The White house confirms no chance of alien invasion

...Seriously...well not exactly invasion; but we've always wanted to write a headline like that.  The White House has released a statement saying there is no evidence of life existing on other planets than ours.

The statement arrived in response to two petitions launched on the online Government initiative, We the People, the White House’s experiment in crowdsourced petitioning and public opinion.  Any petition that accrues at least 25,000 signatures is passed along to the top for a response, which has led to this rather strange story outing.  The petitions asked the White House to “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race” and to “immediately disclose the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings.”

Both petitions claim that extraterrestrials exist on Earth and that the government has gone to lengths to hide this information.  They also made claims about big foot and the loch ness monster. The White House, though, says:

The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.

Here's the big twist ending.  The combined signatures don’t add up to 25,000, so why would the White House would respond to this petition instead of others on the platform?  Hi X-files.