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U.S. Congress And Email
Carnage4Life writes "While browsing ZDNet I found this article that describes how U.S. members of congress receive so much email (about 55,000 a month) that they now routinely ignore email messages especially since a lot of them do not even come from their constituents. " Here's a similiar story where emails to our congressional representatives are referred to as spam. Although I'm sure mass-mailing reps is common, I wouldn't be at all surprised if 50,000 people emailed during the Napster hearings. But we've said it before, Reps don't understand bits and bytes. If you don't send them dead trees, they don't think you vote.
Do you think they read that crap either? Yeah right. This is part of the reason special interest and lobbyists are so powerful. The people making laws see them as reperesentative of their constituency because they are so out of touch with *their* constituency.
Or one approach that's guaranteed to work with your Senator is to write the following return address on your letter:
MOCHTAR RIADY FRIENDSHIP FUND
100 LIPPO WAY
JAKARTA BARAT 10260
INDONESIA
And slip in a few hundred thousand.
If you want to get a message to your congressman donate 20 grand to their re-election campaign.
http://www.rollcall.com/pages/news/00/2001/03/news 0319a.html
"The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Office will soon be rolling out EchoMail, which will put all messages sent to Senators' public e-mail addresses on a separate server, a move that will help prevent large batches of outside mail from interfering with internal messages sent to staff.
The report finds promise in the EchoMail system, though it cautions that, like all new technology, it will take time for Senate offices to work out the kinks in the program."
Time.
Lots of people still regard email as a novelty. Only half the people I know check it daily. Only a couple dozen check it hourly. So I'm not surprized that Congress ignores email. Heck, they might as well not have it. Here's yet another example of a technology that really hasn't panned out, at least not all the way.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Whilst it's true that email is in some senses the "killer app" of the internet, it's also one of the most over-hyped, productivity destroying pieces of crap ever developed :) On the one hand it allows for free, nearly instantaneous conversation and information sharing with people anywhere in the world, but at the same time it allows those people to send each other "humourous" clips of cats doing martial arts and Americans going "Wazzzup!" at each other, clogging networks and stopping people from working.
The trouble is that because email just seems so convenient companies love it. If they don't have email, then they just aren't part of the modern business world in their view. But this isn't true. Despite the internet hype, everything necessary can be done over the phone or even by post, without ever touching a computer! And in many cases, the computer merely serves to waste time whilst appearing to be more efficient.
It's the same here. Despite email promising to let people get in touch with their congress people, in reality all it does is let so much stuff get there that it can't all be checked properly. It's just a waste of time, and people are far more likely to get their message across if they sit down with pen and a paper and write out a letter stating the issues at hand.
And besides, the quick and easy nature of email means it's a very sloppy method of communication. It lends itself to knee-jerk, flaming reponses and mails full of factual and grammatical errors, which all serve to make the user look bad. At least with a letter you have to take your time and consider what you're writing.
Email is great for letting the office know about the next progress meeting. But it's not really very good for getting someone's attention and making a point.
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
gov.slashdot.org ;)
Same focus, no need for another domain =)
Moof!
Yeah, but if *I* was in office, and somebody took the time to spend three bucks to send me a certified letter, I think I'd take the time to read it . . . that sort of person is probably pretty serious. Of course, I get the impression that many of our reps don't care that much . . .
Of course, best case scenario would be all correspondence got read, but I'd bet that at least ten percent of the correspondence these folks get (whether on paper or electronic) is hate mail . . .
Frankly, I'm of the opinion that we have too much democracy. That the question of the teaching about the origins of life, the nature of mental disease, and so forth is determined by popular sentiment rather than objective fact is a disaster. Look around - how much ear-time do you really want your representatives giving to the yahoos that populate this mudball?
I read about a dozen emails a day, and delete about 2 dozen spam messages a day without even reading them, but I haven't read a postal mail since Christmas brought me many "family updates" from around the country.
You want to get a hold of me, send email. I don't answer the phone or read postal mail (unless the return address includes a family member).
Joe
[ before you ask, no I don't do the bills. ]
Joe Batt Solid Design
Send a FAX instead. I've heard aout Congressional staffer ignoring emails for some time. Honest-to-God letters and FAXes are more difficult to ignore. Imagine how difficult it'd be to mount a campaign where everyone send a letter via registered mail. ``Senator Smith, we've been signing for registered letters all day long for the last two weeks. I think your constituents have a strong opinion about that Bill you're sponsoring.'' Too bad sending a registered letter costs a couple of bucks. If only there were a way to send a registered FAX.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If you *really* want your congressman to get your message, save the money on the postage and instead give several thousands of dollars to his campaign manager. Only then can you be sure that he'll hear you.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
There are lots of customer-relation-manager software
that will make a preliminary attempt to sort
mail based on content. Smart companies use this
to pull out the most important problems first.
Do Congressmen use this?
Yup. From what I hear, the usual rule of thumb is that the more effort a person makes to contact their congresscritter, the more seriously they're taken. (Up to a point, of course.) Email is so easy, it's practically pointless.
Oh, stop being such a crybaby, Taco. If you received over 1000 emails a day, you wouldn't read them all either. If you were in charge of representing several hundred thousand people to Congress, and kept getting e-mail from the millions you weren't representing, it would probably sour you on the whole thing as well.
Don't forget, these are people whose lives don't revolve around sitting in front of a computer all day. E-mail makes sending a thought to another user nearly effortless, the product of mere seconds of work. In such a position, I'd probably treat the average e-mail with the same amount of gravity I usually reserve for Post-it notes. Less, since the majority of post-its I get are from people I actually know, about things which are actually important.
-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
go away gallagher.
BilldaCat
Don't rely on one method of reaching your congressperson:
Make all of these intelligent and to the point.
And most importantly, when you do these 3 things at once? Note that you send the message all three ways. If you've sent an intelligent message, it may just make them appreciate the people they represent more.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I like it-- someone who writes a letter cares enough to take the few extra minutes to print the thing out and mail it. If people took the time to spell and sanity-check their letters, and to think about what they said rather than flinging them out into the ether, Congressmen would take them seriously, too. As is, most of the e-mails they get are probably form-letters and flames, with a few intellegent comments nestled somewhere in a deep inbox.
-m
Yes, the Virginia reps are pretty good at that. I have gotten a response to every letter or e-mail that I have sent to Allen and Warner. Just sent a letter to Warner this morning about the DMCA.
--- witty signature
While this may not be the general case, I ask the question: do they have the hardware for it ? Remember, the Congresscritters and Senators may have nice, new, shiny boxen, but the mail gets answered by admin types with old, slow boxen. And these are mostly political types, not techies. Can they handle it ??
You either need to work seriously to elect someone new or re-examine what the hell you wrote. I've almost never heard of a snail-mail letter from a constituent not getting at least a form letter reply.
If con is opposite to pro, whats the opposite of congress?
regards,
kenneth
... sometimes I fly with the white swan to my Liffey home.
While we're amending the Constitution, do the same for the Executive branch. There are too many regulations also.
ya wann bet 50 bucks that someone else in the office is able to sign for these????
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I believe that email is less effective as a form of protest and public speech because it's too easy to clean out an entire inbox of thousands of messages.
Compare getting three bags of US mail with 10,000 email messages... how easy is it to clean up the emails vs. regular mail.
Also, there's the idea that regular mail is more 'official' and that you'd be breaking a whole lot of laws to tamper with it, whereas I can set up a yahoo email alias, and never read any of the mail/spam I get and nobody cares.
Unfortunately, I believe that email is a poor political medium because it's too easy to get rid of.
So with the email just hit the print button spend the $0.35 or so and send both :)
It is said that a child learns wisdom from the parent,
but the truly wise parent learns joy from the child
>If only there were a way to send a registered FAX.
Well, you get a transmission report at the end of the fax anyway, and if you had the correct number, there's really no difference from a registered letter... there's no way to prove anyone read the fax, but there is also no way to prove or force them to open and read the registered mail, either...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
And of course, your representative will never be there because he or she almost certainly has a "second" residence in washington where he or she lives 9 months out of the year. And of course, the secret service probably won't like knocking on his or her door. ;-)
Admittedly, whenever you send anything to a congressperson's office, that person will VERY seldom actually read it. They have interns to evaluate those which can get form responses, those which can be completely ignored (apparently I've always been in that category), and those which should go to the attention of the congressperson himself. Only things which require action go to the congressperson, everything else just gets tallied.
But I'm still surprised at the total lack of response. Maybe the overall trend is to just ignore everybody these days and wait until the poll numbers are in. If so, then the issue of ignoring email is part of a larger trend: politicians don't care, or don't have time to respond, to all the demands placed on them by their constituents.
Imagine you're a standard representative. Imagine you have what, 10 staffers? (I don't know the exact number). Imagine you get just 1000 emails and letters and faxes a day. How are you going to actually get through all those. If you expect that each piece of correspondence requires some kind of response, and you have 10 staffers, each one has to get through 100 pieces of correspondance a day. On a 10-hour day, that's 6 minutes per piece of correspondance. You're never going to get any ability to deal with ALL that on an ongoing basis, so you have to figure out very quickly what to drop and ignore.
At my former job, e-mail was the usual cause of my headaches as the network admin. E-mail brought us the Melissa and Love Letter virrii. The USER partition was filled to capacity when one of our sales people decided to e-mail over 7 gigs of pictures to clients... And our e-mail relay server was using a 56K frame relay line... Are sales and marketing people the dumbest, whiniest group of people in every company? Ugh. I'm glad I quit.
Anyway, I agree. E-mail is incredibly overrated. What the hell is wrong with a telephone? When people that are in local calling distance send me e-mail, I reply with my phone number. I consider e-mail inferior for some types of communication.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Besides, if you think only messages from consituents count, think again; lobbyists and other goons bearing cash get more attention from congressmen than their consituents do.
What is amazing is that the chain letters, stock scams, etc are getting sent straight to congressmen, who are less interested in forwarding the messages to law enforcement than in simply deleting it.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
That's what most corpies do. Write a fat check and congress critter will not only read your letter but will lick your ass while he is doing it.
War is necrophilia.
I can't believe that senators have to waste their time dealing with a fucking hat issue by the army. can't the God-damned army deal with their stupid hats without getting the congress involved? It's a hat people!.
,stupid, stupid. I am so glad I am no longer in the military.
when I was in the military I was shocked to see how much the military wastes on training their people on the proper way to wear a hat and all the damned rules about when, how, which hat to wear. The funny thing is that none of the damned hats (except the BDUs) served a purpose at all. they did not keep the sun out of your eyes, did not keep your head warm, did not keep it from getting wet. Stupid
War is necrophilia.
If you want to get a message to your congressman - send a certified letter. The only person who can sign for it is the congressman, and you can even ask for proof of receipt.
It costs $1.40 to send a letter by certified mail and an additional $1.25 for the sender to get a receipt back confirming delivery.
If you really care about a topic - show it by spending the $2.65 to make sure your message gets to your congressman.
Chances are, they took more time on yours than they did on others, as there are probably quite a few that they just outright trash without even blinking.
Here's a few hints for you who might want to mail your representatives --
I know, there's Bcc, but people will recognize that you're mailing it to more than one person. [And you sure as hell don't put it all in To: or CC:, as then they'll know they were 345 of the 347 of people you mailed.]
In the case of congressmen, tell 'em where you live, so they realize that you're in their district, so you're one of the people who affects their re-election.
Sure, someone's got some nice 'copy and paste this to send to whomever' form letter. If if's the first one they get, they might be impressed. When you're the 200th one they've seen, they couldn't really give a shit. [And it's not like they have to read it. They can recognize it from the layout of the page]
You'd be amazed how many people bitch and bitch, and you just want to choke the damned ignorant ungrateful bastards. When you get the one nice message after 30 some rude ones, you're a little more likely to take some time on this one, so you don't have to go back through the rest of the rude ones.
If you're going to complain about something, give suggestions for improvements. There's no point in telling someone that something sucks, unless you can suggest an alternative for them to do instead.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
From my days of dealing with a hundred or more email a day, you quickly learn just how important form letters are so that you can get back to your other work. When done right, however, it doesn't look like a form letter.
The first few times you receive something on a new topic, you actually respond to the person. Buy the third or fourth time, you're copying the bulk of the response from one of the earlier messages.
Once you've got a reply that you really like, you save it somewhere, so you can grab it when needed. The next time someone asks the question, you insert the text file. You trim out any bits that aren't relevant to their question [one of the sure signs of form letters], and you might tack in a sentance or two in there to make sure you highlight the answer to their question. [Eg, 'To explain why we're doing X, you really have to understand the whole process behind Y']
Once you're replied, you save their message to the appropriate bin, so that when you have to report to your boss later, you can state that 27 people complained today about A, 14 about B, and you received 42 copies of 'The Internet Spy'.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Glad it works for you. I have written to my congressman MANY times. Not once have I received any sort of reply. This includes writing via dead trees, and email. The only thing I have ever received back is an auto-reply via email. All of my letters have been extremely civil, have stated my point, have mentioned that I am one of thier consitituents. Seems to me that there should be some much simpler way to let your congressdope know your view.
.e.
www.perceive.net
People see the world as they are, not as it is.
I think this is a little bit of an exagerration. I sent two emails to my representatives, one to my Congressman and one to a Senator from my state (NC), regarding the appointment of our favorite Attorney General and another regarding privacy concerns with a bill related to the Methamphetamine Proliferation Act, respectively, and received packets in the mail (snail) roughly a week later from both. The congressman sent me an explanation of why he voted against the AG, but was not in the majority (sadly), and the Senator sent me a letter explaning that the rider I was objecting to had been removed, as well as a report on the Meth bill, and another report on Privacy bills.
This largely depends on the representative, their staff, the issue you are referring to and your tone in the letter. I don't think it's appropriate to make broad generalizations like this with little evidence.. the reps are doing the best they can.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
.... but Dead Presidents.
While it may be true that your average Congressperson is for sale, there are good rental options.
I e-mailed congressman Tom Davis (Republican, Virginia), last year, about allowing Hybrid Vehicles to ride in HOV lanes. I recieved an e-mail back from one of his assistants. LaterI recieved a couple of letters from him; the last being about how Hybrid Vehicles will be allowed to use the alternative fuel plate, to ride in HOV.
I am not a Republican, nor are there a huge population of people in Virginia that own Hybrid Vehicles. The system seems to work to me!
Though I live in the tech hub in the DC Metro area, so that may be why Tom Davis finds e-mail to be a necessary form of communication. Perhaps in states with lower tech income, the Congressmen ignore the fact that we are in the 21st century. If I lived in one of those states, I'd be packing my bags.
--
you are not what you own
it's a sig, wtf?
As an intern for a summer session. Yes, they do read the email they recieve. Yes, it is a menial task relegated to interns and junior staff. The biggest problem Congressmen have with email is that the senders usually do not have their physical address included with the email. Because most staffs are instructed to forward email for other districts to their respective Congressmen, very few emails are actually tallied with the other correspondence unless it is clear it is from their district. So, save an interns time and get your email counted by including your postal address with your email. Yes it sounds old fashioned but it's how it works.
At least your attitude on an issue will be tallied with other emails, phones, faxes, and postal mails received by the Congressmen for the month.
Our new Democratic senator, Ben Nelson, has chosen to not use email as a means of hearing from his constituents.
After trying calls for 45 minutes, I got through to his assistants who told me that he had no plans on adding one since it was "too much of a hassel." Apparently making your constituents have to dial for 45 minutes (for what sounded like a total of two staffers answering phones - nifty bottleneck) isn't a hassel...
What's next? Limiting calls to one phone line, one hour a day? Rejecting U.S. mail letters? I think our freshman senator has found a new way to say "Gosh, I never heard anything from my constituents to the contrary of my opinion, so that's why I voted that way."
So much for a "representative" republic...
*scoove*
You wanna get results, send a political action comittee. Check with your company; they may have one.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think they understand perfectly well. It takes significantly more effort to write a paper letter than an e-mail. If you were trying to figure out what issues your constituents really cared about, which would you pay more attention to?
CmdrTaco is very misleading in his editorial comment. The article does not state that the reps. regard our email as spam. They DO understand bits and bytes, as is evidenced by the comments made by our reps. What IS being said is that the reps. regard abusive SPAM as being a major hurdle in reading all the email they recieve. Read. It prevents perpetuating non-truths.
I am MuchTall
Fisrt off, don't be so quick to assume that our representatives call our email spam. The article states that abusive SPAM prevents them from getting to all our email. It does NOT say that they regard our email as spam.
I'm sure that our government has a better grasp on technology than CmdrTaco would like you to beleive. How do you confirm the origin of snail-mail? Similarly reliable methods could be applied to email.
I am MuchTall
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Not when you've got a half dozen staffers. They could have one person read the emails, send form letter responses, and tabulate the results, then forward on the 'unique' letters with special points on to the congressman for personal perusal.
Slashdot saying something doesn't mean that it is true.
Without a doubt, they filter the letter-writing campaigns, because they are a waste of resources.
However, each congressman's budget includes "constituent work" budgets, which includes helping constituents deal with the Federal government, and responding to letters.
Why do they do that? Given the low turnout in congression elections (especially off-year), it is estimated that 5%-8% of the vote can be changed by these constituent actions.
As a congressman, I'm nuts to let my staff trash anything. While Slashdotters probably will not affect their vote by the thing, my father's poorly constructed prose will definitely affect his vote, etc.
The reason that they listen to letters is that they can't afford to alienate a vote.
Assume average American. Family of 4. One of them writes their congressman. If he gets a response, they and their spouse are likely to view that person more favorably. They are also more likely to defend them to their friends, etc. Assume each response generates 3 votes (0-6), if you can get 5%-8% of the voters to personally identify you because you responded/helped their friends and family, you are a shoe-in.
They would be insane to ignore e-mail. While your congressman doesn't personally read it, I can assure you that his staff has some people reading it, and letting him know what is going on.
Yeah, I particularly liked getting a letter from the local Congressman (Mass. liberal) explaining to me about how I can't get a tax cut on his tax-payer based correspondance note...
The real travesty is that it was provided for Congress to keep the locals informed when the House was representing the people and the political elites controlled the Senate and White House (officially, not just in reality).
It wasn't used much until computers... with targetted mail, Congress went nuts.
Alex
There's a similar story on salon.com here.
"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
I do not think moderation should look at a poster's past, but the merit of the post itself. If moderators think it is funny then so be it.
Perhaps you should not be so anal as to care who does the post and look at the value of the post. If all posts should be serious then we should take away the +1, Funny option...
I give you "-1, Needs a Life"
"...But we've said it before, Reps don't understand bits and bytes. If you don't send them dead trees, they don't think you vote."
Oh, they don't, do they? How about those clueless reps who are fighting the DMCA, and worked to get encryption software delisted as a weapon?
Let's face it fifty thousand emails a month is WAY too much to read. That's over 2000/business day. If you had a secretary to do nothing but read email 40 hr/week, you _might_ get through it all.
Of course they're going to ignore it. The sheer volume pretty much proves that any idiot with a computer and too much time can bash out an email to his rep. Write a real letter if you want to be heard.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
What I would really like to see is our representatives putting some actual content on their web pages--FAQs on their opinions on the latest issues. That way when they start getting tons of duplicate messages, they can use that wonderful 5-char response: RTFM!
If the FAQs were kept up-to-date, it would be a real benefit to democracy. Many times people don't realize that there is careful reasoning that goes into lawmakers' decisions that just doesn't occur to us. (and yes, sometimes that reasoning is planted in their ears in tandem with checks in their pockets, and sometimes there's no reasoning at all). But if our reprsentatives could tell us why they voted the way they did, without us having to sit through hours of CSPAN, that would be really cool, I think.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Each congresscritter gets some set amount of funding per year to maintain his or her office staff. Last year I have information on (1989, came across it by random chance, haven't been curious enough to find out more recently), the total staff salary was on the order of $400K, which sounds like a lot but a small congressperson's office probably employs 8-12 people (head AA, 2 or 3 other office people that handle mundanities and snail mail, staff in the home district, etc.). Simply put, they may not have the budget to dedicate 2+ more people to something as ephemeral as email.
Of course, they could get interns, but a) there are only so many unpaid interns available, and b) unpaid interns and politicians are a potentially unstable mix... ;-)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I have heard that faxes count as dead trees in this case. The basic process seems to involve stacking all the 'agree' and 'disagree' pieces of paper and taking the taller stack to indicate voter intent.
Read the full text my book Perl for the Web
"trough email"? Is that what pigs use? :-)
Grab.
Fraid so.
See, the Congressman for your state is your representative. That means that if you want stuff doing, you talk to him, and he passes it on. Talking to someone from another state - if they're interested/pleasant/not busy, then you may get an answer, but there's nothing that says they have to. They're not there to represent you, they're there to represent the ppl in their state.
That's the theory, anyway. So if you send out emails to every Congressman about something, you've just wasted 49 of the 50 emails. And these 49 are going to obscure those ppl who genuinely do want to make themselves heard. You can probably except the chair of a committee - he/she takes on extra responsibilities with that. But the rest is pure spam.
And "barrage" sounds a bit strong. If lots of ppl are sending in multiple messages just to put pressure on, basically you're DDOS-ing them. And that makes it likely that, as with any other messaging system, they'll just shut it down until the "attack" goes away.
Personally anyway, my reply to ppl complaining about Napster is to shut up, stop whining, and grow up. But that's just my opinion...
Grab.
for the average congressman to find his daily porn through all those useless emails.
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Sure, a letter (hard copy, typed or hand written) to slashdot may not get taken as seriously. But in virtually all other sectors of the world, a real letter will get taken more seriously. For one, it takes more effort, and therefor is taken as more genuine. Also, email has generally taken on a casual tone, and that tone does not always work well with serious matters. No one should expected their congressperson to treat an email the same as a letter.
Similarly, I wrote a thank you note to a major printer manufacturer, who offered a replacement part. If I had sent just an email it would have been read by some intern, and mostly ignored. But the letter was read, and someone called to thank me (they had to look hard to find my phone number even), and sent me a freebie. Of course, actual results may vary...
You don't have this facility with any of the other communication methods that you mention: unless you can afford to pay the salary of one or more secretaries who are filing/ typing/ making transcripts of recordings all day...
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I searched the US Constitution and failed to find the word 'constituents' anywhere in the document. I was taught that each representative represents the whole country, not just a specific generalized area. Perhaps what I was taught so many years ago is not correct...perhaps. Not!
eom
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
I think he meant he has written to CmdrTaco and recieved a reply. On the subject of e-mailing congressmen, perhaps they could filter incoming e-mails to get an idea how many e-mails deal with a specific issue. They may not be able to read every message, but they'll know if they get 20,000 messages about one issue.
--
55000 / 30 = approximately 1833 emails a day :)
And that number is expected to go up after the recount!!!
So outsource it. Last I heard, there were lots of English-speaking people in India who would be happy to work for $8K/year sorting email. Use one of your in-house staffers to conduct random statistical analyses for QA purposes.
Ok, politically, that might be tricky. But I promise you that there are regions of the US with >15% unemployment and low costs of living, to which email sorting and analysis could be easily off-loaded.
Hm, I think I smell a business.
I sent and e-mail to my congressmen (Jerry Moran and Sam Brownback) using mp3.com's form that they had a while back. I didn't think anything of it, but a while later I got a response back in the mail from both of them. It even seemed like Jerry Moran understood the bill and was in favor of it. The bill hadn't made it to Senate yet, so Brownback didn't know as much about it.
--
I wrote an electronic message to Congresswoman Heather Wilson (Republican representative from NM) which got me a personal reply on paper. On the other side of the coin, I have more than once found Sen. Jeff Bingaman (Democrate Senator from NM) to have nonworking email. Of course it isn't necessarily the Senator's intent to ignore his emails. It may just be that his system and/or crew needs an overhaul ;^)
David
fghit entyrop
why not do a global replace search on US Congress with CowboyMcNeal ??
why not do a global search and replace on "US Congress" with CowboyNeal... and wipe out the vermin from the face of the planet once and for all ?!?
You can't have it both ways kids, the /. crowd equates anonymity to privacy, but total anonymity makes it pretty difficult to ascertain anything about an email automatically, so by default it should be discounted as spam.
The moderators particularly liked the phrase "nice, new, shiny boxen."
---
Email your representative letting them know how you feel about them not reading your email!
"This is where god would go if he wanted to get off blow!"
It's amusing to get a "response" to an email, when it's obvious no human ever read the original messege.
I'm envisioning some kind of autoresponding software the cranks out one of five or so pre-written responses based on a few (poorly chosen) keywords in the original email. Of course, I base this on a single instance when I emailed Jesse Helms' office about the Ashcoft nomination...
-Dorsey
-Dorsey
If you can't beat them, exploit them. *Then* beat them... -Milk & Cheese
My congress-units do read and respond to my email. The three that I write to are Wolf, Warner, and Allen, all from Virginia.
Of course, I'm mostly writing to tell them how much I disagree with their policies, but oh well.
I recently e-mailed Rep. Rick Boucher to commend some of his words on the DMCA, and got a prompt, rather verbose reply from him.
For whatever it's worth, State Congressional Officials and Senators do take e-mail a bit more seriously. I recently e-mailed my 4 local representatives in Louisiana and all 4 sent replies. I'm not saying they weren't scripts, but three of them took four days to answer which makes me think someone read them.
I have found that by sending an e-mail that isn't obviously cut and pasted from some other source that my e-mails will get a response.
I recently wrote Senator Bob Graham of Florida regarding the Rangers' Black Beret and how the U.S. Army is screwing the Rangers by issuing the beret to every soldier. I wrote Senator Graham using my own words and not those of the Ranger Association. I was surprised to get the response that I got. It was a detailed description as to why the Rangers are losing their black beret with responses that addressed my concerns. I don't agree with Senator Graham's position but at least he wrote me back in something other than a form letter. I believe that since I used my own words, Senator Graham's staff didn't ignore the message.
While certified mail with receipt is the only way to be sure somebody handled your mail, it is no guarantee the Congressman ever saw it, or that it was even read.
In America, anybody can sign anybody's signature as long as the person signing is doing so with the full knowledge and consent of the signature owner.
As Congressmen are quite busy, or would like you to think they are, it is almost certain that every Congressman has designated an signing agent.
Most likely, said agent simply runs the document through the signature machine, so that it is a perfect match... you won't be able to tell who signed for your mail.
I've always found the following two methods work perfectly for getting your Congressman's attention:
A new year calls for a new signature.
Try it yourself!
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
in the U.S., it's the other way around: your congresspeople can send you all the crap they want for free, but you have to pay (it's up to $0.34 as of 1/1/01, btw) to send stuff to them. The Canadian system seems quite logical, I must say!
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I would love it if my congresspeople (one of whom is Maria Cantwell, formerly of RealNetworks, and presumably not computer-illiterate) would actually *use* e-mail to help stay in touch with constituents. I mean, it would be awesome to get a little weekly message that says "Hey folks, here's what we accomplished this week, and here are the things I voted on and why I voted the way I did."
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
55000 / 30 = approximately 1833 emails a day
A day!? Thats a hell of a lot of emails. I get approximately 200 a day and even then I don't have time to read them all let alone do any other work.
Sending snail mail registered or not probably won't make much of a difference to be honest, 1833 messages is too much to read on a daily basis in whatever medium you care to think of.
--
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"I am a warrior, and information is my weapon..."
okay. Whatever. Can you pass me whatever youre smoking now...Please???
"I am a warrior, and information is my weapon..."
Email is an annoyance, snail mail is a reality.
Burn Hollywood Burn
However, due to the volume of mail received (typically spammed to all congressmen, often included on a mailing list), offices often don't respond to email that didn't come from constituents.
e ss_e_mail_2.html
From the story at
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010318/pl/congr
David Carle, spokesman for Sen. Patrick Leahy (news - bio - voting record), D-Vt., said his office responded to about 50,000 people who e-mailed during the week of hearings on Napster (news - web sites)'s free Internet song-swapping service. Napster and other groups have started encouraging people to barrage legislators with e-mail.
``From virtually every office we talked to, they kind of rolled their eyes and said that it's all that damn spam that comes in that causes us so much headache,'' Shapiro said. ``What it's doing is generating a lot of noise that's just clogging up the whole system.''
So, if Sen. Leahy is chairing hearings on a topic in which I have an interest, and I, as a non-Vermonter, send him an email stating my opinion on the topic, I have sent spam?
Working on a Congressman's staff, you undoubtedly know that most important decisions, which will lead to laws, are made in committee. And that final language is quite often realized in conference committee. If my Congressman is not a member of either of these committees, any email I may send to Congressmen who are on these committees but who do not represent my district is to be considered "spam", and an annoyance, and "a lot of noise"? Especially if I use a mailing list which includes all the Members on the committee in question?
Help me out here.
No, I don't think so. If this were the case, then anybody who wanted to kill an important politician (and there are a lot of people like that out there) would just have to spend the extra $2.65? No, it's not quite that simple.
It would be nice if they were able to sort and read it all. I read someone's post up above and they mentioned that they have applications to do this already avaliable. But, still, 50,000 is a large sum and I'd hate to see the final costs of tryin to read/sort them all (even after the application got done with them). I mean, next week we would see another Story submitted along these lines, "Congressmen spend thousands for reading email". But we wouldn't understand just how much is involved and this isn't a major coporation we're talking about. But I wonder how much of the 50000 was spam that was completely useless. None the less I'd like to see some commitment put towards filtering, sorting and then reading the valuable emails (ignore outright flames, spam and useless forwarded blonde jokes).
Email is a mess when it gets beyond a small group of people, what we really need is a slashdot.gov with lots of polls about real issues. Community moderation is the best way to sort stuff out, I don't want a "machine" to count where my "email vote" stands. .gov once they see it's the best way.
For the government to interact with the public as a whole, the public must assumne the position of the government.
the current systems in place for voting and writting letters makes it feel like it's "Us and Them" instead of "We The People"
this is still the infancy of the information age, it will get better.
pehaps we should start with a slashdotgov.org site for unofficial voting/community, and then go
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Now let's see a show of hands of those that have personally spoken with a congressperson. (Probable answer: .0001%)
...
If you just show up at those weekly or monthly Town Halls they announce in the local paper, you can talk with them and they'll even give you coffee/tea and some snack food. You could work on some code during the boring parts, and there are usually only 30 to 40 people at such events.
Not all forms of communication require an equal amount of investment by the communcator--therefore they should get unequal amounts of attention from the communicatee.
Nothing wrong with gaming the program - just look at what everyone else does and do something different. Heck, I'm sure they'd notice if someone hacked their website
If you want your opinion read, just write it down (or print it out)--it only costs $.33 to send.
Nope, only costs $.20 to send a handwritten postcard with name, address, phone and brief message. Forget all the verbiage, and use a cool free postcard from your local coffee house or restaurant.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I don't think they even allow laptops on the floor. Why would they bother to read e-mail if most of them don't even use a computer. Most, if not all, of the paper mail they receive is reviewed by staff, never to be read by a representitive.
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
so, cut your next letter in stone.
Now let's see a show of hands of those that have contributed the maximum allowed by law, along with an additional gratuity in soft money (or other form). (Probable answer:.000001%)
-Dave
The effort put forth by an official for a response will never be a greater effort than that put out by the taxpayer. This applies to any situation, whether it be a large business or a government office. If you want a written response, send a written letter.
I've found that if you stop by their office and look and sound important, speak politely, and act uninterested in subordinates you move up the chain quickly. I spoke with two of my state senators, in their office, face-to-face, just by stopping by and expresing my disgust that they hadn't stopped by my office yet. I never actually had previous contact with either of the offices, but no subordinate will risk blowing off a person who is already pissed and may be important.
Expecting anything more than an ambiguous form letter from an email is ridiculous. How much of the "junk" mail do you respond to?
The ACLU newsletters often give links to a section of their site that allows you to send a free fax online, concerning the issue mentioned in the email. You tell it your zipcode, and it gives you a list of representatives to choose from, but again the fax only relates to a certain issue. If someone were to design a directory where anyone could enter their zipcode, select a recipient, and send a free fax containing any comments on any issue they like, I think you'd see a lot more results. The only response I've ever gotten was the result of a free fax on ACLU.org.
Quoted from www.michaelmoore.com
I wonder when PayPal will let you attach payments to your emails; I bet that'd get your meassage heard.
--M.
Cmdr, what up? All the energy required to power the web, my computer, etc, certainly amounts to a lot of dead trees, or fossil fuel, or nuclear waste. So in a way, just sending email isn't being 'conservative' of the environment anyway. Plus, the written word on paper always says more than an electronic message shot off to whomever you want. Sending snail mail means you took some serious time to sit down and write/type it out and then put it in the mail. And W. already announced he isn't sending email anymore due to privacy concerns, so I think snail mail is still the way to go to be heard in this country.
Not really big news anymore. http://www.salon.com/politics/wire/2001/03/19/emai l/index.html.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
As someone who lives and works by email, I find the comparison to SPAM from 'From virtually every office we talked to' to be somewhat offensive. Yes you get a lot of contact from the people. THIS IS WHAT WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE IS ALL ABOUT. TOUGH NUTS. If you cannot respond to the people then YOU SHOULD NOT BE THERE. Case closed.
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
I used to work in the political milieu and I can tell you that BillyGoatThree is right on there. My lobbying organization would generate blizzards of pre-printed postcards to representatives with absurd stuff like "I believe [the following seven paragraphs of hypertechnical blather about some bill number and its amendments]" and get people to sign them. Big deal. Occasionally, people would take the time to write out the letter and it would be taken -much- more seriously. Much of the mail/e-mail received by a legislator essentially -is- spam -- even "handwritten" letters people (before the days of E-mail) would essentially copy-and-paste from a "sample" letter we gave them. Legislators are not impressed by hundreds of copies of word-for-word plagiarism. :)
However, if letters don't appear to be coordinated by lobby groups, they are paid much more attention -- they show that awareness is getting outside the rabblerousing groups out into the general public.
I testified at a government hearing once about a pending regulation -- I can tell you that there the comments were paid some heed. Still not a heck of a lot, but this time you had to drive to the location, go into the auditorium, and wait an hour for your turn to talk. And the vast majority of people who took the time to do that knew what they were talking about (myself not included :) ).
The other pressure point is the kind of lobby group I worked for. People listened to us because we "represented" our membership. So if you care about an issue, you can bring it to a group's attention and might get it paid some attention, while your mail/e-mail/whatever might get lost in the shuffle.
Of course their going to listen to paper, It takes more effort to run out, get a stamp, get an envelope, and write it out yourself. Only people who really care will take the time and energy needed to express their thoughts on paper. It's better that getting some e-mail that says nothing important from someone who lives two states away from the representative's area. - -
--God, guns, guts The staple diet of religious nuts
Reps do get bits and bytes. They know that any 133t 1d10t can send an e-mail rant in 5 seconds. They don't care about that stuff. Send them a nice clearly written letter explaining your gripe. I wouldn't pay attention to that much e-mail either
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
Here in britain even though the government claims to be "Pro Web" it seems the only way to contact your government representative is through the good old fashioned postal service
404 File Not Found The requested
It is simply a fact of life that handwritten letters on paper get taken much more seriously. Email is for informal frequent and quick back-and-forth communication, and it will stay that way until a reasonable way to enforce identification and authentification is enforced (see this recent /. story).
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
For example, there was a guy recently who asked me out trough email. Cool. How am I going to tell it's not my viscious cousin Laurie doing a prank? Needless to say I ignored him
Now, my boyfriend did decalre his love to me trough a letter. A handwritten, perfumed (Dune, Christian Dior works wonders) with a extremely seewt poem on it. How could I resist?
/* in its mouth... */
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
So what you're saying, Magic, is that you like being told, "Even if you meticulously craft, draft, redraft, and spellcheck your email, I'm going to ignore it because some other idiots send in incomprehensible poorly-written drek"?
I still don't like it.
The facts (at least, I'm assuming them to be facts) and statistics in the article are saddening. There is, however, still a way to get your message through.
First, follow the rules they set. If you're writing about a specific issue, make the subject line of the message reflect the issue and your position. As an example, "Please vote NO on AB12345." Most emails, like most snail mails and faxes, are just used to tally support for a position. This means, of course, that the carefully thought-out and worded contents of your email will probably never be seen.
Second, identify yourself properly. Members of the House, for example, are elected to represent only members of their own district, and if you don't show a snail mail address in their district, they're not going to pay attention to your email.
Third, ask for action in a separate email. Not the one with the short, sweet "No on AB12345" header. Like I said, they probably didn't read it. Send an email asking for information or asking for some specific document (again, make the header clear and identify yourself). Staffers will deal with those, and if you phrase your message well, you can get across a point along with your request. If you phrase it extremely well, the staffer will pass it on to the boss.
There's no question, though, that emails get lower priority than phone calls, faxes, or snail mail. I don't like it, and I don't agree with it, but when the subject matters, I do my best to go around it.
Please mod him down.
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324006
Or understand all too well?
.0001%)
Let's see a show of hands of all those that have emailed a congressperson via webpage touting some issue. (Probable answer: 60%)
Now let's see a show of hands of those that have emailed a congressperson "manually". (Probable answer: 30%)
Now let's see a show of hands of those that have snailmailed a congressperson. (Probable answer: 2%)
Now let's see a show of hands of those that have personally spoken with a congressperson. (Probable answer:
Not all forms of communication require an equal amount of investment by the communcator--therefore they should get unequal amounts of attention from the communicatee.
If you want your opinion read, just write it down (or print it out)--it only costs $.33 to send.
Addenda: Not all congresspeople are deleting all mail. I emailed my reps recently and got a physical (admittedly form-) letter back from one of them.
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324006
how do I score someone points?
God spoke to me
have a go - it opens up your communication methods. sure i wish everyone used email, but they don't yet.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was 1 2 4 foe i 3 it not 4 5 did grow