They quote that "162 responses" number right after saying "petitions must receive 100k signatures", when none of those responded to had to have received 100k signatures.
Additionally, 2.1 million signatures (responded to) divided by 162 petitions (responded to) is an average of 12,963 signatures per petition. The largest petition ever - obviously an outlier - received just over 300k. In fact, only one petition ever has cracked the 100k mark: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions/popular/0/2/0
Not only that, but the top three were related to an exceptionally charged issue that was sparked by an absolutely awful tragedy and then catalyzed by an awful group of people whose entire purpose in life is to cause controversy, which hints that outside of another elementary school rampage, nothing will gain the momentum necessary to meet this new threshold. I'd argue that the GMO petition is the first legitimate "issue" petition on that list, and it's nearly 40k signatures short of this new threshold.
This is more or less a guarantee that almost nothing else will reach the threshold necessary to receive a response.
Of course. Without it people would be forced to contact their congressional reps, their senators, their local law makers, send letters directly to the president, and get involved with the media. All of which are precisely the sorts of ways you can actually effect change.
Indeed, I've always thought of them as a cunning way of soaking up some of the pressure.
The UK's version ( http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/ ) goes a step further as you have to provide your name and a full address, so regularly signing petitions will be giving the Government a nice set of data to mine to provide a political profile based on views on certain issues...
The site says "This information will not be used for any purpose other than in relation to the e-petition." but that doesn't fill me with confidence that they can't do mining...
With an increase in effort required is there also a corresponding decrease in people who follow through?
Could you not create a petition and then heavily promote it to gain media attention? I mean, look at the Death Star petition. That made the regular news everywhere.
I think this is just another avenue to voice your opinion. Anyone serious about effecting change is going to use all possible forms of media to do it. Anyone not serious would have done nothing petition website or not.
In a word? Yes. Providing the illusion of listening is actively deceptive, whereas not having the website won't trick people into thinking they're interacting with their government.
It might be interesting for an external party to have such a website but it's counter productive for the government to have one because clicking a link on an online petition accomplishes literally nothing.
How invested you are in an issue is displayed by how much work you're willing to put into doing something about it. Online petition is practically zero work so it's zero worth, regardless of how many people click what.
Neither better nor worse? We the people, already know what we the people want. Writing it down doesn't make much difference. Maybe for the sake of posterity?
Once a given petition crosses the threshold, there is much less pressure to recruit more signatures. Without data on the rate of new signers before and after the threshold, I can't prove it, but I'd bet this will not stop serious petitions.
By coincidence, I've been collecting just such a data set since Saturday afternoon. I suspect that in the case of the petition I'm interested in, the fact that it had almost no "earned media" before crossing the threshold is why the signing rate appeared to speed up once it had crossed the threshold.
Additionally, 2.1 million signatures (responded to) divided by 162 petitions (responded to) is an average of 12,963 signatures per petition.
That assumes people only sign one petition. I bet you could find plenty of people who have put their names to 5 or 10 petitions right here on HN.
Also, when you looka t the other petitions, it's obvious that a lot of them are a) duplicative b) bullshit and c) ignorant - like asking the Executive branch to 'repeal Obamacare,' when repeal is a legislative function.
I'm all for the petition process, but I'm also all for some kind of filter against teh dumb [sic].
Good catch on the multi-signatures. That would tend to suggest a higher number of signatures per petition, but even in that case, we're talking about an average of ~13,000 people engaged per successful petition.
I totally agree that there needs to be a filter against teh dumb (because the average citizen has an appallingly tenuous grasp of the basics of US civics), but it seems like all that this does is increase incentive to trump up phantom(/spam/falsified) support for a petition, rather than actually improving engagement with constituents and giving them a voice.
It seems like their goal is to maintain a threshold such that x petitions get responded to, where x is a number they can manage and afford. I highly doubt x is actually zero, so they will probably adjust the threshold in the future if needed.
I'm guessing that's because saying something like "X signatures needed" creates an easier metric for people to know when a petition will get responded to.
"Top X/month" would assume that they would choose a time of the month when they would compare and respond to those which is probably not the way things work(they respond to things as they get around to them, whenever that is and as fast as possible).
That link seems to only show open petitions. The ones that have already been addressed are not shown. For example, the Piers Morgan petition went over 100k but is not on that list.
You know, after looking at these, there's a bunch of stupid and petty petitions there. I wonder if this one will just simply get lost in the noise of idiocy.
http://cl.ly/image/2n1H2Q0z1919
They quote that "162 responses" number right after saying "petitions must receive 100k signatures", when none of those responded to had to have received 100k signatures.
Additionally, 2.1 million signatures (responded to) divided by 162 petitions (responded to) is an average of 12,963 signatures per petition. The largest petition ever - obviously an outlier - received just over 300k. In fact, only one petition ever has cracked the 100k mark: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions/popular/0/2/0
Not only that, but the top three were related to an exceptionally charged issue that was sparked by an absolutely awful tragedy and then catalyzed by an awful group of people whose entire purpose in life is to cause controversy, which hints that outside of another elementary school rampage, nothing will gain the momentum necessary to meet this new threshold. I'd argue that the GMO petition is the first legitimate "issue" petition on that list, and it's nearly 40k signatures short of this new threshold.
This is more or less a guarantee that almost nothing else will reach the threshold necessary to receive a response.