Yesterday we brought you the story of the White House’s petitions website, where any American can post a petition on an issue, and if that petition is signed 25,000 times, it gets addressed by the White House in an official statement. Well, after petitions to do things like build a Death Star and deport a British-born American newscaster for saying stuff about gun control reached that mark easily, and the threat of other internet-friendly petitions, that ask to build the Enterprise or for each state in the union to name a state pokémon looming nigh, the White House decided this week to raise the minimum number of signatures a petition requires.
But according to a new petition on the site, they forgot a very important loophole.
Because now there’s a petition to lower the number of signatures needed to get a petition adressed by the White House.
According to the Daily Dot, it reads:
We, the 100,000 People of the United States, demand that the petition level for taking us seriously goes back down to 25,000 people.
And the makers of it are quite serious, pointing out that the use of the petition website is one way for the average American citizen to get their voice heard at the very top of the executive ladder. One reason why the White House is quadrupling the requirement to get petitions heard, I’m sure, is because of the increased frequency of joke petitions or petitions for acts that are clearly not within the White House’s constitutional abilities now that the site is gaining prominence. If the White House is going to take high ranking petitions seriously, it needs a bar that actually weeds out the ones that aren’t serious. Otherwise, the site isn’t really functioning as that good method of communication between the people and the President.
