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White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

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Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#31

Post by jrogers65 »

dasil003 wrote: post #21
jessaustin wrote: post #6

Whether the threshold is 100K or 100M, nothing has happened yet as a result of a "successful" petition. Sure, the stupid petitions give them a chance to giggle at the rubes. The most reasonable petitions get essentially the same reaction, however. ["Legalize pot? I think we can guess what they were smoking when they signed that one! Hahahaha!"] As much as I wish it were otherwise, I expect the same for the current "f…

What do you suggest then? Resigning ourselves to apathy would seem to play right into their hand. Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start.

A more reasonable place to start appears to be making a lot of money and then using it to lobby relentlessly.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#32

Post by danso »

_b8r0 wrote: post #17
zbowling wrote: post #8

It started out at 5,000 signatures. Then it went to 25k. Now it's 100k?

For some reason I'm reminded of Colonel Carthcart in Catch-22[1], who continually raised the number of missions crew had to fly to complete a tour of duty. It's almost like the Whitehouse put the site up to listen to and respond to the people that elected them, but has to raise the barriers so that it doesn't have to listen to and respond to the people that elected them. If that's not Catch-22 in the US government, t…

Yet somehow I think there would be people peeved knowing that the White House pays a staff to write a reply to every petition that gets the number of signatures equivalent to the number of retweets Justin Bieber gets when he blinks.

And yes, a "staff", because someone has to sort/collate the petitions, write the response, and also legally/factually vet the response, as it isn't a reddit post but something that is the official voice of the government

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#33

Post by Xylakant »

tobinfricke wrote: post #20
ttaubert wrote: post #7

I think this really makes sense given that in Germany we have a quorum of 50k with a much smaller population. The same thing is probably true for other smaller countries as well.

What can a quorum of 50k people accomplish in Germany?

Your petition might get a reading in the Parliament and you're allowed to speak. However, this is not a guaranteed outcome, the Bundestag or rather the committee in charge of petitions may deny you the public reading with a 2/3 majority.

However, on the state level there is a "Volksentscheid" where the people can directly vote or enforce a vote on an issue. The quorum and the topics that are eligible for a Volksentscheid depend on the states legislation. Berlin for example allows a vote on general topics of interest while other states only allow votes on proposed laws.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#34

Post by tobinfricke »

ohwp wrote: post #19

Why not make it a percentage of the (qualified to vote) population?

It is already:

(100k signatures / 200M voters) = 0.05%

Public awareness of the petition site is growing much, much more rapidly than the number of eligible voters in the U.S. Thus it makes more sense to tie the required number of signatures to the number of people who know about the petitions site, which is essentially what they are doing.

For example, they might have internal targets of a fixed number of successful petitions per month, or a fixed fraction of petitions being successful. This makes sense. To maintain these targets the number of required signatures would be periodically adjusted.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#35

Post by tobinfricke »

Xylakant wrote: post #33
tobinfricke wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can a quorum of 50k people accomplish in Germany?

Your petition might get a reading in the Parliament and you're allowed to speak. However, this is not a guaranteed outcome, the Bundestag or rather the committee in charge of petitions may deny you the public reading with a 2/3 majority. However, on the state level there is a "Volksentscheid" where the people can directly vote or enforce a vote on an issue. The quorum and the topics that are eligible for a Volksentsc…

Have there been any particularly notable uses or outcomes of this process?

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#36

Post by steveplace »

dasil003 wrote: post #29
justin66 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start. If you live in the United States you have a congressperson. Contacting them is a much more reasonable place to start.

Okay, but a petition is a public focal point that takes 30 seconds to contribute too. The cynical attitude "I'm not going to do this because it won't help" is probably a greater negative to one's personal effect on the cause than however much time it might waste.

With the current legislature, a local vocal group of constituents is a much more effective means of citizen-government communication than an internet survey that takes 30 seconds to contribute to.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#37

Post by justin66 »

dasil003 wrote: post #29
justin66 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start. If you live in the United States you have a congressperson. Contacting them is a much more reasonable place to start.

Okay, but a petition is a public focal point that takes 30 seconds to contribute too. The cynical attitude "I'm not going to do this because it won't help" is probably a greater negative to one's personal effect on the cause than however much time it might waste.

I like the idea that of there being some easy middle ground between doing nothing and going to the effort of calling/emailing/writing a congressperson. If the person you were responding to is correct and nothing of consequence has come of these petitions, that is not what this is.

Venting that effort into something that doesn't work at all does not strike me as a net positive.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#38

Post by toyg »

jessaustin wrote: post #6

Whether the threshold is 100K or 100M, nothing has happened yet as a result of a "successful" petition. Sure, the stupid petitions give them a chance to giggle at the rubes. The most reasonable petitions get essentially the same reaction, however. ["Legalize pot? I think we can guess what they were smoking when they signed that one! Hahahaha!"] As much as I wish it were otherwise, I expect the same for the current "f…

Representative democracy is just that: representative, not direct. You have people who represent a whole body (district/state/whatever), not a drone that will pull a lever when you tell him to. They should try to determine what their whole electorate wants, not just the majority of it, and then faithfully represent that point of view in various ways, which is not just voting or fielding new laws.

Petitioning, per se, has always been a sort of plea, a supplication to the ruler that he should pay attention to something. You bring the petition to your ruler, he reads it, and then does what his conscience suggests him to do (which might be to prosecute every single signatory, for what we know). This hasn't changed. Petitions are tools to get topics "on the radar", providing another datapoint to decision-makers; nothing more, nothing less.

If you want direct democracy, then you need a website where you can propose laws and force the legislative branch to actually vote on them. This is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it's a quagmire waiting to happen (unless you really want laws glorifying Anonymous or public buildings dedicated to moot).

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#39

Post by metl_lord »

I like the idea of the We The People petitions, but I think the focus is wrong. Petitioning the president is a way to get an idea noticed, but it's not the way the legislative process in this country works. Laws are created by the Congress. I think it would be a much more effective system if it petitioned Congress.

Right now you can contact your representatives, but I think this system of online petitions would work if the party leadership agreed to have a representative respond to each petition instead of a White House staffer.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#40

Post by junto »

jlangenauer wrote: post #27

Petitions are encouraged precisely because they're completely ineffective: a safety valve to allow people to believe they're effecting change when in fact nothing is changing. If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned.

> If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned.

That statement is so scary, but most likely true.

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