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Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

Whether the threshold is 100K or 100M, nothing has happened yet as a result of a "successful" petition. Sure, the stupid petitions give them a chance to giggle at the rubes. The most reasonable petitions get essentially the same reaction, however. ["Legalize pot? I think we can guess what they were smoking when they signed that one! Hahahaha!"] As much as I wish it were otherwise, I expect the same for the current "fire the prosecutor" petition. Ortiz might be reassigned to a different state, but only as part of a promotion: she's been "playing ball". They want federal prosecutors to be tone-deaf automatons of sovereign vengeance out of any sense of proportion. This petition is proof that she is what they want. She'll probably print out the page and have it framed for her new office in New York or DC or wherever.

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> Whether the threshold is 100K or 100M, nothing has happened yet as a result of a "successful" petition.

This isn't true. For example, the White House had been intentionally silent on the issue of SOPA until two petitions pushed it to take a stand, which had a not small impact on the outcome of the legislation.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/14/obama-administrati...

> The most reasonable petitions get essentially the same reaction, however. ["Legalize pot? I think we can guess what they were smoking when they signed that one! Hahahaha!"]

Please cite examples. I am aware of two responses to marijuana legalization petitions. Both were reasonable, respectful, and laid out why the White House disagreed with the petitioners.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/support-law-protec...

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-regul...

It's neither reasonable nor respectful to maintain that cannabis ought to be prohibited.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvNmYA3ZPPs

Representative democracy is just that: representative, not direct. You have people who represent a whole body (district/state/whatever), not a drone that will pull a lever when you tell him to. They should try to determine what their whole electorate wants, not just the majority of it, and then faithfully represent that point of view in various ways, which is not just voting or fielding new laws.

Petitioning, per se, has always been a sort of plea, a supplication to the ruler that he should pay attention to something. You bring the petition to your ruler, he reads it, and then does what his conscience suggests him to do (which might be to prosecute every single signatory, for what we know). This hasn't changed. Petitions are tools to get topics "on the radar", providing another datapoint to decision-makers; nothing more, nothing less.

If you want direct democracy, then you need a website where you can propose laws and force the legislative branch to actually vote on them. This is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it's a quagmire waiting to happen (unless you really want laws glorifying Anonymous or public buildings dedicated to moot).

> They should try to determine what their whole electorate wants

I'd argue that they should determine what they whole electorate wants... but they should be striving for what their whole electorate needs. It may not get them re-elected, but getting re-elected isn't "supposed" to be their job, doing what's best for the people they represent is.

Sadly, none of that seems even close to common practice.

Yeah, there is an ongoing debate on the meaning of "representation", of course. After all, most electoral systems are based on geographical locations, but actual politicians usually belong to specific parties "representing" different political philosophies, so there's a friction even at a theoretical level. Add to that the vagaries of actual electoral rules (first-past-the-post etc etc) and an inevitable dose of human nature (corruption, ambition etc), and you have a recipe for the clusterfuck that is modern representative democracy.

Unfortunately, the few alternative models emerging in the last century (usually just variations on one-party rule, really) backfired quite spectacularly, so we're nowhere near finding better solutions to the problem.

We have direct democracy in California and the world isn't ending. I think essentially you just gather enough signatures for an issue and it gets put to a direct vote on the same ballot as the presidential elections.

Although it's by no means perfect (what is?), it does help solve the problem of special interests being able to buy politicians.

I'm not incredibly familiar with CA, but I'd argue you probably have some provisions for direct democracy, akin to referenda or people-proposed laws in some European countries. The main system is still fundamentally representative in nature.

Yes, but the point is that allowing people to directly petition the government via gathering signatures, which then triggers a public vote of the citizens, does not lead to quagmire. Far from it.

When done offline, no. When done online, though, it's a whole different ballgame. Even limited automation of electronic voting has been proven extremely unreliable and prone to fraud. This is not a big deal when consequences are limited (i.e. petitions, non-binding surveys etc), but when actual legislative action starts depending entirely on a few electrons, then it's a scandal waiting to happen.

The purpose of the petitions is to provide input as to what issues concern people, not to provide a list of things to be the subjects of immediate executive orders. The kind of action we should expect from a successful petition is to put the issue on the agenda, which may lead to policy changes and legislative action.

Interestingly in this scheme, it's not just one way as you made it sound. As soon as the petition reaches a certain threshold it warrants an official answer from the governing body stating their approach on the matter. This way both petitioners and non-petitioners have a glimpse into the decisions that might be taken or not taken on the matter, and decide what to do when election time comes.

What do you suggest then? Resigning ourselves to apathy would seem to play right into their hand. Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start.

> Obviously a lot more than a petition is necessary to effect change, but it seems a reasonable place to start.

If you live in the United States you have a congressperson. Contacting them is a much more reasonable place to start.

Okay, but a petition is a public focal point that takes 30 seconds to contribute too. The cynical attitude "I'm not going to do this because it won't help" is probably a greater negative to one's personal effect on the cause than however much time it might waste.

With the current legislature, a local vocal group of constituents is a much more effective means of citizen-government communication than an internet survey that takes 30 seconds to contribute to.

Why is it either-or?

I like the idea that of there being some easy middle ground between doing nothing and going to the effort of calling/emailing/writing a congressperson. If the person you were responding to is correct and nothing of consequence has come of these petitions, that is not what this is.

Venting that effort into something that doesn't work at all does not strike me as a net positive.

The petitions are ignored precisely because it takes so little effort to do. I'd also imagine that lots of people say 'oh, I signed that petition, I don't need to do anything else'.

Take the long view. Organize and build a large, broad-based coalition of support and advocate strategically and creatively for the change you want to see. It's the only thing that ever works.

And I'd argue that that's a good thing. Being able to get an official comment and maybe some future consideration of the issue from the White House is one thing, but being able to substantially impact policy by getting a relatively small number of people (in Internet terms) to spend a minute signing an online petition doesn't seem like a high enough threshold. Requiring the kind of effort you're talking about doesn't guarantee positive change either, but I think it helps ensure people really want the change their advocating.

I'm sure some people like the idea of being able to successfully demand that individuals in government be fired through the petition system, but that seems like a Pandora's box if ever there was one.

A more reasonable place to start appears to be making a lot of money and then using it to lobby relentlessly.

Fact: you'll care less about this stuff once you have a lot of money.

I suspect a neurochemical basis for this - when one is rich and in the higher echelons of society, it goes to reason that their brains will have more serotonin swimming around due to a) better food and b) more socialising.

Having higher levels of serotonin makes us more blind to unfairness:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5884/1739.abstract

> We observed the effects of manipulating 5-HT function on behavior in the ultimatum game, where players must decide whether to accept or reject fair or unfair monetary offers from another player. Participants with depleted 5-HT levels rejected a greater proportion of unfair offers, but not fair offers, without showing changes in mood, fairness judgment, basic reward processing, or response inhibition.

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