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I stand by my comment. | 559 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Another factor: Simple Volume!
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 16 2013 @ 03:04 PM EST

Caveat: Let's pretend all the petitions are reasonable and call for Legal solutions.

To put the factor in a short phrase:

    Volume Overrun!
There's a finite number of people working on Capitol Hill to begin with.

Secondly, there's a lot of other things that are on-going and need far more immediate attention. The world isn't going to stop just because someone feels their particular need is more important.

That all amounts to an even more finite amount of resources going to deal with the We The People petitions.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if the following points were all true:

    1) The Government under-estimated how many would appear!
    2) The initial use - before the common person even heard of the potential - was well more then the Government expected
    3) The full use, once everyone becomes more aware of the tool and it falls into a more "stable societal use" state - well... the Government is still unprepared for even though they've got a bit of a wake up call
Add all that up and it's like having so much work to do you are so overwhelmed you can't accomplish anything.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if they have to raise the level again just to get the "working list" down to a reasonable level.

When you have 50 things to do, it's far, far, far easier to prioritize then if you have 73,000 things to do.

I know I'd be overwhelmed if I had 73k different petitions to try and prioritize.

Ah well - instead of increasing the thresh-hold in order to allow the people to decide which should be prioritized over the others - I suppose they could just put the list into a computer and randomly prioritized them.

I agree: it's much too early to start spreading doom and gloom on the process. Patience to let this new tool smooth itself out is required at this point.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Semi-simple solution
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 16 2013 @ 03:21 PM EST
If you sign a petition for something that is unconstitutional on the face of it,
they void your signature on all petitions.

That should get rid of some of the nutjobs.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I stand by my comment.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 16 2013 @ 05:34 PM EST
Meaningless drivel is meaningless drivel, whether there's one signature or
100,000. We The People is perceived, and rightly so, as a means of drawing
attention to issues, without having to deal with an immobile, paid off Congress,
or expensive litigation. Yes, there are lots of idiots out there, on line. The
petition to remove Ortiz was posted on 12 JAN, and has achieved 37,676
signatures as of today, 16 JAN. Pre-censorship is not a solution. Neither is
raising the threshold. I suggested 25,000 in one week, 100,000 in one month,
fail either, and it's deleted.

The Aaron Swartz case is hot, more so now after his suicide. 25,000 sigs in 4
days? Removal of a U.S. DA? Frankly, I think they don't want to hear about it,
and they are beginning to rethink this whole 'We The People' thing.

albert

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Why We’re Raising the Signature Threshold for We the People
Authored by: Tyro on Wednesday, January 16 2013 @ 11:26 PM EST
Sorry, but they have a history of ignoring serious petitions that get enough
signatures, or, once, pulling a petition when it was around 500 signatures short
of when they would officially be required to respond.

That site isn't anything but political theater, and they have always ignored it
whenever it was inconvenient.

P.S.: If it's a silly petition, a response of "Sorry, but that's a silly
thing to ask for" would meet their publicly specified commitments.
Refusing to respond doesn't meet those commitments. (And they *do* understand
this. Note the response they made to the request to build a
"DeathStar" [or was it to not build a "DeathStar?].)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Political Theatre - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 17 2013 @ 04:35 AM EST
    • Political Theatre - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 17 2013 @ 12:43 PM EST
      • Political Theatre - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 18 2013 @ 04:19 AM EST
it's disappointing anyway
Authored by: designerfx on Thursday, January 17 2013 @ 07:35 AM EST
the fact that these online petitions don't get responses
from the office a majority of the time shows that it's just
a game, and far less something that has actual impact. So
now they just want less of them to reply to.

I know techdirt took it as a great thing (popularity, etc) -
and if they're going to actually dedicate themselves to
responding to ones with 100k signatures that's fine.
However, I doubt that's the intentions here.

What's the last time any of those petitions resulted in
anything significant? There isn't one I can think of off the
top of my head. The one where they reply to star wars is
humor and nice to see a human reply but I see that more that
the administration takes the entire petition website as a
joke.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Why We’re Raising the Signature Threshold for We the People
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, January 20 2013 @ 04:19 AM EST
We are talking about the U.S. here. Numbers don't provide a guarantee that a
proposal is not pushed by a bunch of nuts.

Sifting by numbers means that things that are harming a minority are not
suitable for petition. Please note that "hatming a minority" is not
the same as "benefiting a majority".

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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