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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

#71

Post by _b8r0 »

danso wrote: post #32
_b8r0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's a legitimate question that I'd like to know the answer to.

How many petitions on the White House petition site, regardless of the number of signatories have resulted in a direct change to US policy, in favour of the petition? I think people should be getting more peeved about the answer to that question than the number of staff writing non-responses to them.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#72

Post by wes-exp »

toyg wrote: post #70
wes-exp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have direct democracy in California and the world isn't ending. I think essentially you just gather enough signatures for an issue and it gets put to a direct vote on the same ballot as the presidential elections. Although it's by no means perfect (what is?), it does help solve the problem of special interests being able to buy politicians.

I'm not incredibly familiar with CA, but I'd argue you probably have some provisions for direct democracy, akin to referenda or people-proposed laws in some European countries. The main system is still fundamentally representative in nature.

Yes, but the point is that allowing people to directly petition the government via gathering signatures, which then triggers a public vote of the citizens, does not lead to quagmire. Far from it.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#73

Post by moskie »

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.

Just because change doesn't come directly from these petitions, it doesn't mean they're worthless. They act as a gauge, not necessarily for our government, but for us, showing the amount of support that exists behind a given idea or movement. It's not precise, and is not the only gauge, but it at least functions as one piece of the puzzle of affecting real change. Your cynicism is wasted here.

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

Replace "petitions" with voting, protesting, posting comments on Hacker News, or talking with your fellow citizens about political issues. All those are other pieces to the puzzle. Why aren't they banned?

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#74

Post by bjustin »

chii wrote: post #57
jessaustin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true! It's also true of "real" voting in "elections". They only put up with that crap because it's so easily manipulated by the media. They'll distract us with "new" policies when they have to, but nothing will ever threaten the ever-expanding stream of money that flows through lobbyists to their employees in government and back out to the lobbyists' clients. The system won't be "fixed" using tools that exist with…

> It must be hacked, but I don't really see how. figure out a way to efficiently get energy (nuclear? solar? vacuum energy?), so you don't need to rely on any incumbent authority. Using that energy, design drones to mine resources from the earths' crust, or extract minerals/resources from the sea. THis process must be automated. These drones, using the extracted resources, would reproduce themselves, so that the whol…

You do so shortly before nanomachines for eternal life are invented, and your second in command turns out to be a tyrant ruling over humanity for hundreds of years.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#75

Post by tokenadult »

As I wrote in the thread under the posting of the original source (the White House announcement),

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064137

The founders of the United States knew that a representative democracy (what they termed a "republic") has some distinct advantages over direct democracy. This fact was discussed at length in the jointly authored Federalist Papers.

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html

History shows that this fact is rediscovered in each new generation through hard experience, on a bipartisan basis.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#76

Post by randall »

brudgers wrote: post #69
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.

Petitions for Ballot Propositions have radically reshaped California's government over the last several decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_ballot_propo...

Some (me!) would argue rather poorly. Design by committee taken to its unfortunate logical extreme.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#77

Post by frere »

This whole idea was bound to be a failure from the start, but still, the administration pushed it. Now they validate my original conclusions: this is a great mechanism to convince the legions of redditors that they actually matter. Whenever petitions reach the threshold, they can just claim "the project is so successful, we have to raise limits keep it manageable", when in reality it is pure window dressing for a President who has successfully manipulated to youth. Ugh, I wish we had a 3rd party!

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#79

Post by toyg »

wes-exp wrote: post #72
toyg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not incredibly familiar with CA, but I'd argue you probably have some provisions for direct democracy, akin to referenda or people-proposed laws in some European countries. The main system is still fundamentally representative in nature.

Yes, but the point is that allowing people to directly petition the government via gathering signatures, which then triggers a public vote of the citizens, does not lead to quagmire. Far from it.

When done offline, no. When done online, though, it's a whole different ballgame. Even limited automation of electronic voting has been proven extremely unreliable and prone to fraud. This is not a big deal when consequences are limited (i.e. petitions, non-binding surveys etc), but when actual legislative action starts depending entirely on a few electrons, then it's a scandal waiting to happen.

Re: White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

#80

Post by belorn »

chii wrote: post #58
junto wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If petitions actually worked, they'd be banned. That statement is so scary, but most likely true.

the amount of effort you expend to sign a petition is next to nil. Why would anyone expect, then, that signing a petition can affect any sort of change? Activism comes from expending effort to direct the course of the system (aka, society). Some people, like the rich and powerful, are also "activists" - in the sense that they use their wealth and power to direct the system in such ways as to benefit themselves, while…

> the amount of effort you expend to sign a petition is next to nil. Why would anyone expect, then, that signing a petition can affect any sort of change?

Because government should serve the people and a petition is meant to show government issues the people find important?

Okey, I guess saying that government should serve the people is hard to do with a straight face, but thats how it was suppose to be. Its like saying that the law should be fair and non-discriminating, no matter skin color, sex, or money in the bank. People still expect those two things to be true, even if in truth they are rarely so.

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