Those "hit X signatures and the government will consider your request" petitions irritate me to no end. Not because of the people sharing them, but because their institution is such a farce of 'democracy'.

Like, the appeal is clear. "You can influence government policy, just sign these petitions!", and that makes them an appealing tool for governments to use to give citizens the impression that they're participating. But no, you're really not.

Here's the fundamental problem with them: the amounts of signatures that these things require are very high, and the counterpart obligations on the government are extremely low. Generally they require nothing more than 'consideration' or a vote, as they are entirely non-binding in terms of policy.

The result is that, as a petition organizer, you basically always have to spend orders of magnitude more effort getting your petition 'through', than it costs politicians to dismiss it if it doesn't fit into their plans.

That is not democracy. That is not influence. That's a way to suppress citizen participation by exhausting organizers, and nothing more.

I don't have a problem with people choosing to create such petitions, or campaigning for them. But I do have a very big problem with the governments who basically declare that we'll get these fucking crumbs of influence and we shall be happy with them.

No. Fuck that. It's *our* world. Governments do not get to define the ways in which we are allowed to govern ourselves.