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Increase to 180 days the days allowed to get enough signatures (currently 25,000) for an official White House response

Created by J.S. on October 13, 2011

Currently, We The People only allows 30 days for gathering enough signatures to reach the 25,000 threshold to receive an official response. This was hard enough to do when the White House set the threshold at 5,000 signatures. Now it is much harder. No good democratic rationale exists for such a rush: the quality of petitions does not increase as the time period allowed to sign them is decreased from 180 to 30 days. Instead, the shorter time period primarily disenfranchises a large part of the population that may need time to mobilize support. The democratic rationale for We The People should be simple: use new technology to allow politically underrepresented groups to mobilize support. The short time period to gather signatures is incompatible with that purpose.

Civil Rights & Equality
Government & Regulatory Reform
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