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Yes, there are official petitions in about half the US that you can create to attempt to gather enough signatures of verified registered voters to force a potential ordinance, state constitutional amendment, state law, or other measures onto actual election ballots.
And there are unofficial petitions that can potentially generate the change you may be seeking.
We were told that our northern Wisconsin county was going to make a bid to become a "low level" nuclear waste dump. Most of us had moved there to enjoy the beauty of the pristine groundwaters and boreal forest. Needless to say, the idea of a radioactive waste dump offended, alarmed, and enraged us. We generated a petition against it and, in a county of a few thousand people, got thousands of signatures, some from county residents, some from second-home lake cabin owners, some from tourists who only heard about it from us and were shocked. So the petition was not limited to registered voters, nor was it official. But it got the job done.
We put those petitions on "tractor" paper from old-style computer printers. We all attended the well-attended first and last public hearing on the question. One of our members, when it was his turn to testify, took a thick stack of the computer paper and explained the number of folks who signed a petition against any nuclear waste dump in our county. Another member took the top sheet and began to walk backwards down the public hearing aisle in the middle of the mass of chairs. He kept backing up, and the computer paper, all attached to the next sheet, made a long line of petitions, all attached, stretching to the very back of the public hearing hall.
"As you can see," said the man testifying, this long line of petitions isn't even 20 percent of the total. You have mass opposition to your proposal."
That was the end of the idea of a nuclear waste repository in that county. Unofficial petitions can create very official results in our democracy.
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