I think that's a bit paranoid. I think it is simply because there are now loads of petitions, often at least partially redundant, that easily reach the 25k thre

I think that's a bit paranoid. I think it is simply because there are now loads of petitions, often at least partially redundant, that easily reach the 25k threshold. To answer all of those they'd have to expend an unreasonable amount of time and they want a more reasonable threshold to filter out those petitions that really matter to people. For example, if I click on "popular petitions" right now, there are at least 5 petitions about the Westboro Baptist Chruch with more than 25k votes, and some of these are outright duplicates. Repealing Obamacare seems to be another popular topic. Basically it seems that, because it is relatively easy to vote, you can find 25k people on the Internet to vote for more or less anything, overwhelming the administration with petitions that wouldn't actually find much support in the population.