Online Poker Petition Demands White House Response
September 29, 2011 6:11 amOn the White House website, the ‘We The People’ section allows citizens to create a petition on important issues facing the country, with the promise that if enough support is received then the issue will at least receive an official response by White House staff.
As President Barack Obama explains on the website:
“When I ran for this office, I pledged to make government more open and accountable to its citizens. That’s what the new We the People feature on WhiteHouse.gov is all about – giving Americans a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most to them.”
Consequently, September 22nd saw director of grassroots and external affairs for the Poker Players Alliance Drew Lesofski, post a poker petition online on the White House website aimed at drumming up support for the legalization and regulation of the game in the USA.
One stipulation of the ‘We The People’ petition section is that in order to be reviewed the petition should first receive at least 5,000 signatures within one month.
However, that didn’t prove to be too much of a problem for the online poker petition, which reached that total within three days and a week later has already 7,000 signatures to its name,
The petition will now continue to be on the site until October 22nd, after which an official response from the White House site will be issued. In the meantime, members of the poker community are encouraged to visit the site and add their support to the petition.
Highlighting what the petition means to the poker community, PPA vice president of player relations Rich Muny said:
“What we really want is to show the administration that a lot of people care about this liberty. We want it to always be in their heads that poker is in the top-tier of Americans’ interests. To me, that is more important than what response we get from the administration.”