I want to send a petition to friends to "sign" (print name and
address) before forwarding it on to their friends.  Is there a way to
do a cover sheet with petition following it with word 98 that I can
email to others?  Someone suggested setting up a web page where people
can click on to it but I would prefer to send the petition direct.

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Request for Question Clarification by easterangel-ga on 06 Sep 2002 17:59 PDT

Hi thanks for visiting us. Would sources to formats of any kind of
petition be considered as an answer to your question? Just let me
know.

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Request for Question Clarification by lisarea-ga on 07 Sep 2002 10:01 PDT

The problem you're going to run into here is gathering all the
signatures. You will be 'branching' your petition with each new
signature, which will then be forwarded and branched further, creating
multiple partially redundant versions, which will be difficult to keep
track of. Even if you could get all copies together, you'd have to
combine all the information, weeding out the redundant signatures. Not
to mention that a lot of people will not open attachments to email,
and of those who will, many will likely not have access to the
software to read it.

You will also lose control of the document, and will not be able to
reign it back in when you want to. This has caused a lot of problems
for people in the past. For these reasons, you may want to reconsider
having a single version on the web, which everyone could sign, and you
could remove once you've accomplished whatever you're trying to do.

See this page for an example of this sort of thing gone out of
control, and an explanation of some of the reasons a forwarded
petition is likely to cause problems:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/afghani.htm

And there's a whole section for online petitions on snopes, describing
other online petitions as well:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/petition.htm

london15hwh,
 
If indeed you are trying to solve the 'branching' problem that lisarea
described, then your friend's suggestion of making it web-based is a
good one.
 
There is a service called petitiononline.com that will help you set up
a web-based petition for free. You can then email your friends with
the link to the online petition that you create. Your friends can go
to that site and sign it, and forward your mail to their friends.
-raj