Creating a WebForm help

[Brando]

We want to make available online, a form that will create an email letter with 7 recipients (BCC'd). (Our town council)

Basically the user will navigate to the page, read the letter and if they agree do the following:
We want user to enter their own Full Name and email address. (possibly home address and Phone number but not mandatory)
We want a user to have the ability to add an additional comment to the letter. Then when they are finished they can "Submit" (effectively "signing" the letter).

We want the letter sent in typical email/letter format, the added comment if any, effectively "signed" with the name and email address(phone/address) that was entered, emailed to a list of 7 specific email addresses each time.
A bonus would be if the "submit" would generate an email letter addressed to each council member individually and signed by the submitter, rather that a blanket " "Esteemed our town council member"
IE "submit" would send a separate email to each:
One addressed to Major Smith
One addressed to Vice Mayor Johnson
One addressed to Council Member Williams
One addressed to Council Member Brown
One addressed to Council Member Jones
One addressed to Council Member Miller
One addressed to Council Member Davis

We have run into services like Jotform ( dont see the option of sending to each individual). that seem to be able to accomplish this in their paid for version( which is fine), but wondering what other options or services or software may be available.
At this juncture the simpler the better, we are developing a webpage and likely be able to add this form an existing web page but this is early stages of this "Campaign" and web page development hasn't really begun.

Thank you for you patience and insight

[lammert]

I hope you'll understand that what you want will be a perfect SPAM vehicle to send multiple people a stream of unwanted emails once hackers have found the email form?

What you propose was a common way of handling forms in the previous century, but we are in another era now. Instead of bringing the Internet of two decades back to life, wouldn't it be better to use a modern solution and educate the recipients in new technologies?

[Brando]

@lammert ty for your insight, perhaps, since i am the one inquiring , you can provide the solution for "the new era", what is the "modern solution" of which you speak?

[NickMNS]

Do the council members that will receive the email, agree to receiving the emails, or is this a form of pressure?

[lammert]

The modern solution is where the people signing the form do some off-line authentication before they can initiate the sending. This could be through email verification, or an authentication service, depending on the level of trust you need that the user is who they claim to be.

With email verification you only know that the user has access to that email address, but it is no guarantee that they use their own identity to sign. You may want to make sure that users only sign the documents once. A user using throw-away email addresses could sign a document multiple times.

For the receivers there must be an opt-in consent to receive the emails. I would prefer a system where the response document is stored and the receivers can download it when they need access to it.

[Brando]

@NickMNS The email addresses we have and will use are town government emails that have have been provided to us to use by the town manager and head of the development and planning commission.
They are aware of the fact that we are opposing a project. We requested these email in order to provide them to those residents who would also oppose the project and would wish to make their position known.
I suppose it is a manner to pressure the council into understanding that this isn't wanted by a large portion of the residents.
Its public opinion that the council should be aware of. The issue is a very large portion of the public isn't even aware of this project and it is already past a stage of design review and approval without public input.
We are pursuing other methods of disseminating the information and manner to contact council, we just want to get as much coverage as well can in as many ways as well can.

[NickMNS]

The points that @lammert raises very much apply here. As @lammert mentioned, simply publishing a form that sends these individuals emails with a single click and no validation will be abused, potentially by angry towns people but more likely by spammers.

Unfortunately, validation is not a simple task, it is unlikely that there is a product or plugin available that will allow you to do it, as there are many factors to deal with in terms of privacy and security.

One work around, which is far from ideal, would be to simply put a mailto: link. This would send the message from the users email account. The problem is that using a mailto link for multiple addresses is not recommended and could be buggy. Here is Stack_overflow link describing the challenges:
[stackoverflow.com...]

[lammert]

While I understand that in some circumstances bombarding public officials with communication may be tempting to change their view on specific issues, it may from a moral and legal point of view not be the best approach.

In the place where I live, official petition websites exist which do the necessary checks to prevent multiple signatures by the same person. You may look if such services also exist in your jurisdiction and use them instead. They often have ready-made marketing tools through the use of social media channels and press-releases to make petitions faster known by a large group of people.

[Brando]

@lammert we have in fact already utilized the online petition sites, we have actually been advised, by the Town Aide to the Major to proceed with letter writing campaigns in several forms,( we have that in verifiable emails (town government) because letters emailed to the official town government personnel are added in to the public record that will be presented in the appeal meeting with the council. Online petition signatures are not.