I will never understand this naive and enduring faith in petitions. Except where called for by law, they're nothing more than statistically inaccurate opinion polls.
I’m glad my state is strengthening laws dealing with legal petitions. Things like better disclosure of who is funding them and who is collecting the names. Sounds like they’re also looking at ways of verifying that the names are people who actually wanted to sign them.
The petition rights mentioned in the Constitution are completely misconstrued. “To petition the government” meant to sue the government. The framers would not have thought that a list of demands from the citizenry would have had much effect.