Petition

I know many must have experienced situations which require
them to write a petition or do this for someone else. Others
might be wondering what this is, well if you are wondering what
a petition is, it refers to a formal request from a person or
persons that is written to appeal to a governing body or a public
official and it is meant to address a specific issue/s in order for
one or a group of people to be granted favors, relief or certain
privileges. It is typically signed by many people. It can also be
looked at as a formal application which is made to court in
writing and it usually serves as a request for action to be taken
with regards to a certain matter of concern.

Coming up with a petition is not an uphill task but many people
dread or shy away from doing this. With the help of the
guidance and the freely available petition examples and petition
templates you are good to go. This site offers the easiest and
most convenient way of coming up with a petition that will
enable you to achieve what you will be asking for.

How to write a suitable petition

If you have a burning or pressing issue that you want to be
sorted out in your community, nation or county you can start
the process of seeing this come to light by writing an appropriate petition. This document has the ability to shape the
world if it is well thought out and written in an appealing and sincere way. In order to create a petition that will stand out and speak your mind, you can follow the following tips and steps to
realize that;

First you need to research your cause for writing the petition.

There are couple of things that need to put into consideration.

1. You need to make sure that your course of action falls
within the authority that you are addressing for
instance your local government jurisdiction. You can
confirm this by contacting the administrative office of
the authority that you are addressing or you could
simply check out their website. At times you might
find out that you need to petition both at the county or
state level. During the processing of contacting the
relevant authority you can ask the office that you have
approached to direct you to the appropriate department
that will best address your petition.
After addressing the above issue you can then ask for
the petition guidelines that you need to abide by.

2. You will also be required to know how many signatures
will be required in order to effect a given petition. This
will enable you to set your target signatures within
range that will enable you achieve it without the risk of
having too many or too few signatures. It is also good
to confirm whether your petition will require approval
or not before circulation .

3. One also needs to learn how people should sign the
petition for it to be deemed as valid. In certain
scenarios such as getting a candidate’s name added to
the ballot, the law usually requires you to show the
address for each name and you will thus remember to
ask the signers to provide this information as well.

4. You need to do a thorough research on the topic of
your petition to make sure that you know all the
positions that you have. By doing this you might
accidentally discover that a similar petition was tabled
in the recent past and this might help in eliminating
repetition of issues.

5. You need to weigh the various media or platforms that
are available for circulating your petition. No matter
what your preferred media is, you still need to make
sure that you have written the petition in the right
manner. For local petitions you can consider using
paper petitions as this will adequately reach your
target group. If you want to reach broader networks
you will need to use online petitions, this will enable
you to reach a large target in an easier and faster way.
There are sites that can help you get to a large number
of people if you choose to use online petitions and you
can check these out and single out the one that best
suits your needs.
It is also good to put into consideration the aim of
coming up with a certain petition, if you desire that
people should take action, you can opt for a more
suitable option such as a campaign rather than
addressing the authority using a written petition.

The second step is the process of writing the petition.

1. You need to develop a specific statement that will help
to identify what it is you need the people to support.
The statement should be precise, concise as well as
informative.

2. One has to make sure that the petition is as brief as
possible. The reason for this is that people are likely to
support a course that they have read and understood
properly. By making the petition to be as short as
possible you will make more people to be able to easily
and quickly go through your petition. This is opposed
to the lengthy petition which many will shy away from
going through due to the unbearable length.
Regardless of the length of your petition you need to
make sure that your specific goal has been highlighted
and has come out clearly in the first paragraph. This
should then be followed with your solid reasons for
writing the petition. This happens to be the paragraph
that most people are mostly interested in a given
petition.

3. You can then proceed to add body paragraphs to
support the first paragraph. The first paragraph
normally acts as the declarative paragraph and the
preceding paragraphs should contain more information
and the appropriate examples that help to explain what
you are fighting for.
You have a choice of writing as many additional
paragraphs but you should put into consideration the
fact that people on the streets won’t be that much
interested in these additional paragraphs.

4. You need to come up with a summary and this
summary should be read through carefully. You should
see to it that your summary describes the situation,
suggest what is needed and it should also explain why
it is needed. Make sure that it is crystal clear in the
sense that one who never knew about what is in your
petition can actually understand and appreciate what
you are doing.

5. Make sure that you edit your petition to omit any
spelling and grammatical errors. By letting your
petition to be dotted with grammatical and spelling
errors you may end up losing since most people won’t
take you seriously. You need to make sure that all
errors are corrected to attract some respect and
seriousness when one is going through your petition.
You can undertake a spell check and you ought to
proofread your written or typed petition to capture any
obvious mistakes. One can also choose to read out
loud the written or typed petition to ascertain whether
there is a logical flow of the contents in it.

6. Just to make sure that you have dealt with all the
errors you can choose a friend or a relative, most
preferably one who is not informed of the petition.
After they have gone through the petition you could
ask them a few basic questions to determine whether
the people will respond positively to your petition.
Make sure that you have ascertained that they
comprehend your goals, if they can tell why you are
petitioning as well as the demands and the reasons
why you are asking for this.

How to create the signer’s form for your petition

1. You need to create a signer’s form on a different and
separate sheet of paper. On this you need to put the petition title at the top. See to it that your petition title
is precise and descriptive as well.

2. You can prepare the form by use a spreadsheet
program. This will add a professional touch to your
petition and this has the additional advantage of
enabling you to change it when need arises. You need
to divide the page into five columns to give space for
the name, address, e-mail address, phone number as
well as the signature. In other scenarios you might
decide to include an additional sixth column for the
voter registration number. You need to make sure that
you have plenty of space for the address column.
In case you don’t have a personal computer you can
opt to use the library computers which have the
appropriate spreadsheet program. If this is not
possible you can also use a plain paper and then
manually divide the page into the respective columns.
This would do.

3. One needs to proceed on and make photocopies or
print versions of the original document. The number of
copies that you need will be determined by the number
of signatures that you want to attain. In order to keep
track of the copies that you have generated it will be
prudent to number them before printing them out or
you could do this manually. In case you are using
signature gathers you may opt to tell them to initiate
the pages with their names so that you can make
inquiries about certain copies of the signature forms.
By initialing the pages you may also attract or
showcase some level of general accountability.

How to best promote your petition

1. You can choose to speak to people in person. If you
choose to use this means you need to address a large
group of people who are affected by what is to be
addressed by your petition. It will be prudent to write a
speech if you are going to address the general public
this being done after seeking the appropriate
permission. You can go to a specific target location
that has people who are affected by your concerns in
your petitions. You can also use posters posted on
community bulletin boards to address the community.

2. E-mails can also be very helpful in promoting a
petition. You can send e-mails to the appropriate
people and this should be followed by reminders but
watch out that you are not over-flooding people with
e-mails.

3. You can get media coverage of your petition. This can
be achieved by making use of the local media houses
or a local radio station as well as the newspaper if the
petition is meant for a small group of people confined
in one area.

4. Remember to be polite and not mess around with
people in the streets just because you want them to
support your course. It is good to judge the response
of people and act accordingly.
By going through this and trying out the guidelines and
recommendations you can be able to come up with an
unbeatable petition. If you find it hard don’t hesitate to make
use of our petition templates. Check out our petition examples
to get a hold of what has been conveyed in this article go.