From the day The Need-to-Know Petition was posted on the White House "We the People" website, the technical roadblocks placed in front of would-be signers have been chronic and significant.
- 404 messages. Browser incompatibility. Not getting the confirming emails. Getting locked out even after signing. Under maintenance screens. Sign in boxes hidden.
You name the dysfunction. Someone who has been trying to sign The Need-to-Know Petition has experienced it. It has cost the Petition many thousands of signatures already and it has not been fixed. Or even acknowledged, other than there ever-present "undergoing maintenance" screen. Instead of promoting the content of the Petition, precious time is wasted trying to figure out what is wrong with the site and how to respond to it.
While the options get explored, Petition supporters should still try to sign the Petition, despite the hassles that continue to plague it. If you can't sign, then send the White House a technical complaint through their site and tell them how lame it is to try an experiment in democracy and then be unable to get a decent webmaster to run it.
If you've had trouble registering and signing and have actually overcome the problem, please post your comments here explaining to others what you did and how you did it.
And, if anyone who works for the White House reads this, please know what a miserable experience has been created by what looks to be technical incompetence. You should immediately resource up to fix this problem and then give every petition that has been trying to get signatures during this appalling meltdown a new 30-day lease on life with a working site. If you don't do it, shame on you.
