© Photograph: Lucasfilm/Ronald Grant Archive
Recent petitions have asked the White House to allow Texas to secede, to deport Piers Morgan and to build a Death Star.
After We the People site sees surge in popularity, Obama administration quadruples the previous 25,000 threshold.
The White House has quadrupled the number of signatures required to receive an official response to petitions submitted on its
We the People website, after a surge in its popularity.
The Obama administration will now only be required to respond when a petition gathers 100,000 signatures, up from the previous 25,000.
Use of the We the People site doubled in the final two months of 2012, when petitions were added to grant Texas the right to secede from the US, to deport Piers Morgan and to keep him in the US ("because the UK doesn't want him"). All easily passed the 25,000 signature threshold.
Macon Phillips, White House director of digital strategy, wrote in a
blog post that the site's popularity exceeded the "wildest expectations".
"When we first raised the threshold - from 5,000 to 25,000 - we called it 'a good problem to have,'" Phillips said. "Turns out that 'good problem' is only getting better, so we're making another adjustment to ensure we're able to continue to give the most popular ideas the time they deserve."
