Why are comments required for some petitions?
The reason we require comments is because many of these petitions are being put together for public comment periods for the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Land Management, or other governmental offices. With many Internet-based petitions that don’t require comments, your name and information would simply be plugged into an identical copy of a form letter. Many of the Government organizations have thus decided that all such identical letters — sometimes from thousands of individuals! — will count as just one public comment, making the thousands of signatures invalid. We think this shouldn’t be allowed, and are fighting such techniques, so that the voices of all of a petition’s signers will be heard. In order to make sure that we don’t lose a single signature, and to make the greatest possible impact, we have our signers add their own unique comments, which are included in the body of each letter. Thus, the petition targets have to read each letter that we collect, and count them
Why are comments required for some petitions?