E petitions

arclight

arclight

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Is there any form of security to prevent the same person from puting multiple "signatures" on an e-petition ?
E-petition software usually blocks multiple use of the same email address on the same petition.

Most of us will have several email addresses and can have hundreds of them if we could be bothered.

So, what is to stop one person puting multiple signatures on a petition using different email addresses ?
 
Your supposed to provide your post code as well as email address and while that is still circumventable it would limit the amount of multiple signatures. And even if you had multiple email address's, I have three, thats hardly going to make a massive difference
 
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jakeblu said:
Your supposed to provide your post code as well as email address and while that is still circumventable it would limit the amount of multiple signatures. And even if you had multiple email addresses, I have three, thats hardly going to make a massive difference
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Indeed, three will make no difference at all. I have more than three and my ISP provides disposable email addresses if wanted. I don't think that there is any limit on the number of independent email addresses that can be held by an individual.
There are close on 2 million UK postcodes with each applying to approximately 15 properties with no means of verifying truthful usage. Therefore, a relatively small group of people with the aim of exerting influence could easily flood an e-petition.

Whilst e-petitions to parliament appear to have very little chance of directly changing anything in Westminster the media are quite keen on reporting the number of signatures in support of topical subjects. That can be influential in determining the mood of the public.

Seems to me that the epetition system is very flawed.
 
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Hmmm, I wonder if your a little upset about the ground the e-petition on allowing more migrants into this country is making. Seems that maybe your a little worried that your views are not the majority views of the UK in this matter.

Not completely sure why someone would want to flood an e-petition with multiple votes on this subject though.
 
jakeblu said:
Hmmm, I wonder if your a little upset about the ground the e-petition on allowing more migrants into this country is making. Seems that maybe your a little worried that your views are not the majority views of the UK in this matter.

Not completely sure why someone would want to flood an e-petition with multiple votes on this subject though.
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Not bothered about that particular epetition per se, but it did make me think how easy it would be for any pressure group to make use of the system to sway opinion.

Have a look through the list of epetitions https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions and you will soon find a lot of subjects that could attract the attention of pressure groups. Even things that are very local in nature (fracking, for example) are likely to attract an input from far and wide.
 
arclight said:
Not bothered about that particular epetition per se, but it did make me think how easy it would be for any pressure group to make use of the system to sway opinion.

Have a look through the list of epetitions https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions and you will soon find a lot of subjects that could attract the attention of pressure groups. Even things that are very local in nature (fracking, for example) are likely to attract an input from far and wide.
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Goodness me there are some strange petitions on there. I wonder who decides which are to be rejected, some of the rejected ones seem far more appropriate than others that passed.
 
jakeblu said:
Goodness me there are some strange petitions on there. I wonder who decides which are to be rejected, some of the rejected ones seem far more appropriate than others that passed.
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Sure are - I sometimes wonder if it is a Westminster ploy to make people think that they actually get a say in what happens.
 
arclight said:
Sure are - I sometimes wonder if it is a Westminster ploy to make people think that they actually get a say in what happens.
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Of course it is. It creates an illusion of representation whereas the petitions are used as coffee filters. [/cynic]
 
Llamaman said:
Of course it is. It creates an illusion of representation whereas the petitions are used as coffee filters. [/cynic]
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Coffee filters ?? I thought they wiped their a***s with them.
 
You have to give your name and postcode so they could check and validate against the electoral roll -- though my bet would be that they don't.
 
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