Say,this catering to populist whim is sort of tricky, eh?
When we launched We the People, none of us knew how popular it would be, but it's exceeded our wildest expectations. Through the past year, interest in We the People exploded and we're closing in on 10 million signatures.
When we first raised the threshold — from 5,000 to 25,000 — we called it "a good problem to have." Turns out that "good problem" is only getting better, so we're making another adjustment to ensure we’re able to continue to give the most popular ideas the time they deserve.
Starting today, as we move into a second term, petitions must receive 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order to receive an official response from the Obama Administration. This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist.
In the last two months of 2012, use of We the People more than doubled. In just that time roughly 2.4 million new users joined the system, 73,000 petitions were created and 4.9 million signatures were registered.
It couldn't possibly be because some of the petitions are, oh, not exactly what the White House was hoping for, could it? Deport Piers Morgan! Let us secede! Build a Death Star! Maybe they should raise the bar even more, to, say, 51 percent of the population. Oh, wait. . .
I bet we could get 100,000 signatures in Indiana to have pi rounded up to 3.2.
