have a negative effect on all local businesses and anyone who works in the local area as you will not be able to park on single yellow lines until after 12am from Monday through to Saturday and only after 6pm on a Sunday.

The fees for the parking meters will be £2.40 per hour Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and £4.80 on Thursday Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We would like everyone who these new regulations affect to please sign the petition so we can stand together as one.


Compus
 
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They are trying a new one:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Re...t_final_report_on_the_collapse_of_Building_7/
Petition at Avaaz said:
85 signers. Let's reach 100

...Despite never being hit by an airplane, Building 7 was reduced to a pile of rubble in about 7 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001. ...

Posted May 7, 2012
Despite the obvious lies and falsehoods, they have now 85 signatures towards an intermediate target of 100.

Recent Signers:
2 minutes ago
Peter Drew, United Kingdom

6 minutes ago
Chris Dewey, United States of America

one hour ago
michael maybo, United States of America

one hour ago
Eric C Anderson, United States of America

3 hours ago
Meg Connor, United States of America​

And they are advertising it at 911Blogger:
http://911blogger.com/news/2012-05-07/petition-revise-us-government-final-report-collapse-building-7
(Submitted by MarkGraham on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 2:59pm)

Steven Jones wrote today:
I notice the number of signers is increasing rapidly this morning, now 80 signers as I write. [on Tue, 05/08/2012 - 10:09am]
Not sure what the time zone is - UT, mine, Jones's, or the server's.
 
About 20 hours later, they are now at 104 signatures.

Latest signers:
39 minutes ago: enrico napolitano, United Kingdom
7 hours ago: Grace Andrews, United States of America
8 hours ago: Herb Moyer, United States of America
8 hours ago: Susan Reiners, United States of America

So they reached the first goal of 100 8 hours ago, around midnight in the USA.
 

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