This article is about the impact of digital tools in society in regards to political matters; what is todays role of e-petitioning, or should we say citizensourcing or rather still crowdsourcing or maybe even remote e-voting, digital signatures? Many are the terms and definitions that essentially point to the same: the ability for citizens to express themselves unequivocally on the internet such as by answering a poll or signing a particular petition from one's
Experimenting
A small diagonal read[4] through academic research on e-governance seems to indicate that beginning in mid-2000s such initiatives surged a little all over the world. This period came to be known as third-wave democracy; the understanding by the masses that the internet can play a pivotal role in politics resulted in actual efforts to create such innovative use cases. George Soros (a questionable billionaire), and the USA through the US Embassy Democracy Commission were quick to jump on board with this new trend by financing a lot of these projects from Latvia to Mongolia, as indicated on the research cited above.
In late 2004, in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, local authorities (the municipality) launched an on-line forum in the context of urban planning around the renewal of an important part of the city.[5] Expectations were high and as the project developed the activity on the forum was rising. By November 2006 it had 980 posts which ranged from city life, housing, transport, the environment and the participation process itself. These discussions were also mirrored with activities at the city's museum. However, at some point throughout the experiment, some flaws related to the way decision-makers and users interacted started to become apparent. Officials felt that users were not making “realistic proposals” in regards to the limited resources of the project's budget and constituents felt that their opinions were not being taken in consideration. Viewed this way citizen participation seemed more like sharing concerns and wishes than sharing real power. In 2008, 4 years later, a second project was launched in Sweden as well, this time in Malmö[6], and directed more towards e-petitions in general than urban planning in particular. It achieved 200 e-petitions the first year. Yet, again, at least at the time of publication of the Austrian study cited above, 2011, the political and administrative decision-makers were reluctant in providing direct responses. Another similar project with relatively more success evaluated in the study was the British Bristol e-Petitioner[7]:
"However, even if Bristol e-Petitioner shows some degree of political responsiveness, overall it is rather limited; according to the Bristol Council homepage, only five out of 210 petitions had any impact during the seven years that the project has been active."
LiquidFeedback was another one of such systems conceived of and designed by activists from the Pirate Party of Germany and published as open-source software around the same period. Soon after the launch, the platform was replicated in two other contexts; ProposteAmbrosoli, during regional elections in Lombardy, and TuParlamento, an effort to approach voters and members of parliament, both in Italy[8] (today e-petitioning technology is used all across the globe, see Taiwan[9] for example).
What all of this shows is that there have been many attempts at bridging civic participation and politics with the help of digital tools, at various levels, the case of ProposteAmbrosoli as a means for self-promotion; mister Ambrosoli was a candidate running for office whereas in TuParlamento MPs were trying to legitimize their actions by creating a more direct communication channel than traditional means with the electorate. However, in the latter case, publications on the platform were ignored for the most part and little feedback was given to users. ProposteAmbrosoli deprecated after the election. In these last two examples, maybe because these tools were connected to particular personas, they didn't gain enough traction and their success was temporary.
A lesson to be learned from these trials during the first third-wave democracy experiments is that to engage and onboard new users they need to feel that their activity on the platform is consequential. Because online voting (which is almost the same as saying to sign a petition online) is not really a replacement for paper voting but rather an entirely new form of expressing political views, platforms must design and provide a direct link between decision makers, institutions and end users. Ways to achieve this are manifold but in general, requires an educated and politically active population.
But from all the possible citizensourcing applications, let’s draw our attention to a smaller subset, e-petitioning.
More context
Petitioning goes far back in human history and across multiple locations on the globe.[10] It played an important role both in phases of social turmoil and in periods of prosperity. In France and the USA, it is closely associated with its revolutionary constitutions of the eighteenth century. In the UK and Portugal it goes as far back as at least medieval times. Anecdotal evidence even suggests that in earlier periods such as 5th-century Persia, petitions played an important role: "responding to petitions helped ancient rulers seem careful and responsive. It also provided an effective and simple way to strengthen their authority and power." Although petitions today have different characteristics, e.g. can even been done digitally, their consequences are still similar: showing responsiveness to the public by authorities and legitimising the power of parliaments.
"The importance of petitions, whether presented digitally or based on paper is multifold; may work as a sort of political safety-valve or fire-alarm, used to communicate information by informing about policy development or even steer towards policy change. It may be used as a link between parliaments and citizens by giving voice for the public and scrutinizing the executive."[11]
In this article, we will investigate some of the existing e-petition platforms today, a subject we have already partially covered. From official websites born of public institutions such as the EU Citizens' Initiative to private endeavours such as Petição Pública in Portugal, different platforms around the world were created to improve the participation of citizens in relevant discussions in the political sphere. Some of the questions we're going to ask ourselves are; what are the types of proposals submitted by users of these platforms? And what are their scope, are they popular or little known? Do they have any real impact on decision-making or end up falling by the wayside or being ignored? And yet, are these platforms cybersecure or subject to manipulation?
We the People
We the People[12] (WTP), launched just 11 days after 9/11, is a now deprecated e-petition platform previously accessible through the official website of the White House, whitehouse.gov (likewise, Citizinvestor[13] was a platform tailored more to the local government now also offline). As soon as President Trump first took office in 2017, his administration was hasty at getting their hands on the platform.[14] Later in the same year, it announced that We the People would be temporarily shut down in order to replace it with a "new platform [that] would save taxpayers more than $1m a year". Yet, nothing happened. Worse, "bugs" seemed to appear out of nowhere as reported by the Independent and reposted on the Disruptive Dissertation blog:[15]
"received hundreds of tweets from proud signees but the official count (at the time of writing) reads: '27 signed'." Jillian Steinhauer wrote for Hyperallergic on Jan. 25 that it "shows only 44 signatures, despite hundreds of people having tweeted that they signed it. Many have noticed the discrepancy, with one tweeter claiming that the petition had nearly 100,000 signatures yesterday [Jan. 24]; another says the number was originally in the tens of thousands. The other petition shows 734 signatures, a small climb from the 724 listed earlier today, but does not seem to be accurately counting those who’ve signed based on the sharing rate suggested by social media. It also appears to have been set up only after a previous petition vanished."
The bugs were claimed to be fixed soon after these findings. However, as late as January 28th 2017, a petition titled "End the media blackout on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)" displayed only 1 signer despite attempts by several people to sign. A White House spokesperson claimed; “It’s a question of high volume at the end of the day, but the signatures are being captured. Because of high volume they’re having to change how they’re being captured.”[16]
(Sorry to rant but Facebook, YouTube, Google, Reddit, TikTok, etc, seem to be doing just fine handling petabytes of data daily all across the globe but the White House couldn't handle a few thousand petitions? We are talking about less than 1GB of raw data most likely as a publication[17] by a researcher in Dakota State University seems to suggest; "The study found 3688 petitions on the online petition system of the White House, We the People, and found only 252 (6,8%) of them were reviewed".)
More recently in 2021, on the very same day that Joe Biden's new administration took office, the URL that pointed to the WTP e-petitions platform, https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/, simply changed and started redirecting to the main whitehouse.gov domain with no futher explanation. It has not been relaunched since and apparently there are currently no plans for doing so. So what exactly is the problem with WTP platform and the White House? Lets look at an archived version of the project, it may help elucidate:
Archive of We The People[18]
Very poor is the record track of the White House's attempt at e-petitioning; from bugs to failed promises of updates and improvements to ending on an unannounced shutdown. In contrast, other private e-petition platforms have been more successful so far...[19] From pressuring drug companies to resume production of life-saving drugs against cancer, to getting TripAdvisor to take complaints about sexual assaults more seriously, or reverting allegedly poor decisions of the judiciary such as the cases of Rodney Reed or Cyntoia Brown, to name a few of the many impactful use cases. Ironically, Change.org, one of the biggest private e-petition platforms has on it a petition asking for the restitution of We The People.[20],[21]
I am at loss now, is this a public vs private e-petition battle?
Picture of an ongoing e-petition as of the moment of writing at SumOfUs, one of the largest e-petition platforms on the market[22]
But how successful are these private e-petition platforms in reality?
"For instance, on Change.org, more than 99% of the petitions were never marked as "victory". A petition is considered a victory if the target entity has made a response to the creator's satisfaction. Otherwise, the petition is closed. For example, as an effort to protect animals, a petition for banning the transportation of hunting trophies was addressed to Delta Airlines at Change.org. The petition accumulated 395 259 signatures within a few months and Delta Airlines announced that it would "officially ban shipment of all lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, and buffalo trophies worldwide as freight." During the period of the petition, nine other airlines also have taken similar actions."
Changing the policy of multiple airline companies concerning trade related to endangered species?
Cybersecurity
The topic has been presented to a great extent. Now to discuss the cybersecurity of each one of these platforms a little extra analysis is required. Cybersecurity is a vast domain that cannot be summed up in just 4 or 5 criteria and surely requires technical training to make accurate assessments. But there are things too obvious that jump to the eye, even for amateurs. When we register on a platform and are only required to present an e-mail and nothing else, what conclusions should we draw from the mechanisms (or lack thereof) regarding identity control? What prevents a user in this case from creating multiple accounts, even impersonating other people and negatively influencing the information posted on the platform?
More, if platforms are still under the previous paradigm of Web 2.0 where all information is kept on centralized servers, to what extent are the platforms at risk of mismanagement by the system administrators responsible for running and maintaining the software, hardware and databases, manipulating or censoring information? Using blockchain correctly in sensitive applications such as e-petitioning in 2022 is a cybersecurity requirement!
(Now please bear with us as we present an EU-centric overview of the ecosystem but surely there are other interesting use cases all over the world, please post in the comments if you know any!)
Petitions, UK Government and Parliament[23]
The most active and interactive implementation of the e-petition, between petitioners and state officials seems to be the case in the UK. The first experiment was run in 2006 and within as little as 6 months, 2860 active petitions were created and one even received over one million signatures.[24] By 2018 more than 30 000 e-petitions had been submitted with about 14 million different signatories, making it one of the world’s most used platforms put forward by a public institution. The idea in the UK system is not only that citizens sign and present a digital document endorsing a particular political view or project but that upon amassing a minimum number of supporters that these texts be brought to the parliament for debate. The UK system has the advantage as well when compared to other jurisdictions that these debates are published on the internet as well. So, what kind of petitions can we see there today?
Waive visa requirement for Ukrainian refugees[25]
LIVE: E-petition debate on arrangements for Ukrainian refugees to enter the UK - 14 March 2022 on YouTube[26]
Citizens are using the platform to petition on other sensitive matters such as "Do not require health and social care workers to take covid-19 vaccination"[27] or to "Outlaw discrimination against those who do not get a Covid-19 vaccination"[28].
Identity control: Hard to assess. Assumed to be between weak to moderate. Although in the UK there is no state-issued national ID smart card, tabulations corresponding to the identities of citizens and the corresponding credentials are in possession of the government, in particular in the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Anti-censorship: Highly centralized solutions are prone to censorship by their own design. As an example, and not to make the example as proof of bad faith of the system admins, far from that, ...
Not passing prejudice but the platform was effectively blocked for few days. Properly configured decentralized systems can prevent these situations from ever happening unless the majority agrees.
Advanced cryptography: Moderate. It does offer basic cryptography such as the use of HTTPS for instance. And because the website deals with e-petitions and not with online voting, although not easily accessible, the digital signatures endorsing each specific petition can be somewhat traced on geolocation:
Here[29] we see by geolocation the number of signatories by petition and by region. Although not really auditable because we cannot see the names of the signers, it does offer some form of traceability.
Advanced cryptography in e-petitions simply means that the digital signatures and the corresponding final tally is simultaneously private and verifiable by the signers themselves. In the literature it reads end-to-end auditable. While this may seem contradictory with smart mathmagics it is possible.
Also, no suggestion at any point in the website is made for users to use overlay networks to obfuscate the source IPs so one could argue that the geolocation of petition signers is vulnerable. Voting repeatedly on the same machine and on the same geolocation can reveal the signers’ identity and intentions.
European Citizens' Initiative and Forum
1. European Citizens' Initiative Forum[30]
As can be seen from the picture the topics are many and relatively recent. Users and discussion in the platform is practically nonexistent.
Identity control: Incompletely good.
Upon attempting to login on the European Citizens' Initiative Forum, the form above requiring eIDAS[31] (which is to say eID backed by public institutions) is presented
Alternatively, new users are allowed to register by providing an e-mail only
It is possible to register with both cybersecurity or insecure methods. It is left to the user which to choose... Although not the ideal scenario where only cybersecure methods would be allowed it is good to show how a platform designed for political discussion would actually look like. At the present however it is still vulnerable to the presence of bots.
Anti-censorship: None. No use of blockchain was found.
Advanced cryptography: Weak. Again, advanced cryptography in the field of digital politics essentially means that tools such as voting online not only are available but built in such a way as to be auditable by the end users, the voters (end-to-end verifiable)[32]. As can be seen, the voting feature is available which is positive but no public auditability is provided, hence the low classification.
It may be worth mentioning the Debating Europe[33] platform, another website created by NGOs, for all its similitudes with the European Citizens' Initiative Forum in terms of design, layout and features where again, we see the stamp of George Soros behind this platform by way of partnering through the Open Society Foundations.
2. European Citizens' Initiative[34], [35]
The ECI is the official platform for e-petitions within the EU. At the moment of this writing, it showed 11 ongoing petitions with a total of 93 ever recorded. A very poor record considering the size and resources of the union and the time the platform has been around. In any case, the reason for being so seems to have already been pointed out.[36]
Screenshot of European Citizens' Initiative in Portuguese. It is available in all member states’ languages.
The petition's lifecycle can be accessed as well
When signing a petition users are prompted to either fill out a form or use a digital certificate (eID)
Even if the form is chosen over the digital certificate method, signers are requested to send personal information such as the national ID card number. Not as ideal as the digital certificate but something nonetheless. There is even a captcha to prevent bots from signing.
Identity control: Moderate.
Anti-censorship: None.
Advanced cryptography: None.
So, what is worrying EU citizens and what kind of proposals are being put forward? The search function can filter ongoing[37] e-petitions or those that have completed their lifecycle[38], according to the rules that set the agenda such as the minimum and maximum time periods for collecting signatures or the minimum amount of those necessary, as well as what actions are to be taken once a petition reaches a certain threshold. These rules vary from platform to platform and are an important aspect that needs to be taken into consideration. We may delve into this aspect in another article of its own, the
Taking End the Cage Age[39] initiative as an example, which petitions to improve animal conditions by legislating against certain types of animal abuse that happen with the discretionary use of cages. In its cited page[40] you can also check the response from the EU authorities and respective works regarding the issue, and you may as well see more details such as a number of signers per country, authors, who funded the petition, etcetera. Other petitions include the ban of toxic pesticides[41] and problems related to the environment for example.
openPetition
openPetition[42] seems to be a small, well-founded, and organized platform created 12 years ago but that saw relatively small[43] success (with only 12 initiatives being considered successful by their authors) but with a lot of active and pending petitions[44] going through the process at the moment of writing, totalling 1273! One of such "successful" stories was the removal of Russian teams from a FIFA simulator at EA.[45]
For signing a petition users are requested to send their full name, e-mail and residential address
After having signed a petition, a successful message is shown
Identity control: Hard to assess, probably very low. Considering that openPetition is not a public institution we should assume that they have no database with the names of all people and their residences. So, how can the platform know which users are real and which are bots or impersonations?
Anti-censorship: None. No use of blockchain or other Web3 tools such as IPFS was detected.
Advanced cryptography: Advanced crypto in the context of digital politics means at best the conciliation of privacy and verifiability when voting. In openPetition signatures can be made public or private at the choice of the user, which is interesting but certainly does not check the advanced criteria. So, although not cryptographically, because users can sign publicly, we classify as low.
Signatures can be public or private; auditable to a certain extent.
E-petition, Parliament of Australia[46]
In evaluating the official e-petition platform of Australia we are to show the consequences of poor implementations. We are able to sign the petitions even though we are not citizens of Australia and there is actually no way for signers to come to understand if the signature was properly accounted for or not. This is not to say that the platform has no cybersecurity nor that it works or not. But it is very opaque and hard to evaluate which makes it more vulnerable to misbehaviour of system admins, the IT team. Most platforms on the market today follow this trend, but it is especially worrisome to see this in official governmental websites.
Identity control: Hard to evaluate. Assumed to be weak. Again, because this is an official website from a public institution the system administrators probably have access to a database with the name of all residents and citizens of the country. Still, what we are to show is what we consider to be poor design and implementation which even if adjusted by crossing data with the mentioned database leaves in our humble opinion open vulnerabilities.
E-petition EN4426. Notice the signature count at 10.
To put the system to test, I made up a fake name and signed.
Sucessful message is shown
If we go back to the petition page, the signature counter went up!
For the record, my real name is not Anthony Fillinbert. I did sign the petition although I am not a citizen or resident in Australia. This was done for demonstration purposes only.
Anti-censorship: No Web3 tooling detected.
Advanced cryptography: No auditability, end-to-end verifiability. Again, it is hard to assess what is happening in the backend, so even basic privacy is hard to evaluate. A statement from the website says the database is encrypted and kept secure. But advanced crypto goes beyond that.
Change.org[47]
Founded in 2007, USA, Change.org is one of the most popular online petition platforms with more than 114 million users worldwide and hundreds of thousands of petitions. It is also one of the most researched which is bringing to light new data about what kind of issues really worry their users or for instance what makes a petition more successful than others? What about gender disparities? Much is yet to be discovered.
A small sample was used in research.[48] The study concludes that people are engaged more with sentiment and emotional factors than morals and logic. Seems to put into question our rationality!
The impact of Change.org is so impressive that it would require an article or even a book of its own.[49] And the irony again is that it offers little to no cybersecurity! Which is to show that online voting or e-petitioning if you will, is a natural use case of IT! Sure, it is prone to manipulation, but only if the system admins misbehave! In fact, even with no strong identity control methods, there are ways to mitigate attacks from bad actors. If the system admins so wish and actually do a good job, the platforms somehow work as intended, as the mostly positive impact of Change.org clearly demonstrates! More, if Web3 tools are integrated into these systems, even misbehaviour from the admins can be detected and is harder to pull off!
Identity control: None.
Anti-censorship: None. The platform is currently inaccessible in Algeria and probably in many other countries as well as controversial petitions gain traction.[50] We have mentioned in a previous article[51] the situation where the blockade of Wikipedia by Turkish authorities was circuinvented with the use of IPFS, a Web3 tool, and the same thing could be done here, albeit with more difficulty as we are not dealing with static content.
Advanced cryptography: None.
Avaaz[52]
Avaaz is another huge e-petitioning platform with allegedly 68 million members. It employs campaigners from over 30 countries, including the UK, India, Lebanon and Brazil to cite a few. A caveat with these platforms is that even though they claim to be born out of civil society and are somehow rooted in an apolitical movement, truth is that as soon as they grow too big their impact on world politics becomes inevitable.[53] In Wikipedia, it is stated for instance that activity in Avaaz was influential in very sensitive issues such as the military intervention in Libya or the evacuation of British journalists and the death of 13 Syrian activists during the conflict in the country. If on one hand, it has made a positive impact on many of its campaigns such as combating climate change, the journey has not been without its criticisms. There are even claims of a hidden agenda connected to questionable billionaires, but these seem to be loose.[54] Anyways, the apparent lack of cybersecurity is concerning.
Identity control: None.
Anti-censorship: None. Like Change.org, it is blocked in many countries.
Advanced cryptography: None.
Care2[55]
One of the oldest e-petitioning websites, it has been around since 1998! Stories like "Success! Germany’s Last Fur Farm Has Closed"[56] in 2019 are the reason why these tools and platforms exist in the first place. There may come a day, God-willing, where such actions won't be necessary but for now we may have to rely on these tools to bring cruelty to light and force society to take action.
Care2's landing page
Identity control: None.
The fact that users can create accounts with Facebook credentials and considering that in a previous article of ours[57] we had already drawn to the attention that the Facebook network is full of bots goes to say that Care2 is vulnerable to a take over by evil actors as it stands, according to our understanding.
Anti-censorship: None.
Advanced cryptography: None.
SumOfUs[58]
From combating unsustainably sourced palm oil to stopping airlines from shipping hunting trophies the success of SumOfUs is interesting. Sometimes drawing a problem to public attention is enough to end it but lest not forget that after petitioning oftentimes there is whole other work of lobbying that is required and demanding which is to the merit of these organizations and one of the reasons why sometimes interesting financial donations are made. The organization is not without its shares of critics and dubious links to billionaires however, as reported by InfluenceWatch[59]; we wonder are these platforms are battlegrounds between populist movements and big corporations.
Identity control: None.
Anti-censorship: None.
Advanced cryptography: None.
Petição Pública[60]
Last, but not least, due to personal bias we invite the reader to delve into the Portuguese case and see what is happening over there. The most used platform goes by the name of Petição Pública which translates to Public Petition. There is also a Brazillian version of it.[61] Anedocticaly, in 2017, a petition from this platform concerning the use of chemtrails as bioweapons was brought to discussion to the parliament and ridiculed as a conspiracy theory as can be seen in this video (in PT).[62] Recent reports seem to suggest some validity to the claims of the petitioner, however.[63] ,[64]
Example of a petition for the creation of a public library
Identity control: Low. It does not make use of digital certificates, however, upon the moment of signing it does require the signers not only to insert the name but also to provide the national ID number present in the national ID smart card. How is the platform then able to cross-check the name and the ID is hard to know but we are assuming that the petitions once reaching a certain threshold are presented to public authorities with the credentials in a public format.
The form to sign the petition asks for the complete name, e-mail and identity number issued by the state. In general, this is enough for us to consider a moderate level of security because to know someone's ID number would require some effort on the part of the bad actor. Still, ID linked to a digital certificate is in principle, better, at least by helping to preserve privacy, a topic we may cover in detail in an article of its own.
Anti-censorship: None.
Advanced cryptography: None. But because the ID is required and probably published (a risky practice as said), we can assume some level of auditability, but not because crypto is well implemented.
Participa[65]
Participa is yet another e-petition platform drawing funds from the European Union but without much participants and few cybersecurity features.
Identity control: None.
Anti-censorship: None.
Advanced cryptography: None.
Alternatively, there are other platforms that harness political activity but which are not e-petition websites or similar e-voting based tech, such as GetUp! or GoFundMe.org (which got recently in the news for blocking funds sent to the trucker convoy in Canada).
In conclusion
A natural question that arises is why is there such a low adoption in some of these platforms?
-
Could it be because of a perceived lack of real impact of using these platforms? Should agenda setting, as in what is done in practice after a referendum ends be made more clear to the end users? What happens if the majority of the users of a platform vote in a specific way around a particular issue?
-
Are users not that naive, and the lack of cybersecurity features on a platform is something that can be felt and repels users, especially when it is lacking as in the majority of cases we investigated?!
Other interesting questions, why are the biggest platforms such as Change.org or Avaaz, We the People, blocked or terminated in certain countries? What are the authorities really afraid of?
-
Are public institutions afraid of cybersecurity threats and thus refrain from developing these platforms or could it be that the officials are afraid of the consequences of giving the citizens more voice over societal matters?
-
Is the lack of cybersecurity a fatality or a choice by design? What would a platform with cybersecurity taken to the extreme look like and what could its use cases be? How close are we to transitioning to a liquid democracy? 5 years? 10 years? 1000?
It is interesting to note that some of the most impactful platforms offer little to no cybersecurity such as strong identity control which goes to show that contrary to intuition or common belief, e-petitioning and other digital tools in politics is one of the most natural use cases of IT...
Summing up, the many existing platforms, pilot experiments and use cases that fit the category of digital politics are slowly becoming more common. I would advise the reader to be aware of the platforms that exist already on ones own country and then to register and be active on them. However at the back of our minds we should always have that most platforms that were presented here do not offer all the desired cybersecurity proprieties evaluated namely strong IDM, anti-censorship and end-to-end verifiability. To be able to achieve this in a trustless solution blockchain needs to be properly integrated. Companies such as Brightgov or Vocdoni are actively pursuing this end with a small scale sucessful use case recently.[66]
Just as paper was pivotal to transition from autocratic monarchies to todays representative democracies, maybe so will digital tools be one of the keys from transitioning from the current status quo to a more direct, or delegative democratic systems...
References:
[1] "Digital Politics: A Deep Dive" by the Network Emergency Response Volunteers, 2022. https://hackernoon.com/digital-politics-a-deep-dive
[2] "Public Administration Digitalization and Corruption in the EU Member States. A Comparative and Correlative Research Analysis" by Armenia Androniceanu et al., 2022. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358882720_Public_Administration_Digitalization_and_Corruption_in_the_EU_Member_States_A_Comparative_and_Correlative_Research_Analysis
[3] NosDéputés, https://www.nosdeputes.fr/
[4] "A study of e-participation projects in third-wave democracies" by Stephen Coleman et al., International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2009. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239433882_A_study_of_e-participation_projects_in_third-wave_democracies
[5] "Case studies on e-participation policy: Sweden, Estonia and Iceland" by Martin Karlsson et al., Örebro University, Praxis Center for Policy Studies, etc., 2013. http://pdc.ceu.hu/archive/00006789/01/PASOS_e-participation_2013.pdf
[6] The Malmö initiative, https://malmo-se.translate.goog/Om-Malmo-stad/Politik-beslut-och-paverkan/Var-med-och-paverka/Malmoinitiativet.html?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pt-PT&_x_tr_pto=wapp
[7] ePetitions on Bristol's Citizen Portal, https://democracy.bristol.gov.uk/mgEPetitionListDisplay.aspx
[8] "LiquidFeedback in Large-scale Civic Contexts : Framing Multiple Styles of Online Participation", G. Bertone et al., Journal of Social Media for Organizations, MITRE Corporation, 2015. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/LiquidFeedback-in-Large-scale-Civic-Contexts-%3A-of-Bertone-Cindio/328a1704c0449cbf6c2a8b72947a295a0b34b322
[9] "The simple but ingenious system Taiwan uses to crowdsource its laws" by Chris Hortonarchive, MIT Technology Review, 2018. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/21/240284/the-simple-but-ingenious-system-taiwan-uses-to-crowdsource-its-laws/
[10] "Petitioning" entry on the National Museum of American History official website, Behring Center, USA, https://americanhistory.si.edu/democracy-exhibition/beyond-ballot/petitioning
[11] "Parliamentary petitions and public engagement: an empirical analysis of the role of e-petitions", Cristina Leston-Bandeira, University of Leeds, UK, 2019. https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/145393/3/Role_Parliamentary_Petitions_Systems_CLB_COMBINED_VERSION_FINAL.pdf
[12] We_the_People_(petitioning_system) entry on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_People_(petitioning_system)
[13] Citizinvestor entry on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizinvestor
[14] "Trump’s team removes all old, pending ‘We the People’ petitions" , https://www.dailydot.com/debug/white-house-petitions-president-trump/
[15] "Under Trump administration, 'We the People' White House petition website is mysteriously broken", blogpost at Disruptive Dissertation, 2017. https://disruptivedissertation.blogspot.com/2017/01/under-trump-administration-we-people.html
[16] "Those broken White House petitions are due to incompetence, not evil" by William Hughes, A.V. Club, G/O Media, 2017. https://www.avclub.com/those-broken-white-house-petitions-are-due-to-incompete-1798256934
[17] "Success Factors of Online Petitions: Evidence from Change.org" by Ahmed El Noshokaty et al., 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2016. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300415479_Success_Factors_of_Online_Petitions_Evidence_from_Changeorg
[18] We the People archive, https://petitions.trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/
[19] "10 petitions that made the biggest impact this decade" by Harmeet Kaur, CNN, 2019. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/22/us/top-petitions-decade-change-trnd/index.html
[20] "New White House Petition Demands the White House Actually Answer White House Petitions", Josh Feldman, Mediaite, 2014. https://www.mediaite.com/online/new-white-house-petition-demands-the-white-house-actually-answer-white-house-petitions/
[21] E-petition in Change.org to restore the e-petition platform We The People of the White House, https://www.change.org/p/joseph-r-biden-restore-the-white-house-s-we-the-people-petition-site
[22] P&G: No more rainforest-killing palm oil petition on SumOfUs, https://actions.sumofus.org/a/p-and-g-no-more-rainforest-killing-palm-oil/
[23] Petitions, UK Government and Parliament, https://petition.parliament.uk/
[24] "Are e-petitions a waste of time?" by Gary Connor, BBC, UK, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34476264
[25] "Waive visa requirement for Ukrainian refugees", Petitions, UK Government and Parliament, https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/609530
[26] "LIVE: E-petition debate on arrangements for Ukrainian refugees to enter the UK - 14 March 2022", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeqPJokhuqA
[27] "Do not require health and social care workers to take covid-19 vaccination", Petitions, UK Government and Parliament, https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/577842
[28] "Outlaw discrimination against those who do not get a Covid-19 vaccination", Petitions, UK Government and Parliament, https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/575801
[29] UK E-petition map, https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/
[30] European Citizens´ Initiative Forum, https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative-forum/discuss_en
[31] eIDAS entry on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS
[32] End-to-end auditable voting systems entry on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems
[33] Debating Europe, https://www.debatingeurope.eu/
[34] European Citizens' Initiative entry on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens'_Initiative
[35] European Citizens' Initiative, https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/find-initiative_en
[36] Weaknesses section in the European Citizens' Initiative entry on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens'_Initiative#Weaknesses
[37] Ongoing petitions entry in European Citizens' Initiative, https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/find-initiative_en?CATEGORY[0]=any&STATUS[0]=ONGOING&SECTION=ALL
[38] End of lifecycle entry in European Citizens' Initiative, https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/find-initiative_en?STATUS[0]=ANSWERED&CATEGORY[0]=any&SECTION=
[39] "End The Cage" represented by Léopoldine Charbonneaux, ECI e-petition, 2018. https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/end-cage-age_en
[40] E-petition details of End The Cage e-petition entry on ECI, https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/initiatives/details/2018/000004_en
[41] "Ban glyphosate and protect people and the environment from toxic pesticides" represented by Mika Theis, ECI e-petition, 2017. https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/ban-glyphosate-and-protect-people-and-environment-toxic-pesticides_en
[42] openPetition, https://www.openpetition.eu/
[43] Sucessful petitions entry on openPetition, https://www.openpetition.eu/?status=erfolg#petitionen
[44] Decision pending entry on openPetition, https://www.openpetition.eu/?status=in_bearbeitung#petitionen
[45] "Remove Russian teams and national soccer team from EA sports FIFA products" represented by Nikita Basenko, openPetition, 2022. https://www.openpetition.eu/petition/blog/remove-russian-teams-and-national-soccer-team-from-ea-sports-fifa-products
[46] Parliament of Australia E-petitions website, https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions
[47] Change.org, http://change.org/about
[48] "Hybrid Recommender for Online Petitions with Social Network and Psycholinguistic Features", Ahmed Elnoshokaty, Dakota State University, 2018. https://scholar.dsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1339&context=theses
[49] Notable petitions of Change.org entry on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change.org#Notable_petitions
[50] "Thailand blocks Change.org as petition against king gains traction", BBC, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54566767
[51] "Let Web3 Flow: Democratizing Data Ownership to Curb Malpractice" by NERV, 2022. https://hackernoon.com/let-web3-flow-democratizing-data-ownership-to-curb-malpractice
[52] Avaaz, https://www.avaaz.org/en/
[53] Ideology entry on Wikipedia , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avaaz#Ideology
[54] Avaaz entry at Discover the Networks, https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/avaazorg
[55] Care2, https://www.care2.com/
[56] "Success! Germany’s Last Fur Farm Has Closed" by Sabrina Modelle, Care2's blog, 2019. https://www.thepetitionsite.com/activist-university/success-germanys-last-fur-farm-has-closed/
[57] "Politics in Social Media: Bots, IDM and Decentralized Moderation" by NERV, 2022. https://hackernoon.com/politics-in-social-media-bots-idm-and-decentralized-moderation
[58] SumOfUs, https://www.sumofus.org/
[59] SumOfUs entry on InfluenceWatch, https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/sumofus/
[60] Petição Pública (Portugal), https://peticaopublica.com/
[61] Petição Pública (Brazil), http://www.peticaopublica.com.br/
[62] "Debate Parlamentar | Discussão do tema Chemtrails | João Torres", partidosocialista, Youtube, 2017. https://youtu.be/iufXz3G-Sqg
[63] "Workers At Spain’s Meteorological Agency Confess To Spraying Chemtrails", reposted on Principia Scientific International (PSI) from State of the Nation, 2021. https://principia-scientific.com/workers-at-spains-meteorological-agency-confess-to-spraying-chemtrails/
[64] "Spanish government admits to spraying chemtrails on citizens, at behest of the UN" by Lance D. Johnson, Natural News, 2022. https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-06-09-spanish-government-admits-spraying-chemtrails-on-citizens.html#
[65] Participa, https://participa.pt/
[66] "Official referendum in Bellpuig with the Vocdoni voting technology", Vocdoni, Youtube, 2022. https://youtu.be/Kk4d9Avsh3M