Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon (R–Illinois) Wikipedia

A successful discharge petition embarrasses the leadership; as such, members of the majority party are hesitant to support something that would make the Speaker and their own leaders look bad. (Naturally, the minority party will often support discharge petitions precisely to embarrass the leadership.) Furthermore, since the signers of a petition are not private, majority party members are pressured not to sign, and open themselves up to retribution from the leadership should they disobey.

Required are 18 Republicans to go along with the plan. Twenty one Republicans have gone on record showing support for a clean budget. Many voters are asking their state's moderate Republican Senators to sign the discharge petition and end the government shutdown.American voters are going public by signing an online petition to the House Republicans, requesting all Republicans to sign the discharge petition and get the U.S. government back on track. Currently, the petition stands at approximately 40,000 signatures.Discharge petitions are not anything new, dating back to 1910 to remove disliked Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon (R–Illinois), who wielded the office of Speaker with unprecedented power.Considered a secret process, it was only when the require number of votes were gathered would it be announced. The advantage then was that the votes were secret; today they are not.1993 saw the Discharge Petition Disclosure Bill passed. The bill, which made the rule change that would require signers to go public, was itself filed with a discharge petition. According to Wikipedia , "With this secrecy removed, it became more difficult to dissemble in such a way; it also opened signers to more direct retribution from the leadership."According to Wikipedia, the discharge petition changed again to a modified version dating back to 1931. The rules were changed from the earlier version, changing the number of required signatures to force a vote. It went from 145 votes (one-third of the chamber) to an absolute majority of 218 vote.Politically embarrassing as it is, the discharge petition was used successfully with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, called known as McCain–Feingold in the Senate and Shays–Meehan in the House, involving the immigration reform debate. But a discharge petition that is brought forth basically says that governmental leadership is in trouble, showing serious discontent in the majority party.NOTE: The website " Official House Rules on Discharge Petition " is not there. The website " The Discharge Rule in the House: Principal Features and Uses" is also not there. Also .... " The Discharge Rule in the House: Recent Use in Historical Contex " is not there.BUT ... " Discharge Petition Bargaining in the House, 1995–2000 " is available.