As Executive Campaign Director here at Daily Kos, one of the most frequent criticisms I hear of our work is some variation on why petitions are useless:
Petitions are pointless. They don't accomplish anything. Decision makers don't take them seriously—if they pay attention to them at all.
Sure, that's fair enough. It is true that members of Congress, heads of corporations, members of the news media, and other decision makers don't take petitions seriously. (Although petitions can be useful in getting you meetings with decision makers, or in getting a media write-up that mentions your targeted decision makers, both of which have utility for political activists.)
However, just because decision makers don't take petitions seriously misses the main point of petitions and why they are important.
Petitions are sign-up forms for your organization. They are a way to build a contact list of like-minded people, so that you can send those people emails with more impactful actions on related topics at a later date.
Since Daily Kos founded our email list in August 2010, we have had more than 2,000 petitions. Very few of these petitions had any activist impact, in and of themselves. However, collectively they generated us an email list of over 4,000,000 people (2,760,000 of which are still subscribed) who we then contacted with calls to action that achieved the following which are continued below the fold:
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Over $10,000,000 raised for our endorsed candidates, and over $7,500,000 raised for Daily Kos itself;
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Over 24,000 volunteers to help get out the vote in 2016, and 6,000 in 2014, who collectively generated several million voter contacts;
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Over 500,000,000 clicks on the Daily Kos Recommended email, helping to spread progressive content far and wide;
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Over 4,000,000 signups for Democratic candidates and progressive organizations through our paid lead generation program, including 206,154 for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and 179,684 for Bernie Sanders's campaign (the Sanders signups went on to donate $5.7 million to Sanders);
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Several million more signups for Democratic candidates and progressive organizations through joint petition actions (no exact number is available);
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Over 1,000,000 direct contacts to Congress (emails and phone calls) in support of the Iran peace deal; over 1,000,000 to the FCC in favor of Net Neutrality; over 500,000 to the Senate in support of filibuster reform, in opposition to food stamp cuts, and in opposition to TPP/Fast Track.
None of this would have been possible without the petitions that first signed people up to our email list. The petitions generated us an enormous email list, and by repeatedly sending emails to that list we achieved amazing things.
Think of petition signers as the equivalent for email lists that likes for a Facebook page, or followers for a Twitter account. Each new petition signer is someone who you can send out your new content to, in the same way a new Facebook page like or Twitter follower would be. If you can understand why having 2,760,000 likes on our Facebook page would be powerful, or having 2,760,000 followers for your Twitter account would be handy, then you can understand why getting 2,760,000 people to sign one of your petitions is important.
This is what most people miss about online petitions: they are signup forms for your email list. Once you have a large list, then you no longer need something to go viral in order to generate a lot of action on it. You no longer need to beg someone with a larger platform to send out your content in order for it to reach a lot of people. Once you have a large list, then you have the power to reach huge numbers of people all on your own.
