Years after politicians and government officials began using Internet surveys and online outreach as tools to engage people, the results overall have been questionable.
While there is no doubt that online advocacy works in campaigns, critics say that many of these government programs are geared simply to perpetuate the feel-good notion that Americans can participate more directly, with few tangible results to argue that they work. Programs that are rigged to provide partisan responses, or to gather donor information, have raised more questions still.
Some programs do draw large numbers of participants—and all the problems that come with it. When it began, the White House's We the People site required 25,000 signatures within 30 days to get a response from the administration. That threshold was increased to 100,000, on the heels of a bombardment of petitions, including ones for the Death Star effort.
Topics of petitions have run from the serious to the ridiculous. For example, earlier this month the White House rejected a petition idea that called for establishing a "Gun Free Zone" around the president, vice president, and their families, which would mean no armed security. The petition was seen as the product of an organized effort by gun-rights advocates, angered by the president's gun-control efforts following the Newtown, Conn., shootings.
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