Change.org Petitions are Rife with Fraud

Copyright 2020 Tony Lima. All rights reserved.

Change.org is a website famous for hosting petitions for all sorts of causes. My serious advice is to never, ever sign a petition on that site. It happens that the wording of petitions can be changed at any time without giving up any of the current signatures. Change.org petitions are rife with fraud.

This first came up with a petition asking a member of the city council to resign. Imagine my surprise when I read the petition a few days later. Suddenly the ask was for an apology, not a resignation.

An Experiment

I started a petition asking California Governor Gavin Newsom to support raising the minimum wage to $25 per hour. Here are my posts.

Original petition summary Change.org Petitions are Rife with Fraud

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Original petition details Change.org Petitions are Rife with Fraud

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Original petition number of signatures Change.org Petitions are Rife with Fraud

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You read that correctly. The original petition called on the governor to raise the minimum wage.

After collecting 22 signatures, I made a few changes to the petition:

The revised version asks him to oppose raising it and to also start the process of repealing the current law. For reference, the full revised petition is a pdf at the end of this article.  Here are summaries.  Note that the number of signatures did not change.  In fact, I downloaded the signature list after making these changes..

Edited petition summary Change.org Petitions are Rife with Fraud

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Edited petition details with signatories Change.org Petitions are Rife with Fraud

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Edited petition including change dot org logo Change.org Petitions are Rife with Fraud

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For the record here’s the full text of the revised petition.

 

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About Tony Lima

Retired after teaching economics at California State Univ., East Bay (Hayward, CA). Ph.D., economics, Stanford. Also taught MBA finance at the California University of Management and Technology. Occasionally take on a consulting project if it's interesting. Other interests include wine and technology.