White House to Review Online Secession Petitions
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — Living up to its crowdsourcing promise, the White House says it will review online petitions from states that say they want to secede from the United States.
In the days since President Obama was re-elected, visitors to the WhiteHouse.gov site “We the People” have submitted a wave of petitions calling on Obama to allow 36 states to peacefully secede from the United States.
As a practice, the White House says it will review and respond to petitions that obtain more than 25,000 signatures. Three secession petitions, from Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, have passed that threshold. Texas leads all petitions, with 82,799 online signatures, which the White House confirms through email.
And the White House said it would follow this procedure now.
“Every petition that crosses the threshold is reviewed and receives a response,” a White House official said when asked about the secession petitions. “As a rule, we don’t comment on the substance of those responses until we’ve issued them to the petitioners.”
That said, the White House has been known to dodge. While it sometimes responds in several hundred words written by the relevant policy officials, others (such as this one) amount to explanations of why the White House can’t or won’t comment.
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