Here are the petition basics -- *not* how to write up the actual petition 
text (because I think other people are better at this and would give 
better advice) but just the MECHANICS of it...
Jana
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If you want people to take an interent-based petition seriously, you have to 
collect names and valid mailing addresses *and* you have to protect the
addresses from public view. If you don't know enough about CGI to put up a
form that does this, you can pay someone else to run that end of things for
you -- I used C&N Programming at http://www.c-and-n.com/ (Please note that
Kim is changing servers at the end of the month -- the alternate URL during
the move is: http://209.95.201.19/) Inform people that their address will
not show up online, and make this information stand out from the rest of the
instructions because once people see that a full address is required they
tend to balk. You also need to inform people that their "signature" is
useless without this valid street address, because at the end of the
petition a random selection of names may be contacted to verify the petition
signatures. (Hence, if they can not be contacted, they will help to
invalidate the petition.) Let them know that you will not be selling their
names and that the data will be destroyed after the petition is over. You
can also provide the text of the petition in a format that they can print
out, sign, and mail for those who still don't want to give out their address
online.

Email petitions in which someone adds their name and city/state and then
forwards the petition to someone else are not only useless, they are
specifically prohibited by the terms of service of most Internet service
providers: *you could lose your ISP account.* The most famous of these
forwarded petitions is the "Women in Afghanistan" email, which I'm sure most
of you have received. The originator of the petition had her email address
deleted by her ISP, and the thousands of "signatures" were deleted unread.
You can read the details here:
http://www.hoaxkill.com/hoaxes/afghanistan.html