if its anything like the UK version it'll be full of stupid petitions asking about pointless things such as "can we have national walk like an egyptian day" etc

So, anybody have any petition ideas? Can we petition "the messiah" to resign? How about we all sign a petition to bring our troops home NOW? I think the vast majority of us here agree on that topic.

My take on this is that it's some lame attempt on the part of government to try to defuse revolutionary fervor. The misguided hope that if they pretend to listen to our "petition for redress of grievances" we'll think they actually care and will do something.

I suppose if you're one of those people who actually believed the propaganda you heard in 5th-grade Civics class (that's what it was called in the '60s; sorry, I don't know what that class is called now), then you might think that it's actually an attempt to make government responsive to your needs and desires. Good luck on that, citizen....

How about an expert panel of 12 document specialists to confirm the long form BC is on file and in order?

That cant be that hard can it?

Originally posted by Shadowalker
How about an expert panel of 12 document specialists to confirm the long form BC is on file and in order?

That cant be that hard can it?

find me 12 experts that every person with a vested interest in the matter will accept their word as gospel even if God turned up and said its legit there would still be some who would think that God's lying

Let me save you all alot of time and aggravation. This administration (as well as its predecessor) regularly launches new 'feel good' access progams to involve The People. I've been working with various entities in DC for over 4yrs across two administrations. We have dealt with these programs as they poppped-up from the White House, HUD, Treasury and others. We have submitted vetted materials through these various portals/programs, have had secretary-level meetings in some cases and had a program of ours rank #1 by over a factor of 2 based upon public voting and input. Where did it go? Nowhere.

We've learned that they truly don't give a crap about what any of us think, say or feel. They truly don't. We've had one-on-ones with 5 different Congressman from both parties. What did we learn? They don't care. Not about The People. Their handlers/benefactors most assuredly, but not We The People. More than likely this is simply going to end up being a ploy to collect the identities of 'malcontents'.

Been there, done that. A waste of time.

If a petition meets the signature threshold, it will be reviewed by the Administration and an official response will be issued. And we’ll make sure that the petition is sent to the appropriate policy makers in the Administration.

The initial threshold to get a response from the Administration is 5,000 signatures.

So essentially what they are saying is that they'll issue a canned response. I.e. if a petition comes up "End the wars!!!", even if it gets 15,000 signatures, way more than the 5,000 required, a response would probably be something like "This administration firmly believes in peace, but we need to finish what we started in the wars." I fail to see how this would actually accomplish anything.

We've had this in the UK for some time. If a petition gets more than 100,000 signatures it gets debated in Parliament. Nothing of great significance has happened yet, but it's a handy tool for letting the Government know how people feel about issues and may have an effect on policy even if the petition doesn't directly result in a change of law.