On Thu, 11 Sep 2008, Nick Scholtes wrote:

> I use them all the time. As for which sites to go to, it depends on the 
> issues you're interested in "voting" on, and what your persuasion is. I 
> also send a fair amount of emails and faxes to my elected officials 
> through their government sites or through other websites (such as 
> Congress.org). I have no idea if these sites use FOSS.
>
> As far as if they work, I'm guessing you mean if they get results with 
> politicians. I'm pretty sure they do because a couple years ago Congress 
> tried to say they weren't going to accept comments from such sites. 
> People got upset, and I believe Congress backed off the issue.

My petition wouldn't be a political thing -- nothing involving politicians 
-- it would be about policy within a scientific/professional organization. 
So when I said that the site should "work" I just meant that it should 
correctly collect the data and count signatories.

So which site(s) do you recommend?

Thanks for getting back to me!

Mike


> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Mike Miller <mbmiller at taxa.epi.umn.edu>wrote:
>
>> A little off topic but you guys seem to know things like this.  Also, I
>> would prefer a site that uses FOSS software, just because.
>>
>> There are sites on the web that allow users to enter a petition and to
>> collect "signatures".  Have any of you used these petition sites?  Are any
>> of them supposed to be better than others?  I would be concerned mostly
>> about sites that harvest email addresses or other information from
>> signatories.  Otherwise I just want to know that the site works.
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>>
>> Mike