Happy Birthday, We the People! Marking Three Years of Online Petitions

On September 22, 2011, the Obama Administration launched We the People to give Americans a new way to petition their government around issues they care about. It works like this: Start a petition, get enough signatures, and the Obama administration will work with policy experts to issue an official response. The We the People platform has led directly to policy changes and provided new opportunities for dialogue between citizens and their government. That's part of the reason why, over the course of 2014, an average of response surveys showed a majority of signers thought it was "helpful to hear the Administration's response," even if they didn't agree. Nearly 80 percent said they would use We the People again.