After Obama won the election earlier this month, many petitions have gone up onto the We the People website. Anyone can post a petition on the We the People website, and if a petition gets more than 25,000 signatures, it must be reviewed by the White House. All 50 states have a petition to secede, but the Texas petition has the most signatures. Currently there are 117,108 signatures on Texas's petition. While these petitions aren't from the states themselves, it is alarming that a petition to secede from the Untied States can get so many signatures. I think that many of the signatures may just be the initial reaction of people upset by the results of the election, but at the same time, many of the signatures are also from people seriously wanting to withdraw from the United States and create their own government.
There are also petitions in response to the secession petitions on the We the People website. One petitions says to, "Deport Everyone That Signed A Petition To Withdraw Their State From The United States Of America." If people really were deported for signing that petition, that would be a clear violation of the first amendment. Even so, that petition has 25,375 signatures.
Both the secession petitions and the one wanting to deport the people who signed them are both very extreme, so the number of signatures that both of those petitions received is an alarming wake up call of how upset people are with the current state of the government. The fact that even a small percentage of americans would be comfortable with splitting up the United States, or others would be willing to so blatantly ignore the first amendment, even if we are in perilous times, is unnerving.
Why do you think people signed either of these petitions? And how do you think the White House could best respond to these petitions?
I find it interesting how this is the only election I have heard about states wanting to secede afterwards. However, I believe the "We the People" petitions are also fairly new, so the secession requests are probably there only because it's available now.
ReplyDeleteAs for the deportation petition, I don't think that they are serious. To me, it seems like a quick, satirical, and unreasonable response to a seemingly unreasonable request. I don't think that any of the secession or deportation petitions should be responded to, as it is the state government's role to deal with those sort of things.