Online organizing sites of all political stripes often include petitions to sign.
What’s bizarre is that these petitions are sometimes posted at the same time that there is a live bill making its way through the legislature.
If that’s the case, why would a constituent want to sign a petition, instead of contacting their representative directly?
The reason is that the organizing organization is primarily interested in capturing your email address to re-use. In some cases, the organization includes a privacy policy, telling you that you’ve just signed up for a mailing list. In other cases, such as the online appraisal petition, there is no privacy policy posted.
Since the early days of internet commerce, many consumers have gotten justifiably wary of contests, coupons, and other excuses to get signed up for an endless flow of spam.
Online organizing is in an earlier stage, and citizens are probably more trusting of the intentions of groups who are helping them take action.
The message for citizens is to be skeptical of petitions that don’t have privacy policies, and to contact your representative directly, instead of signing a petition.
The message to advocacy organizations is to be honest. If you’re giving citizens the opportunity to stay informed by joining a mailing list, say so upfront.
I agree you shouldn’t sign petitions without privacy policies, but I wouldn’t encourage people NOT to sign web petitions on issues they care about. Without supporter lists, groups like ACLU, EFF, etc. would be less effective, because even if ad dollars spent convince somebody to contact their rep, the next time that bill needs help, there’s no cheap way to re-contact them and tell them to act again if you didn’t gather their name. That’s why organizers use petitions – the same reason paper petitions were used before, BTW. Political mass movements require communication between groups and constitutents, and political groups can’t communicate, or effectively represent their constituents’ interests, if they don’t know who their supporters are.
Scott, when you sign a petition on a live bill, how does the list of signatures affect the sponsor, compared to sending a letter? Is it a tradeoff between convenience and time (i.e., signing petition has 1/10 of the value, but also takes 1/10 of the time?).
Also, I strongly agree with the value of mailing lists. They are valuable to the organization and to the citezen who wants to stay informed. I just think there’s an ethical continuum:
1) no disclosure that the signer will be put on a list — unethical.
2) disclose in a privacy policy on the site, but don’t disclose on the petition form itself — borderline.
3) provide a checkbox that lets the citizen stay informed on the issue — ethical, good practice.
“when you sign a petition on a live bill, how does the list of signatures affect the sponsor, compared to sending a letter? Is it a tradeoff between convenience and time (i.e., signing petition has 1/10 of the value, but also takes 1/10 of the time?).”
It depends on whose petition it is, and how clever they are about using it. Ideally, petitioners will be divvied up and their member will receive a district-specific list that will be more meaningful to them. Also, if petitioners gather contact info, they’ll hopefully be layering communications, so the petition signer may be asked to contact their member separately, too, later on, when the time is right. E.g., you can gather petitions over a long period of time then use the list to activate signers at key moments.
The big difference is, if I ask you to call your member on a House bill, and say it takes $3 per constituent call to generate your call. My group doesn’t want to spend another $3 bucks to get you to call your senator four weeks from now – we want your email so we can remind you when it’s time to act – that saves money, time, and heightens effectiveness.
Also, many more people will sign a petition than will call their legislators – you need vehicles for engagement for folks who don’t want the more signficant degree of involvement.
As for your continuum, it’s important to understand that web best practices are mostly designed around limiting commercial communications and are much stricter than traditional non-e-politics. The First Amendment lets me send a piece of mail to your mailbox, for example, whether or not you like it, and in the e-world that’s considered spam. Regarding the subject at hand, all petitions submitted to the government are public records. Even if I don’t put the names into a database, after I submit it to a government agent, anyone else can get the list and do so, send you mail, call you on the phone, etc. List brokers routinely data enter petition lists submitted to governments to get items on the ballot, for example, without anyone’s permission.
Also, few e-petitions I’ve seen from legit groups actually hide their privacy policy, and most I see are right on the petition page. In any event, either a (not hidden) privacy policy or formal opt in don’t bother me so long as all future communications have an opt-out option. Both afford more user-control than you get regarding snailmail lists, for sure.
I’ve seen e-petitions that require you to reply to an email to confirm you’re on, and the email grants permission to re-use the name in some fashion. Again, as long as there’s disclosure and opt-outs on future communications, I don’t see anything wrong with that.
I might add, I have very little respect or use for so-called e-activists who want to support an issue once but don’t want to receive ongoing communications. Politics are about group interests, not rugged individualism. To be effective in the long-run, e-activism mustn’t be the poltiical equivalent of a checkout counter impulse buy of a candy bar. We need to build organizations and mass movements to create change, and that can’t happen without ongoing communication with constituents.
Chris, thanks for writing back. I wasn’t trying to pick on your site in particular — just used the examples of two sites I’d run into into while browsing various Texas political issues.
“The lack of a privacy policy should be attributed to the limited amount of time we have to dedicate to the site. It is run by two very busy people who work on it in their spare time. Privacy policies fall into the category of things that are important but not urgent.”
I certainly understand the time pressures on people who do civic activity in their spare time.
At the same time, I think that privacy policies is important to maintain the trust that people put in the sponsors of online campaigns.
“I might add, I have very little respect or use for so-called e-activists who want to support an issue once but don’t want to receive ongoing communications. Politics are about group interests, not rugged individualism.”
I agree in part, and disagree in part. I definitely agree that ongoing involvement is very important.
At the same time, staying on top of even one topic can be a full-time job. It is far too much to expect that any one politically active citizen should have their mailbox full of thousands of emails on every topic that they ever took an interest in.
It is wonderful to have a wealth of web resources to research when you want to learn more about a topic, but just too much to have all of it “pushed” by email.
That’s why I think the RSS model of easily managed subscriptions has a lot of long-term promise for activism.
Hi,
I believe e-activism is the wave of the future. Local events are now taking international dimensions because of the internet and local dictators are no longer able to stop the international pressure of this kind. Let us not block progress.