I'm of the opinion that this is in direct response to how quickly 25,000 signatures were raised to fire Ortiz.
How would they like it if the citizens of the US took the same tact: "Hey Obama administration, I'd like to inform you that I am choosing a different tax bracket arbitrarily with the same level of authority as you show me respect as a citizen."
Maybe there should be a new petition to build the Starship Enterprise so the 100k limit can hit by something silly too. Another petition that screams "We know this is a joke to you."
I'm not saying it would have effect on it - but rather, an important step in quashing such actions in the future.
"Oh shit! look how easy that 25K for Ortiz was! We learned our lesson! let's up it to make it 4X as difficult to force us to issue a statement informing the populous that they have no voice!"
I think that's a bit paranoid. I think it is simply because there are now loads of petitions, often at least partially redundant, that easily reach the 25k threshold. To answer all of those they'd have to expend an unreasonable amount of time and they want a more reasonable threshold to filter out those petitions that really matter to people.
For example, if I click on "popular petitions" right now, there are at least 5 petitions about the Westboro Baptist Chruch with more than 25k votes, and some of these are outright duplicates. Repealing Obamacare seems to be another popular topic.
Basically it seems that, because it is relatively easy to vote, you can find 25k people on the Internet to vote for more or less anything, overwhelming the administration with petitions that wouldn't actually find much support in the population.
How would they like it if the citizens of the US took the same tact: "Hey Obama administration, I'd like to inform you that I am choosing a different tax bracket arbitrarily with the same level of authority as you show me respect as a citizen."