Moroni understood the implications of the timing of the Lamanite attack with internal dissention. He sought the power to do something about it. What he does is send a “petition, with the voice of the people.” This is a parallel procedure to the one that the king-men had used to alter the law. Their petition also came with the voice of the people (verse 3). As with the previous petition, it will also ultimately be decided by the voice of the people (verse 16).
Geographic: The point of attack for the Lamanites appears to have required a great deal of travel time for the Lamanite army:
“Amalickiah gathered together a large army and moved toward his attack point, the land of Moroni (v. 22). The distance for Amalickiah’s armies to travel must have been substantial (cf. 43:22-28, for between the time Moroni “saw that the Lamanites were coming into the borders of the land” and the actual attack, he had time to obtain the voice of the people to act against the king-men and to march forth against and defeat them, surely taking weeks (John L. Sorenson, The Geography of Book of Mormon Events. FARMS, 1990, p. 280).