"but it doesn't seem like any of them have had an effect."

100,000 out of 300,000,000 people. What effect do you imagine it should have?

If you really want to give these petitions some weight, they should raise the threshold to 150,000,000. And there should be some way of letting people without computers sign it too. Maybe we could have places where people come to sign the petition. But that sounds like a big undertaking. Maybe we could gather several petitions and let people sign the ones they like, every say 4 years.. maybe with a smaller event in-between. And the results should be counted, and then the government forced to do what is decided.

Hmmm... If only there was something like that. That would be awesome.