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Closed Replace e-petitions with e-surveys (much fairer)

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Petitions are statistically insignificant. With no 'disagree' option, they cannot be representative of the population. The total votes are also rarely sufficient to justify any serious credibility, let alone to initiate a parliamentary debate!

The 100,000 e-petition votes required equates to only 0.16% of the UK population. The remaining 62.2 million (99.84%) are not represented – the vast majority may disagree with the petition objective.

To put this into perspective, around 2.2% (1.4 million) of the UK population have an IQ score below 70 (mentally retarded). This is a massive 14 times greater than the ‘significant’ e-petition vote!

The e-petitions website should therefore be changed to an e-survey format, adopting both AGREE and DISAGREE options, enabling a statistically significant vote.

A minimum requirement of 100,000 AGREE votes AND at least 40% voting AGREE is suggested. Therefore if only 40% vote AGREE, at least 250,000 total votes would be required.

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10,000

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  • Petition closed

  • Petition published

    This petition can now be signed.

    If this petition gets 10,000 signatures, government will respond to it.

    If this petition gets 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.

    This petition will stay open until 5 August 2012.