White House Petition Demands That White House Answer White House Petitions
After months of waiting, people have had it. Well, as of Friday, at least a few hundred people have had it anyway.
The White House Petitions website is now the subject of a petition on the White House website that calls for the White House Petitions website to answer White House Petitions on the White House Petitions website.
A petition posted on April Fools' Day (or April Atheists' Day in some circles) demands that the White House answer every petition that has gotten more than 100,000 signatories within one month of reaching their goal.
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In other words, the moment a petition gets its 100,000th name of support, the White House has 30 days to find someone to give an official response; any official response technically. Even a bad one, in fact.
"The idea is that if more than 100,000 people all feel strongly enough about something to hand over their home address and personal email to the government and complete a nearly impossible CAPTCHA, then the President of the United States should have to respond to them," says the petition.
"Here's the problem: there are dozens of Whitehouse.gov petitions that have received more than 100k signatures, but have gone months and even years without a response … That's not improving transparency, it's the same gov't spin we've always had."
Created by "E.G." of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, the petition has already garnered support from numerous people across the United States of America.
Known as the "We the People: Your Voice in Our Government" website, it was established by Obama Administration for more direct communication between Americans and the White House.
"The idea of petitioning the White House or the government isn't new, but this online platform is," reads the "How & Why" section of the site.
"We the People provides a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. We created We the People because we want to hear from you. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it's sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response."
Initially the goal a petition needed to reach was 25,000; however that led to the Obama Administration having to explain why they will not build a Death Star.
Eventually the limit was increased to 100,000, a number reached and easily passed by a petition demanding that the Canadian menace Justin Bieber be deported from our fair nation.
The Bieber petition, likely supported by all who value good quality music, reached and rapidly passed the 100,000 mark back in late January.
"There will be a response when the threshold is crossed. That response will come, I'm sure, relatively soon," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
By the way, he said that over two months ago.
While the petition has all of the month of April to gather enough signatures, there is unfortunately no guaranteed time table for a response to the petition calling for a guaranteed time table.
