Slashdot Mirror
Handling Email Overload in Congress
DedHerring writes "A piece from Roll Call, a newspaper on the hill, that describes how Congressional offices are working to identify which of the many bulk emails received are actually from constituents of their district. Worth a read to know if the click-through online petition you participate in is ever going to be considered by the recipient legislator. Confirms many posts in Slashdot on this topic."
"And frustrated offices are faced with two less-than-ideal choices: delete the e-mail and ignore a potential constituent or spend valuable staff time and resources corresponding with nonconstituents - a civic-minded approach, perhaps, but not efficacious for Members who are up for re-election every two years. "
It always boils down to two things for them, money and re-election. The whole thing makes me sick.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Perhaps this will have the happy side effect of demonstrating to the polits that spam has true costs to recipients, not only in transfer-across-the-wire and storage costs, but in management costs as well.
Hopefully this will bring something good to bear. I doubt it but I hope it...
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Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
Seriously, though, if you send something like the above to a politician I can virtually guarantee you won't get more than a passing glance at best.
And remember, your letter won't affect change if it isn't read. Period. Run it through a spell checker (and actually correct things) first.
In theory, any citizen should have an equal influence on Congress' handling of any issue. Yet, due to the Congressional committee system, it is necessary to be heard by legislators of whom one is not a constituent for this to occur. If legislators "tune out" non-constituents, we're all effectively disenfranchised. Therefore, legislators should not be allowed to ignore non-constituents's comments on areas on which they have special influence.
Given that it is the legislators job to listen to and represent the views of their constituents (and no one else) then it actually does matter if people sending in email reside in that legislators district or not. That is how the system is supposed to works. Representatives and Senators are elected to represent the interests of the local community within the federal system, so broad public and global opinion is not just less important than local opinion, it is not important at all. Legistlators that start listening to broad public and global opinion soon find themselves out of a nice, cushy job if that broad public and global opinion is contrary to local interests. If the broad public and global interests care so much then they should complain to their own legislative representatives.
listen to and represent the views of their constituents (and no one else)
Did you know that corporations cannot vote? Did you know that congresscritters listen to corporations? Do you think you could get 30 minutes alone with your congresscritter? Do you think Bill Gates could? Of course he could. Unless you live in Washington state, Bill Gates is not a constituent of your congresscritter. This is wrong.
How will anti-spam legislation defeat all the Asian and African and European spam that dwarfs most of our email boxes? What, sue the ISP demanding that they stop this "allowal of spam transfer?" Oh wait, that sounds familiar.
Now that any right- or left-winger with an axe to grind can send an evelope full of confectioner's sugar, snail mail is not an option. Ask youself, how many of those mails delayed by the anthrax panic were critical of the PATRIOT act and other scams? Right, probably no one knows. During a key window of time, when the need for citizen input was most critical, citizen input was removed from the decision process.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yup, that does work. I went and met my Congressman, Bruce Vento (since deceased), to talk to him about a couple of issues -- he was on the Banking Committee and was in hearings about new banknotes, so I talked to him about that, and also about the IT industry. We talked for a good 20 minutes in his office, face-to-face, nobody else there.
I also got to talk to my Senator's chief of staff -- getting to meet your Senator is pretty hard, but the chief of staff is the next best thing (talked to him about the same issues as well as immigration issues because of my wife).
An aside: this goes both ways. I was very happy that Vento and Wellstone's chief of staff met me and took a fair amount of time to talk (about 20 minutes each); both took notes and I got pretty detailed responses by mail later. That was good. So I didn't feel at all bad about voting for them -- I was glad that they at least seemed to care about what I was talking about.
The "other" Senator from Minnesota at the time was Rod Grams. His office wouldn't even give me the time of day. I probably wouldn't have voted for the twit anyway, but that really needlessly insulted a potential voter (and he's no longer in office ;-> ).
All you have to do is look in the phone book, call your congresscritter's office, ask for an appointment (but tell them in advance what you want to talk about so they don't think it's a prank), and they will usually take the time to meet you. Maybe even bring some fellow constituents along to drive the point home.
Much harder to ignore a gaggle of constituents in your office than a lousy e-mail or postcard, and makes a bigger impression because you took the time to go there and meet them.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.