Polls and Petitions

You can organise a poll or a petition using this forum. You can use two ways of doing this. For a smaller, local, poll or petition, dealing with some matter of interest in your locality, you can put this together yourself, completely free, using the Forum. Works for national issues too, but we give you another option for national petitions only at 13 and 14 below.
All you have to do is use the Poll option on the Forum page, using less than 100 letters for the title ( but as much as you need on the explanatory panel) and you have a poll set up that people can vote on or a petition that people can sign.
For a petition, rather than a poll you just ask the two questions-whether people agree or not.
For your poll or petition, make a posting as normal on the Forum but add word “POLL” or “PETITION” in capitals on your title.
Your title might read something like “ Car clamping in Greater Moaning-PETITION” for instance or “Where should new car park be in Greater Moaning-POLL”
Show your petition or poll wording and to whom you intend to submit it. If you want just a poll then the site will give you the facility to get people to vote on up to 10 questions.
You can also add a petition document for other like minded site users to sign if you want to go down that route, using the facility to add a document to your form. Instructions link here.
Ask other Forum users in your area who agree with you to sign your petition and return it to you by e-mail. You can then e-mail it (or send a hard copy) in turn to the authority concerned. You organise it but we can give you access to other like-minded petitioners.
When you send your petition or poll in, why not post how many signatures you have and what results are. If you get no response from the recipient to your petition you can also record this fact if you so wish.
Also remember to let the local newspapers know what you are doing right from the start. They will often pick up on such matters of local interest and may well help you gather more signatures by giving you publicity. They may also be interested to hear the reaction of the body you have approached.
You can use the same system for a national poll or petition too but be aware that you might receive a very large number of e-mails if you do.
Remember the Freedom of Information Act may help you here too if you want information from a public body.
The second way of getting a petition (petition only-not a poll) going will probably be worth considering if you want to start a national petition. Let us say: “Petition to Reduce the level of tax on fuel”.
In this case, if you submit the wording to us and your proposal as to recipient (say No 10) we will consider, if the case seems suitable, setting up a proper petition on the Website, in your name, or user name if you prefer, where signatories’ names are gathered on that petition site without you having to do anything. We will give you access to the petition so you can check on progress. E-mail us at petitions@laughingcavalier.co.uk with your suggestion.
We will help you get publicity for successful petitions, when completed, and pass information to national press in those cases.
The choice is yours. As usual we do not tell you what to do. You decide and we will help you if we can.