How to Understand the Petition Process

You have to follow specific petition process, which Government agencies have.

When you would like to submit a petition about some concern problem that has importance for you and a region, you do need to know the petition process in order to make it effective.

First, you do have to make sure your petition qualifies for the review because some projects are not considered large enough to warrant attention. The most common form or petition that people do present to local, state and federal governments and politicians involves environmental reviews about circumstances that affect people and wildlife of a region..

If you have a project that could have an impact on the environment, you should investigate the project to find out its capacity. A completed petition of this nature must include an explanation of the project and the name of concerned person.

Then you should prepare a list of ways in which this project would harm the environment, also include your own name. You do need to provide supporting verification, such as documentation about harm done in other areas as a result of a similar project. You need to have at least 25 signatures, in order for such a petition to be taken seriously.

Another common petition is one that wants to get a class listed as endangered. These proper requests must be accompanied by published documentation to support the claims you make in the objective of your petition.

Once you present the petition, the organization has 90 days to make a ruling as to whether the claim is warranted. If there is enough data to warrant inclusion of the species on the endangered list, then it will take a 12-month review period to research the information before there is anything done.

A person can begin a petition letter about a grounds or circumstances about which one feels strongly. The environment is just one of several categories in which petitions are filed. Others consist of:

• Common rights

• Big business

• Education

• Entertainment

• Health

• Government and politics

There are common guidelines to which a petition must hold. These are:

• The petition must have a clear goal. You should use a title to write your reasons for starting this petition.

• You should include background information of the situation, which should be brief and not consist of any more than two or three sentences.

• You must state exactly what you want done about the situation and if you have plans about how to carry this out, include them here.

• You should mention the name of the person or organization to which you will submit the petition.

Then you start to collect the petition signatures of those who agree with the issue.

If there is more than one page, each page must have the information about the petition. The lines on the page should also be numbered for the signatures.

The procedure of starting and completing a petition also contains the circulation of the petition so that you have a large number of signatures in a timely manner. In some cases, such as having laws enacted or changed, you only have a small window of opportunity in which you can make your views known to the powers that be so that there is some possibility of effecting the changes you outline in the petition.