Lack of oversight creates an incentive for the Administration to throttle or freeze petitions that it doesn't like in order to prevent them from reaching the minimum number for an official response. Most recently, petitions have shown signs of this throttling/freezing such as; "M855" and "Vaccines".
This has the effect of building the perception that ideas (good or bad) are not popular when they are and stifles speech that does not mesh with official narrative.
We need to demand third-party oversight by organizations who will will be able to check visits to the site and attempts to sign the petition. Good candidates for this role are Pro-Publica and the ACLU. A simple visit and signature counter is all that we request.