WASHINGTON, April 3 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova - The White House petition website ‘We the People' is a nearly completely useless tool used by US political elites to their advantage, Seton Motley, the president of Less Government, told RIA Novosti Wednesday.
"It's a 98 percent useless tool," said Motley, adding that US authorities choose to review only those petitions that help promote their interests.
"They choose the issues based upon how they can spin them to their best political advantage," Motley asserted. "Only politically helpful petitions get to be reviewed."
"If it's a damaging issue, they won't pick it up even if you get to 100,000," the president of Less Government continued. "If they see they can make political hay out of one item or another, they'll pick some really ridiculous thing like the NCAA Tournament, but they won't address real issues like Benghazi," Motley said.
Alexander Zhukov, assistant director at Russia's Government to Citizens echoed Motley earlier this week when he told the Moscow Times newspaper the US petition system "is a flawed democratic tool that allows anybody to ask for anything."
White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden disagreed, saying that each petition crossing a threshold of 100,000 signatures will be reviewed by the appropriate policy staff and receive a response.
Motley also added the ‘We the People' platform is available to foreigners.
"Obama took foreign donations on his campaign website during his presidential run," he said, "so, it's hardly surprising that foreign citizens can use the platform to post petitions to the US government."
Hayden confirmed Motley's words saying that anyone can post a petition after creating an account on the website with a verified email address.
"We monitor petitions for fraudulent signatures, but otherwise if someone has created an account and clicked on the email to verify their email address, then the signature is considered valid," Hayden claimed.
Created in September 2011, 'We the People' is meant to help Americans make their voices heard by creating and signing online petitions urging the government to act on various issues. Anyone aged 13 or older can create or sign a petition on the website.
Last month, a petition for Alaska to secede and join Russia was added to the website. It has already gained more than 37,000 signatures.
