One year ago, the Trump administration relaunched the official White House petition website, continuing a promise to respond to petitions with 100,000 signatures. But over the past 11 months, President Trump’s deputies have not responded to a single demand that met the threshold.
As the site stagnates, it has attracted off-kilter and increasingly foreign-focused concerns, with responses earned by non-black South African separatists, opponents of a port project in Okinawa, and a creator alleging a “Holocaust in East Turkistan.”
Other recently successful petitions demand the impeachment of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and expulsion of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
“What we are left with is this odd embarrassment,” said David Karpf, a George Washington University professor who has tracked the site, which debuted in 2011 under then-President Barack Obama.
Karpf said the Obama administration was imperfect in implementing its vow of citizen engagement, but that now “there’s no meaningful difference” between dormancy and pulling the plug on the site.
Twenty-seven petitions have crossed the 100,000-signature threshold during the Trump administration. But just seven received a promised response, all in early March 2018.
The White House petition site relaunched last year after switching vendors as part of a broader White House website overhaul said to save $3 million a year.
A White House spokesman did not supply updated information on cost savings, or comment on whether there will be a renewed effort to respond to petitions.
Tom Cochran, who led the White House technology team that created the petition site, said the Obama administration wasn’t perfect, but that by using the site it showed “a willingness to listen and engage with the public.”
“I’m happy it survived the transition,” Cochran said about the site. “What I’m upset about … is that it’s not actually being used.”
Cochran said that under Trump, “I don’t think it’s a top priority.”
“Look at what’s happened to the press briefings. They are far fewer and far less of a priority. And I think that would be in line with that strategy. Or maybe there isn’t even a strategy around it,” he said.
Creating a White House petition during the Obama administration was a reliable springboard onto daytime cable news channels, allowing the administration to hammer home a political message, or users to generate a new angle to trending news.
At its height, the Obama White House responded in 2013 to a popular petition demanding construction of a Death Star spacecraft and credited a petition with helping create momentum for 2014 legislation that requires cellphone service providers to unlock phones so they can be taken from one provider to another.
But even under Obama, there were objections, with critics saying it was essentially a propaganda tool. In one instance, the White House took 25 months to respond to a petition demanding a pardon for exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, who had embarrassed Obama by exposing mass surveillance programs.
“It wasn’t really a platform for engaging in highly controversial topics. I don’t think the administration or any administration is ready to use this as a referendum on highly critical issues,” Cochran said. “Things like gun control , Trump taxes, Antifa — I don’t think you’re going to see major movement on those issues. [But] the platform is a way to take the temperature of public opinion.”
