We The People Petition Signature Requirement Bumped To 100,000 337
New submitter schneidafunk writes with news that the White House is raising the signature requirement for petitions from 25,000 to 100,000. From the source: "When we first raised the threshold — from 5,000 to 25,000 — we called it 'a good problem to have.' Turns out that 'good problem' is only getting better, so we're making another adjustment to ensure we’re able to continue to give the most popular ideas the time they deserve. ... In the first 10 months of 2012, it took an average of 18 days for a new petition to cross the 25,000-signature threshold. In the last two months of the year, that average time was cut in half to just 9 days, and most petitions that crossed the threshold collected 25,000 signatures within five days of their creation. More than 60 percent of the petitions to cross threshold in all of 2012 did so in the last two months of the year."
IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Funny)
"We're so pleased at the response, we're going to make it that much more difficult to earn a response from this office. Good luck!"
Shenanigans.
Next stop, 1 Million!
Yay.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if people stopped submitting nonsense petitions there wouldn't be a need to adjust the threshold for an official response.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if they stopped submitting nonsense responses there wouldn't be a need to submit nonsense petitions.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
In a democracy *the people* are the arbiters of what is 'nonsense' and what is not. Not some jumped up bureaucrat or an AC fascist apologist. While I might not agree with the Death Star petition, nor the Sharia for USA petition, it doesn't mean that people shouldn't have the chance to put anything to their fellow citizens and have the White House consider them without raising the threshold to un-democratically restrictive levels.
I think people should be allowed to put anything forward, and they still can, the threshold is just bigger before the White House will recognize it.
Given how these have taken off, I don't feel like this is unreasonable or in any way undemocratic. If it only takes about a week to get 25k, it seems like 100k should be in reach if its a half decent petition.
I mean, isn't that around 0.03% of the population? Up from around 0.008%?
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Funny)
"We fought for freedom and all we got was democracy"
- Pieter-Dirk Uys
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Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't make me laugh. If popular news media, slashdot, and 4chan are any indication of anything, it's that "nonsense" appeals far more than "sense". A lot of people are going to vote for something because they think it's funny.
If the majority of people were reliable arbiters of sense, we'd have a lot fewer problems in the world.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Insightful)
regularly using robots to kill random strangers in distant countries
spending hundreds of billions prosecuting minor, victimless crimes
while consistently ignoring massive and wide-spread criminal wrongdoing by giant corporations because, "hey, they're big!"
handing control of their currency to a clique of unelected bankers who then hand out said money by the (virtual) truckload to the aforementioned giant corporations
cutting sweetheart deals with industry on everything from medical care to oil spill cleanup, at the expense of said majority
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Insightful)
"I've said it before and I'll say it again, Democracy simply doesn't work."
-- Kent Brockman, Channel 6 News
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Informative)
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A democratic republic is a pure democracy, as pure as all other forms of democracy. It is only not a direct democracy.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Informative)
In a democracy
This isn't a democracy - it's a Constitutional Republic with democratically elected Representation. Worlds of difference.
While I might not agree with the Death Star petition, nor the Sharia for USA petition, it doesn't mean that people shouldn't have the chance to put anything to their fellow citizens and have the White House consider them without raising the threshold to un-democratically restrictive levels.
Caveat - I completely agree.
However, you don't need democracy for that - the Constitution guarantees your right, as an individual, to petition the government for redress of grievances. [wikipedia.org] Group participation is not a requirement.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Funny)
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This isn't a democracy - it's a Constitutional Republic with democratically elected Representation. Worlds of difference.
Ugh. Here's a quick refresher on terminology:
Republic [wikipedia.org]. Or at least a very good overview of the definitions that you'll find in dictionaries.
Democracy [wikipedia.org]. Or at least a very good overview of the definitions that you'll find in dictionaries.
A democracy is a subset of a republic. A direct democracy is a subset of both a republic and a democracy. A "Constitutional Republic with democratically elected Representation" is a subset of both a republic and a democracy. You can't have a democracy without a republic, but
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You can't have a democracy without a republic
Crap, I thought the Scandinavian countries were democracies...
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Simply have everything as an idea/project/request/law be submitted by anyone, then have everyone vote on it, and if it hits 51% it happens... until the next idea/complaint/request, where everyone votes again and if it reaches 51% the first is tossed out.
No president, congress, senators, leaders...just people, ideas, and votes votes votes.
Which.. obviously will never get anywhere...too much voting, and too much opinion by everyone not knowing or car
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that what defines a republic is representation.
A republic is a state where The People are sovereign; a "people's thing", res publica. In contrast to one in which, say, The Crown is sovereign. In either case, how the government (the administration of the state) operates, who constitutes it and how it passes laws, is a separate question.
The US and the UK are a great pair to highlight this difference. Both are representative democracies: both have governments composed of representatives elected by the people and accountable to them, who in turn legislate by voting among those representatives. But the parliament of the UK acts in the name of The Crown, and is in theory exercising The Crown's power; while the congress of the US acts in the name of The People, and is in theory exercising The People's power.
It's a much more subtle, theoretical and less practical distinction than that between a democracy and, say, an autocracy, but that's what it means. It has nothing to do with whether anybody is representing anybody.
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Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the threshold were 1, it would clearly be too time consuming.
If the threshold were 300 million, where you need near-unanimous support, it would not.
Finding the right balance, especially when the response rate is increasing, is nontrivial. You must also consider the petitions that aren't utter nonsense but are stupid or impractical for non-obvious reasons, and the fact that even for valid petitions you can only consider so many unless you want to burn another $200k per year taxpayer money for more help.
I don't know how much time is actually spent on nonsense petitions (I saw a few), bad petitions, etc., and I don't know what a reasonable projection is, but there's no reason to be married to the number 25000. Maybe the right number is more. It might even be less, but I honestly though 25k was a bit low in the age of the Internet. A single tweet from a high-profile celebrity would be almost guaranteed to turn into a petition no matter what its merits.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps if people stopped submitting nonsense petitions there wouldn't be a need to adjust the threshold for an official response.
Exactly.
Death Stars? Really?
Thanks a lot all you idiots that jumped on that bandwagon! Nice Job.
You've proven to the elected officials that constituents should be ignored. Happy now?
Equal bitchslaps are deserved by this administration for agreeing that any obviously ridiculous request gets consideration if it shows up in the in-box with enough idiots signing on.
The US has a republican form of government [wikipedia.org], a Representative Democracy, because the founding fathers foresaw this level of idiocy.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
The White House itself demonstrated that the petitions were worthless long before any sarcastic petition got approved. 75,000 people asked why Cannabis could not be regulated like alcohol. The White House had the drug czar, who is statutorily prohibited from advocating for drug law reform, respond. He failed to mention alcohol once.
If the White House won't treat our petitions with respect, why should we treat their petition site with respect?
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Insightful)
no one reasonable ever thought that this was a real thing.
the fact that people BOUGHT this bullshit (that those in charge care about our needs) is even more amazing.
give it up, people. they don't CARE about us. they simply don't care. they got theirs and that's all that matters to them.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Informative)
Especially the one about the TSA. They didn't even try to make it seem as if they actually care in that case.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
.
Death Stars? Really?
Thanks a lot all you idiots that jumped on that bandwagon! Nice Job.
You've proven to the elected officials that constituents should be ignored. Happy now?
I think it was a way for the people to say "you don't seem to take this seriously, so why should we?"
Name just one petition that caused any change, or even that the government appointed a study group to get facts. This is no better than your congressman's automated canned replies stating how much he values your input, followed by ten lines of text proving that he didn't value it enough to even skim-read it. Well, the difference is that the congressman sends a reply for each petition, while the government is honest enough to admit it ignores individuals (but not honest enough to admit it ignores thousands of them too).
Sadly, the only way to the government's ears is through a CEO (or, for some presidents, through charlatans like astrologists and reverends).
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Informative)
I get canned replies/propaganda from a congresswoman, you insensitive clod!
A woman can be a congressman (or freshman or ombudsman) too. All women are men; mankind comprises both sexes, despite what the PC brigade and redstockings want you to believe. Sometimes women manhandle people and commit manslaughter, and have their manservant drop the body down a manhole. Or shoot a minuteman rocket over no-man's-land with showmanship.
A woman is human, not huwoman.
It's men that are discriminated against by language - we don't have the counterpart word to woman that excludes females and children. If I said "werman", no man would understand what I meant.
I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but I think it's important to let "man" continue to mean "person" for as long as possible, and where it's natural to do so.
And a person's gender shouldn't matter anyhow unless you're sexist.
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Or in other words "You're giving us too much work. Here, we're making it so we only have to answer like... 3 things a year."
Y'know guys... if there's an overwhelming number of petitions to dramatically change things, maybe, just maybe, you should consider actually fixing shit that's constantly being petitioned about instead of saying "no, fuck you", and closing the petition.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay. How about if there's an overwhelming number of petitions for ridiculous garbage like building Death Stars or annexing Canada? What should they consider doing then?
I'm thinking they should raise the number of signatures that trigger a response, but that's just me.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Funny)
Okay. How about if there's an overwhelming number of petitions for ridiculous garbage like building Death Stars or annexing Canada? What should they consider doing then?
Build the Death Star, then use it to annex Canada
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Funny)
Or applying Randian Libertarianism to reality??
The last time I tried applying randy libertarianism to reality, I had to attend a sexual harassment class....
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Okay. How about if there's an overwhelming number of petitions for ridiculous garbage like building Death Stars or annexing Canada? What should they consider doing then?
I'm thinking they should raise the number of signatures that trigger a response, but that's just me.
They should ignore the petitions about "building Death Stars" and respond to the realistic ones, such as legalizing marijuana.
This is not difficult.
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They should ignore the petitions about "building Death Stars" and respond to the realistic ones, such as legalizing marijuana.
This is not difficult.
I can't tell if you're being funny or not, but actually you've hit the nail on the head: it isn't always easy to differentiate serious and 'humorous' petitions. Legalizing marijuana is a real issue for many people, and I think the current criminalization in so many countries is a terrible idea, but such a petition could equally be created as a joke.
Also, what is crazy (not humorous, but properly nuts) to one person is not crazy to another. e.g. a petition to deport someone for their views on gun control. Cr
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They did respond to the marijuana one. They just didn't give the answer the people who signed it wanted.
I'm kind of baffled why people were shocked they got a response that said they weren't interested in legalizing marijuana, when that was ALWAYS his point of view. It's not like they didn't already know some good percentage of people want it legal, but a petition of 25,000 people isn't going to automatically change policy all of the sudden if they don't want to do that.
I always saw the petition site as a w
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:4, Interesting)
They did respond to the marijuana one. They just didn't give the answer the people who signed it wanted.
I'm kind of baffled why people were shocked they got a response that said they weren't interested in legalizing marijuana, when that was ALWAYS his point of view.
Asking the President to legalize marijuana is the wrong way to go. Just get it on your State ballots and problem solved.
When enough states legalize it, those representatives and senators will force the feds to legalize it, or withhold all enforcement
funds until DEA removes it from the banned list.
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Maybe they should consider building the stinkin death star so that people can shut up about it.
I mean here I thought we were a democracy.
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Okay. How about if there's an overwhelming number of petitions for ridiculous garbage like building Death Stars or annexing Canada? What should they consider doing then?
How about giving the legitimate petitions real answers, instead of boilerplate political bullshit?
As I recall, the first few batches of petitions were quite serious indeed, but the answers we received were not. It's hilarious irony - the White House brought this upon themselves, started the idiocy, then bitch about people not taking it seriously.
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You mean like building a death star?
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Or in other words "You're giving us too much work. Here, we're making it so we only have to answer like... 3 things a year."
Y'know guys... if there's an overwhelming number of petitions to dramatically change things, maybe, just maybe, you should consider actually fixing shit that's constantly being petitioned about instead of saying "no, fuck you", and closing the petition.
There are 150M registered voters in the USA (out of around 200M eligible voters). Raising the petition limit to 0.067% of registered voters doesn't seem out of line and helps keep down the noise to allow more thorough answers to the petitions that do make the cut.
Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... (Score:5, Funny)
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Does it really matter? It's a piece of theater to placate idiots into thinking anything they have to say -- even in numbers -- means a shit. Make it five people. Make it a million. It's irrelevant.
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it did serve a purpose. but not one they intended.
it proved to us, with no doubts at all, that they DON'T CARE.
if you didn't know that before, you know it now.
so, in a way, it was educational to some. many of us knew this was BS all along, but some of you actually did fall for it.
hopefully, you now realize what kind of government we really have. and this is not about obama; any clown in office basically does the same shit and cares less about the regular people and their needs.
(btw, when are the fires an
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Yes, but aside from the racism, Swiss democracy is working. Not so in the U.S. How we can have a democracy where 90% of people are unsatisfied with the net results(at least for congress) is baffling.
(I guess that's kind of like saying, "aside from the feces in it, this sandwich is delicious" though)
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It's possible to have a democracy in which every decision is made by majority rule, but the majority is dissatisfied with the majority of the decisions. You just have to have a small percentage that wins all the time.
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What racism? Do you mean the ban on minarets? That isn't racism.
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In the US if you have 5 million voters seriously motivated on a topic you can bet it will get some attention, as that is about 5% of the people who are likely to vote in any given election. 5% is PLENTY enough to win you practically any national election in US history.
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Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
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It also got more rewarding to ask for a mc donalds drivethrough in the pacific ocean.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone is latching on to the Death Star petition (which got a reasonable answer in my opinion. An aide who loves Star Wars took the time to compose that response. Compare with more serious petitions that just got a boilerplate answer).
I don't think this is about the joke petitions but about the speed of getting 25000 signatories for the removal of publicity hound Carmen Ortiz because of her part in Aaron Swartz's suicide. She's part of The Establishment, they want to keep her so it is far better to raise the bar than address a perceived problem.
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I don't think this is about the joke petitions but about the speed of getting 25000 signatories for the removal of publicity hound Carmen Ortiz because of her part in Aaron Swartz's suicide. She's part of The Establishment, they want to keep her so it is far better to raise the bar than address a perceived problem.
Failed hypothesis [nbcnews.com]:
"[..] although petitions already underway as of Wednesday, such as the one to remove the federal prosecutor in the Aaron Swarz case, will only require the original 25,000 for White House review."
And the petition [whitehouse.gov] has already passed the threshold:
"SIGNATURES NEEDED BY FEBRUARY 11, 2013 TO REACH GOAL OF 25,000: 0"
TOTAL SIGNATURES ON THIS PETITION: 39,825"
Thanks to the jokesters (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to those who started petitions for Master Chief statues, roaming motorcycle gangs of justices, and Death Stars. Without you folks making jokes out of serious attempts to make political headway on important issues, we might not have had our collective voices diluted. Making a mockery of those interested in forcing the white house to defend, or oppose, or otherwise make a solid stand of issues sure is helpful.
Let's see what nonsense you can come up with to raise that threshold from 100,000 to 250,000.
Re:Thanks to the jokesters (Score:5, Insightful)
People only did this because they ignored the real petitions and even most of the ones they answer are canned bullshit PR responses. It's a gimmick to make you think they care at all in any way whatsoever what you think.
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People only did this because they ignored the real petitions and even most of the ones they answer are canned bullshit PR responses. It's a gimmick to make you think they care at all in any way whatsoever what you think.
Which I think is part of the accidental brilliance of the program. It lays bare the spinworks in play in politics. When you see a political advertisement that goes on and on about how much some candidate cares about YOU and your problems, here is the undeniable indisputable evidence of a government that doesn't give a crap about you.
The best image in the spirit of this revelation is this one [pinterest.com] IMO.
Re:Thanks to the jokesters (Score:4, Insightful)
Making a mockery of those interested in forcing the white house
As if this is bad? The point is awareness that unless you pay money, nothing will change. Making a joke about a joke is not bad.
Re:Thanks to the jokesters (Score:5, Insightful)
Making jokes out of serious attempts to make political headway on important issues
Ah hahahahahahaha.
Wait, you're serious? The jokes are the only ones getting attention because people have realised just how pointless putting a real issue up for debate is. Bring up anything remotely important, and all you'll get is the canned response about how the current policies are best.
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Making jokes out of serious attempts to make political headway on important issues
Ah hahahahahahaha.
Wait, you're serious? The jokes are the only ones getting attention because people have realised just how pointless putting a real issue up for debate is. Bring up anything remotely important, and all you'll get is the canned response about how the current policies are best.
Well, I know you are making a joke, but this is worth responding to.
The Whitehouse response is probably the least important part of the petition process. Politicians of all stripes are more than willing to give their ideas and opinions to you (well, what they claim to be but close enough). Really, read whitehouse.gov or either party's web sites. They are just full of stuff the politicians want to tell you and why their solutions to whatever problems is best. You may not like it or find is unsatisfying,
Re:Thanks to the jokesters (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hardly call these petitions a "serious attempt to make political headway." People figured out pretty early on, from responses like that to the highly earnest pot legalization petition, that the White House was basically going to be using these things to trot out boilerplate responses and the occasional cutesy "haha, Star Wars reference" fluff piece. Better that people recognize these petition responses for the pointless PR exercise they are than labor under the delusion that this (or any) administration cares that a few thousand people have signed a viral internet petition. If you want to actually influence the policy of either political party on a federal level, you better bring a few hundred million dollars (or a few thousand swing state voters) to the table.
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What does it say when it's far FAR easier to find 25,000 people willing to support a joke cause than to find 25,000 people willing to tackle actual issues? The fact is, raising it just puts it further and further out of reach for the people with actual issues that need to be addressed, whereas it'll never be that difficult to find tens of thousands of Internet folks interested in trolling or being silly. Now that that site has become more well-known, it's getting easier and easier for people to recruit frie
Re:Thanks to the jokesters (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to those who started petitions for Master Chief statues, roaming motorcycle gangs of justices, and Death Stars. Without you folks making jokes out of serious attempts to make political headway on important issues, we might not have had our collective voices diluted.
You have it exactly backward. People did take it seriously. Only when it became apparent that the administration did not also take it seriously, did we begin to deliberately mock the system with these made-up issues. It is clear the administration doesn't care what petitioners are saying. By filling the queue with ridiculous nonsense we are perpetrating a satire designed to expose the false nature of the thing.
When the administration takes it seriously then we will also. We started in good faith and received only bullshit in response. Now we're feeding the bullshit back into the system.
Re:Thanks to the jokesters (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up. I came here to say the same thing. Once they demonstrated that they weren't going to give meaningful answers to serious questions, it turned into "well, we may as well use this to entertain ourselves."
Re:Thanks to the jokesters (Score:5, Informative)
Kudos to the White House for changing the URLs so that Google searches return bad links, and no search on the petition page.
Oddly, searching for "Neill Franklin" the author of a petition, returns no results. His petition is discussed here [huffingtonpost.com]
Searching the White House petition page for "TSA" also returns zero results, despite it having been open for voting [boingboing.net].
I find it astonishing that anyone with an IQ over 120 supports this administration.
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I think the problem is that any answer they come up with that disagrees with your own will be considered "bullshit".
But the fact that they got someone from the TSA to respond to a petition stating that we should disband the TSA is rather disturbing.
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And the WH isn't BS'ing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because responding to a petition to eliminate (or reform -- I can't remember) the TSA by having the HEAD OF THE F***ING TSA tell us about the awesomeness of his department, and completely ignoring the issues raised by the petitioners isn't making a joke of the process?
Re:And the WH isn't BS'ing? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Thanks to those who started petitions for Master Chief statues, roaming motorcycle gangs of justices, and Death Stars. Without you folks making jokes out of serious attempts to make political headway on important issues, we might not have had our collective voices diluted. Making a mockery of those interested in forcing the white house to defend, or oppose, or otherwise make a solid stand of issues sure is helpful.
Let's see what nonsense you can come up with to raise that threshold from 100,000 to 250,000.
Here is the Death Star petition, take a look before it expires.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking [whitehouse.gov]
well played white house (Score:2, Insightful)
at 9 days for 25,000 (if that rate is sustainable) were looking at 36 days to hit 100,000 on a 30 day petition... well played white house
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Time to sign the Aaron Swartz prosecutor petition (Score:4, Interesting)
This petition [whitehouse.gov], asking the White House to censure the prosecutor responsible for Aaron Swartz' felony case, will need a lot more signatures if they apply this standard to it. So now would be a good time to go sign it.
Re:Time to sign the Aaron Swartz prosecutor petiti (Score:5, Informative)
Crap, broken link. This one should work. [whitehouse.gov]
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This petition [whitehouse.gov], asking the White House to censure the prosecutor responsible for Aaron Swartz' felony case, will need a lot more signatures if they apply this standard to it. So now would be a good time to go sign it.
Tomorrow would be a good time too, since the limit only applies to _new_ petitions, not existing ones.
If you look at the link you provided, it clearly states that the goal was 25,000, not 100,000.
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Doesn't mean they won't increase the limit for existing petitions. And in any case, it would be really great if this petition made it to 100k, because it would be taken more seriously. If not by the White House, then by the press, which has started paying attention to these petitions.
Good for them (Score:3)
I can get 25,000 people to sign a petition that the world is flat and that everyone should be required to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes. Yes, that is one petition that says both of those.
A milion people willing to click to support an idea is still less than 1% of the U.S. population. For an online poll 100,000 is very reasonable.
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A proportion of voting-age people, sampled at the beginning of each year, could be a good way to go.
The downside being that as population increases, the ability to effectively organise doesn't necessarily scale identically.
It's a practical development (Score:3)
I'd rather them raise the cap and actually look at petitions than leave it low and just give lip service to them.
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I'd rather them raise the cap and ... just give lip service to them.
Well you will get half of what you want. I doubt you will get the other half.
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I'd rather them raise the cap and actually look at petitions than leave it low and just give lip service to them.
This isnt the dichotomy we are presented with.
What they are doing is raising the cap while continuing to not look at any petitions seriously.
My challenge to slashdot is to cite a single We The People petition that was actually taken seriously by the administration.
How about a petition to lower the requirement? (Score:5, Funny)
They're making the source code available too (Score:3)
Waste of time (Score:2)
actually, a waste of money! (Score:2)
Maybe the White House is coming to their senses. Giving it away for free is more work, while small, one-on-one meetings with a fat check are more productive.
Whats the point of a petition without negative (Score:2)
Mandatory Hearing in Congress (Score:2)
Spitballing the specifics:
Get 10 million and news networks need to devote time to its discussion.
Get 50 million and it needs to go before congress as a bill.
We the People... (Score:2)
Ensuring only the squeakiest of hinges get the oil.
Ironic and sad (Score:2)
Even tools that are only supposed to make us FEEL like we have a voice in government are being lifted out of the average Joe's reach and placed only in the hands of those with resources (i.e. money, and/or people).
It's even more ironic that this is (by chance) being done during Obama's presidency. The voice of the people was gonna be heard under this president. It was gonna be different. Riiiiiight...
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Anyone that thinks an ultra rich man will work "for the people" is a complete and utter moron.
There is one way to fix washington. Eliminate Voting. All senate, judge, and executive offices are filled by random lottery at gun point. If you are chosen to serve, you can not say no. we will come to your home on Nov2 and forcibly take you to washington where you will work in the government for 4 years. then you get to go home.
Random = fair and it will eliminate all politics. I also suggest marines to s
Why We Won't (Score:3)
They should change the name from "We The People" to "Why We Won't Listen".
I mean, seriously - has any petition on that site been acted upon? Does the number of petitioners even matter?
The site was only a stop-gap measure to give people hope in the credibility of the federal government. It's run its course as people have realized how pointless it is.
It was total PR, it's purpose was to address growing anger at the federal government and defuse some of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations.
And Note: (Score:2)
If your idea goes against the Party, it will not be considered. Thanks!
It was a waste of time from the start (Score:2)
Has any petition resulted in actual action? (Score:2)
Re:Has any petition resulted in actual action? (Score:4, Insightful)
Disban the TSA? here's a response from the head of the TSA
Legalize a drug? Here's a response from the director of drug law enforcement
They don't even have a disinterested person (or someone capable of fulfilling the request) respond.
What we need is a petition system for congressional bill consideration.
Why did they bother? (Score:2)
They haven't been replying to all the petitions that met the requirements, so why do they need to raise the requirements?
Re:What happens when it gets to 70 million? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the government is just compiling a list of people who's votes should be filtered out if they sign a petition that the government is not to keen on?
That is one reason, among several good reasons, why we have a secret ballot [wikipedia.org].
Be assured that anyone wishing to change that has malicious intentions, no matter what excuse they provide.