For starters, a staggering amount of petitions are targeting people and organizations who couldn’t care less about the feelings of a few hundred concerned activists. The most popular Canadian Change.org petition ever, with more than 1.8 million signatures, calls on the Chinese government to end the 10-day Yulin Dog Meat Festival. Even in free democratic countries, the major pitfall of petitions is that millions of signatures still represent a relatively slim proportion of an overall electorate. A similar numbers game is at play when it comes to the galaxy of petitions demanding action from large corporations. Kraft Heinz, for instance, is currently the target of a 590,000-strong Change.org petition demanding that they do away with plastic packaging, even if it’s recyclable.

Source: National Post November 05, 2018 18:00 UTC