Perhaps the new White House petition site should be called “We the (Too Many) People.”
The White House announced today it will raise the threshold for official responses on its We the People petition platform after 30 of them reached the 5,000 signature barrier.
“This many petitions challenges our ability to offer timely and meaningful responses to petitions in the long term,” White House New Media Director Macon Phillips wrote on the White House blog.
Petitions created from this point forward must now get 25,000 signatures in 30 days to get an official response. The previous threshold will stay in place for all previously created petitions.
In total, people have already created 7,800 petitions on “We the People,” getting more than 600,000 signatures from the more than 375,000 people that have created an account.
Newly created petitions will still need 150 signatures to be searchable on WhiteHouse.gov. Phillips said that the thresholds could be changed again in the future depending on the use of the site.
