[hakaaak]

Here is the reality. Serious concerns will get few votes. Things such as building a death star that are completely stupid and not serious get lots of votes.

So what this is really saying is, "We're going to raise the threshold so we won't have to waste effort replying to your death star petitions, and btw we don't give a fuck about the little man and never did. Fuck you. Case closed. Now if we can get the media to sponsor some petition we really care about like banning all assault weapons or raising the debt ceiling, then you can vote on that, and we'll be glad to tell you why you have a great idea."

[tkahn6]

The change in policy means that instead of needing 0.013% of the voting age population to sign your petition you need 0.052%.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28+25%2C000+people+%2F...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28+100%2C000+people+%2...

Please leave the hyperbole and fatalistic rhetoric on other sites.

[hakaaaak]

Killed my other account last night as I swore again I'd stop posting to HN... that didn't work I suppose.

Do you not understand that raising the threshold 4x is going to reduce the chance of the little man getting his concern addressed by a factor of 4?

My point was that the petitions I've seen on that site getting to the top are too often just joke petitions, and yet there are many legitimate petitions that don't get enough votes to meet the thresholds but should be addressed. Joke petitions have given them a reason to not address serious issues, and the more the threshold gets raised, the less of a chance that serious issues will get addressed.

If you seriously think that you can get 0.52% of the voting age population to sign an online petition, think about how much money and time both political parties had to spend just trying to get people to vote for president and how they were pouring millions into swaying 1% of the population. 0.013% vs. 0.52% is a HUGE difference even though it might not seem like it.

[tkahn6]

0.052%