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Do these petitions do any good? That is, is it even worthwhile to sign it? Or is our time better spent elsewhere.
by dhimes 15y ago
Do these petitions do any good? That is, is it even worthwhile to sign it? Or is our time better spent elsewhere.
- nicki_easy 15y agoI've been utterly disappointed at the handful of official responses so far (http://blog.norml.org/2011/10/29/white-house-response-to-normls-we-the-people-marijuana-legalization-petition/ http://blog.norml.org/2011/10/29/white-house-response-to-nor...), but it's worthwhile giving it a shot, no? While you're there, I'm also a fan of the petitions that the petitions be taken seriously.
- phsr 15y agoThere was actually a meta-petition[1] recently that was asking for the White House to pay more attention to these petitions, so it seems like these petitions are mostly ignored [1] https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/actually-...
- sixtofour 15y agoOf course they're ignored. Everything that comes across a politician's attention is an opportunity for him to reinforce his message. The petitions are not there for us to influence them. They're there (they spent effort to put them there) for them to influence us.
- tekante 15y agoThe petitions are looked at if they receive enough signatures, right now this one needs a little over 23,000 more signatures by November 30th. I would view it as one more avenue of making your opinion known to elected officials. In addition to informing your congressperson and senator to try to prevent the bill from passing this would be a way to endorse a veto from the executive branch. I believe it does as much good as anything else you can do in the amount of time it takes to sign it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- wizard_2 15y agoI find it even stranger that this petition is on whitehouse.gov. The real issue though is that this bill wont die, I'm sick of hearing of its lunacy and the fact that it's even in the house irks me to no end. That's why I signed it.
- JadeNB 15y agoGiven how easy it is to sign it, does it matter?
- dhimes 15y agoIf it fools people into thinking they actually did something when in fact they didn't, then it could be detrimental to the cause. For instance, my father was under the impression that his will was totally legal and everything was taken care of. His misinformation led him to look no further, and as a result, when he passed, things were messy because the will wasn't valid.
- jbooth 15y agoIt's still less effort than writing a comment on HN.
- canes123456 15y agoYou are missing the point.
- jiggy2011 15y agoNot sure about how these work in the US but I know in Britain our e-petitions have some rule whereby if they get over a certain threshold of signitures (around 100,000 I believe) then the house of commons must assign time to talk about the issues. The problem being that most of the petitions that get any significant number of signitures are predictable , populist stuff like "Britain should leave the EU" , "bring back hanging" and "legalise Marijuana" , basically stuff that if the government had any inclination to do they would have already done by now so really all it does is waste everybody's time.
- Cushman 15y agoIn terms of effort:outcome ratio, it probably ranks somewhere under "voting" and somewhere over "arguing on the Internet". Your call.