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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.
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?
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!
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.
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"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
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.
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.
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
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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
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.
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.
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.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Email is an annoyance, snail mail is a reality.
Burn Hollywood Burn
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.
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.
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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