Now You Can Petition Some Members Of Congress Directly

Change.org, one of the most popular websites for online activists, launched a new service that allows lawmakers to create official pages where constituents can petition them on everything from potholes to major national policies.

A handful of prominent legislators have already signed up for the new service including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), said Jake Brewer, the site’s external affairs director. Any of Change.org’s 50 million users will be able to create or sign an appeal directed at a lawmaker who creates an account on the site, but lawmakers will be able to see how many of the signers are actual constituents based on information they provided when they registered with the site, Brewer said. The site’s designers have twin goals. They hope collecting constituent demands into a single petition rather than hundreds or thousands of e-mails will give politicians a positive incentive to respond and engage with them. They also hope that making the entire process public will give politicians a “negative incentive” to engage with petitioners because they don’t want to look unresponsive in the public eye.