White House Raises the Stakes in Online Petitioning Platform
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — “We the People” will now need a lot more people before the White House takes notice.
The Obama administration’s online petitioning platform has become so popular with users that the White House felt it had to raise the number of signatures necessary for an official response from 25,000 to 100,000.
“We the People” is basically a victim of its own success because all kinds of petitions are easily reaching the 25,000-signature threshold, including those calling for funding of a Death Star by 2016 and restricting DC lawmakers’ annual pay to $75,000.
There are also more serious petitions as well, such as the one demanding the removal of the federal prosecutor in the Aaron Swartz case, the online pioneer who committed suicide last week. That one will be grandfathered in, needing only 25,000 names instead of the new requirement of 100,000 to get White House recognition.
Currently, there are approximately 40 petitions with over 25,000 signatures that may or may not get comment if they reach the new magic number. In one case, a petition to legally recognize the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group has well over 300,000 signatures.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio