Techdirt. Stories filed under "petitions" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "petitions"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:13:13 PST White House, Tiring of Death Stars And Deportation Requests, Ups 'We The People' Signature Threshold From 25,000 To 100,000 Tim Cushing http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130116/15533821705/white-house-tiring-death-stars-deportation-requests-ups-we-people-signature-threshold-25000-to-100000.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130116/15533821705/white-house-tiring-death-stars-deportation-requests-ups-we-people-signature-threshold-25000-to-100000.shtml raised the signature threshold at the "We the People" website from 25,000 to 100,000, no doubt in an attempt to trim down the number of Death Star/deportation/secession/impeachment petitions it must respond to. (Why no one thought to kill two birds with one stone and exile Piers Morgan to the newly-seceded Republic of Texas is beyond me.) Of course, it's been very selective in answering petitions up to this point, making the signature threshold essentially meaningless, but let's try to view the positive aspects.

The new level will only apply to petitions going forward, meaning that those that met the previous threshold level will still be ignored/glad-handed in the administration's consistently arbitrary fashion. While this new level looks at first glance to be the sort of workload easing common to entrenched government entities, the fact is that We the People's traffic has doubled over the past two months. According to the numbers posted, petitions are passing the 25,000 signature threshold within five days, which is a bit of a problem when over 70,000 petitions get crafted in less than 60 days.

In fact, a petition to lower the count "for taking us seriously" back to the previous level has already gathered over 1,500 signatures (in less than a day), possibly sending the White House on a collision course with some sort of signature threshold loop. (Not that this system actually works like that, but it's fun to pretend...)


Unsurprisingly, the top three petition categories are Civil Rights, Government Reform and Human Rights, suggesting that the American people are very unhappy with the ongoing rights erosion in this country -- and that they know where to start fixing this. Of course, the administration has been more than willing to route around obstacles like the Bill of Rights, so several thousand e-signatures isn't exactly going to break it of this habit. But, if any politician is interested in catching up on the issues their constituents actually care about, they could do worse than taking a long, hard look at petitions from these three categories.

While it's far from a perfect system, it's the best we've got, as they say. Raising the threshold level should result in more petitions with broader support receiving responses, barring any sort of 4chan-esque ballot stuffing. Even if many of the responses tend to be talking-point heavy and come across as a bit "canned," at least some of those petitioning the government will be able to walk away (angrily, most likely) from the experience with some sort of closure. The administration does need to be more responsive -- both in number of petitions responded to and in the quality of the answers. Talking points may be great when delivering a "top down" stump speech, but they don't really stand up to the sort of scrutiny the internet can deliver.

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]]> 4chan-says:-challenge-accepted! http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130116/15533821705 Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:39:00 PST White House Responses To 'We The People' Petitions Slowing To A Hand-Picked Crawl Of Canned Responses Tim Cushing http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121228/10470921512/white-house-responses-to-we-people-petitions-slowing-to-hand-picked-crawl-canned-responses.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121228/10470921512/white-house-responses-to-we-people-petitions-slowing-to-hand-picked-crawl-canned-responses.shtml "most transparent" in history still needs a lot of improvement to get anywhere near the lofty goals announced during the (first) inauguration. One of the few steps in the right direction has been the "We the People" website, which allows anyone to post a petition and have it answered by the White House if it reaches 25,000 signatures within 30 days.

While the aim is noble, in practice the site has become a bit of joke, both in terms of participation and response. Most responses so far have been canned administration talking points that double down on whatever the current position is on the issue. And from the looks of the petitions currently sitting above the 25,000 threshold, there's no shortage of ridiculous ideas searching for presidential validation.

But among the multiple requests for state secession and Death Star construction are some issues that the administration should be responding to -- like marijuana legalization/regulation, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, free access to tax-funded scientific research -- but clearly is choosing not to. A US News and World Report article points out that the White House's hit-and-miss approach seems to treat the petition site as another soapbox for cherry-picked issues.
The White House's "We the People" website just got its most popular petition to date: a request to officially designate the Westboro Baptist church as a hate group. The petition was started on Dec. 14, the same day a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., left 27 people dead, 20 of them children, and the day the fringe church announced it would picket the victims' funerals.

The petition now has more than 260,000 signatures, far and above the 25,000 signature needed for official response.

But the White House has not yet responded to the Westboro petition—or to any of the rather uncommon requests that have flooded the site over the last few months (to secede from the Union, to make American Sign Language an official language or to nationalize Twinkies).
The White House immediately responded, however, to a petition calling to reduce gun violence after the Newtown shooting, an issue President Barack Obama has said he's keen to address. In a sit-down video response, Obama carefully explained the ways in which he'd work to make children's schools more safe.
Looking through the archives, many petitions that have been answered fall well below the 25,000 signatures needed to "force" a response, while many others well over the limit continue to be ignored. For every ignored secession request (Texas holds the lead with 123K signatures), there's a response for White House beer recipes (12,240 signatures). For every request to strip the Westboro Church of its tax exempt status (multiple - leader has 70K+ signatures), there's a response to a petition for ending "pet homelessness" (11,729 signatures).

While many of the current leaders have dubious import (deport Piers Morgan for attacking the 2nd amendment - 88K signatures), the simple fact is that the responses are being doled out in a fashion that makes a majority of the site's offerings nothing more than colorful wallpaper. The rationale behind the White House's general lack of response is unsurprising:
J.H. Snider, a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, predicted in The Huffington Post in October 2011 that "We The People" would "probably only have a short life ... because the interests of the public and elected officials differ."
Those few that have been answered have generated their own criticism. In response to multiple petitions concerning the legalization of marijuana, the administration handed the "reply" duties over to its current drug czar, who was more than happy to reassert his position's normal talking points.

On the plus side, the administration has responded to 87 petitions so far and has even spent some time explaining why it cannot respond directly to certain requests. And it's a step in the right direction that the site is still up and running. But as long as the White House continues to address only its pet issues, while ignoring a majority of the posted petitions, the more this site becomes nothing more than the internet version of the supervisor who asks for suggestions from the staff before implementing his own ideas -- lots of nodding and thoughtful noises, but very little in direct response or action. 

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]]> could-dismiss-1/3-of-petitions-with-'lolwut'-response http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121228/10470921512 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:03:25 PST Public Opposition Accelerates As Latest Anti-SOPA Petition Hits Goal In Two Days Zachary Knight http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111219/21230217135/public-opposition-accelerates-as-latest-anti-sopa-petition-hits-goal-two-days.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111219/21230217135/public-opposition-accelerates-as-latest-anti-sopa-petition-hits-goal-two-days.shtml no real concern from the public regarding the legislation. They like to claim that only those who profit from piracy really want to block this bill. Yet, we see time and time again this is not true. With letter writing campaigns from groups such as the EFF, Public Knowledge and Demand Progress having generated hundreds of thousands of letters, emails and phone calls from concerned citizens, the pro-SOPA groups have had to resort to drastic inflation to defend their side. We now have further evidence that such widespread opposition to SOPA is not only growing but accelerating as well. This evidence comes in the form of two We The People petitions on the White House website.

The first of these petitions, titled "Stop the E-PARASITE Act", was created back on October 31 when SOPA was known as E-PARASITES. This petition slowly gained signatures for about two weeks and then had a surge of support when the House Judiciary Committee held its stacked hearing on the legislation. On November 16, the petition hit its 25,000 signature goal, a full 14 days before its deadline.

Fast forward to December 18. Only a few days after the House Judiciary Committee held its SOPA markup, a new petition surfaced, "VETO the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information". With the markup fresh in the minds of those opposed to SOPA, this petition reached its target of 25,000 signatures on December 19, the second day after going public. That is quite the feat.

If there is no real public concern over SOPA, as supporters of the bill claim, who are these people? Why are they so mobilized to sign and complete far ahead of the deadline not one but two White House petitions in opposition to the legislation? Regardless of who these people are or what their motivations for opposition to SOPA are, one thing is clear, these people want action and answers. While there is no time frame for when the Obama Administration will respond, one thing is clear, SOPA is a hot button issue and those trying to force its way through Congress will not be able to ignore the public for much longer.

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]]> that-was-fast http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111219/21230217135 Tue, 8 Nov 2011 09:17:46 PST We, The People, Are Sarcastic And Not Easily Mollified By Bland Political Non-Answers Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111107/18294916672/we-people-are-sarcastic-not-easily-mollified-bland-political-non-answers.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111107/18294916672/we-people-are-sarcastic-not-easily-mollified-bland-political-non-answers.shtml We, The People petition site is definitely an interesting experiment in an attempt to be more open in governing. However, as we discovered last week when we mentioned the petition against SOPA/E-PARASITE, many people believe that the administration is not really taking the whole thing seriously. In particular, there's been a fair amount of anger over the bland, political non-answers given to issues raised in the petitions. That's resulted in a petition to take the petitions more seriously, as well as a slightly more sarcastic response (found via Ars Technica), in the form of a petition demanding "a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition."
We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.
While extremely snarky, it's a pretty good way of making a point. While the press may be mollified with boring standard political emptiness, the public is pretty damn sick of it. It seems like the public really yearns for just a bit of authenticity out there, and that's not what's coming back. Unfortunately, petitioning for authenticity just doesn't seem likely to get much of a result.

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]]> yearning-for-authenticity http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111107/18294916672 Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:44:00 PDT Once Again, Dead Content Creators Seem To Sign A Lot Of Pro-Stronger Copyright Petitions Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100924/10292111155/once-again-dead-content-creators-seem-to-sign-a-lot-of-pro-stronger-copyright-petitions.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100924/10292111155/once-again-dead-content-creators-seem-to-sign-a-lot-of-pro-stronger-copyright-petitions.shtml had a bunch of signatures from artists who were dead. Apparently, they wanted copyright protection from beyond the grave. That worked so well in the UK, that it's apparently been expanded to all of Europe. We recently noted that the pro-stronger copyright Gallo Report was approved by the EU Parliament, but now some are noticing that the petitions in favor of it, once again, appear to have included at least one dead filmmaker. Separately, some noticed that the signatures appeared to include a disproportionate number of Hungarians, so Amelia Andersdotter decided to contact a few of the Hungarian filmmakers listed as having signed the document, and they told her they never signed any such thing. Other petitions show similar oddities, including content creators who have come out in favor of file sharing and those not even in the EU. From the looks of things, there's at least a pretty strong appearance of various industry groups simply signing the names of a long list of filmmakers and musicians to pad the listings...

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]]> funny-how-that-works http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100924/10292111155 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:00:00 PST Are Facebook Groups the New (and Improved) Online Petitions? Blaise Alleyne http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081211/1009493089.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081211/1009493089.shtml online petitions were pretty common, but they never were that effective at actually lobbying government, mainly because there's no easy way to validate signatures. The concept was ported straight from the analog world to the digital, but it's interesting to see how government lobbying has evolved online. The Ontario government recently backed down from proposed restrictions on young drivers in the face of a significant backlash, which included a Facebook group that gathered over 150,000 members. The Premier, Dalton McGuinty, mused about conducting consultations through Facebook and, though that never materialized, the group was cited as one of the major indications that the government had "stepped in it." Earlier this year, another Facebook group, Fair Copyright for Canada, had caught the attention of the national parliament in Canada.

What is it that Facebook groups have that online petitions don't? First of all, 150,000 members in a Facebook group is not the equivalent of 150,000 signatures on a (real) petition. A portion of this group's members are probably not even from Ontario (though at least Facebook provides some assurance that most members are real individual people). But, in the same way that 150,000 signatures isn't the same as 150,000 people at a rally outside the legislature, you take the context into account. It's a pretty significant number for getting a sense of a public reaction -- the government definitely hit a nerve here. A Facebook group also contains associated debate and discussion, links to other efforts (websites, YouTube videos, etc.) and a means for members to coordinate further efforts online and offline. It's more about organizing protest efforts than simply presenting a list of names.

Obviously, there are other relevant services besides Facebook (and there are lots of silly Facebook groups), but the Facebook example serves as an interesting illustration of how this sort of political activism has evolved from the digital attempt at petitions to a more involved hub of activity. In Canada, we see examples of politicians now beginning to pay attention, but to get involved -- like McGuinty suggested through consultations and like the Obama team has demonstrated through a campaign -- would take things to another level.

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