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A petition is usually just a formal request of a person or group to take some kind of action. And the law doesn't put any limits on asking. For instance, there's no legal proscription against circulating a petition among your friends calling for a raise in your allowance. Whether this groundswell of support will have any effect on your parents, however, is another matter (especially if you're over 40). So it's the petition organizers themselves, not any legal statute, who set the signing requirements. A look at PetitionOnline.com shows both the scope of issues and the various eligibility requirements of different petitions. For instance, a petition calling for a vote on instituting a lottery in Alabama asks that signatories be residents of that state. A petition to put the Star Wars Kid in Episode III, on the other hand, is open to everyone in this galaxy and beyond. Of course, some petitions do have the force of law. In the recent presidential election, third-party candidate Ralph Nader had to submit a certain number of signatures from registered voters in each state to appear on that state's ballot. And since
all states require registered voters to be at least 18, these petitions actually do have an age restriction.
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