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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."
... is to write a real pen and ink letter. Some poeple sya they aent mroe effective but i they are. I know many people have received resonses from real letters as opposed to email. Also phone calls work good.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
"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.
Seems to be the best approach (short of actually talking face-to-face with them) to reach a representative.
I can remember once in high school where they 'make' us a write letter to our Representatives, Senators, Governor, etc. I actually received a response from my Rep about some educational issues / policies at the time. This was only a few years back (late 90s), so I can't imagine much as changed.
However, I've *never* gotten much (if any) response from email.
I think it shows that a well-written letter shows effort, and showing effort is an effective way to get across the message that 'you care.'
...especially in the offices of our more, erm, elderly congressmen. How do you determine which messages are spam and which messages are Orrin Hatch's real communications about herbal viagra and colon cleansing? ;)
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...
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
dumbass moderators. This actually gets to the root of the problem. it even might inspire congress to pass some strong anti-spam legislation (interfering with government operations). I would be curious to know a categorical breakdown of the different email they recieve, eg spam, letters from constituents, pettitions, letters from non-constituants, etc.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Here's a new way to fight spam: Paste your Congressperson's email all over your popular website. Soon they'll be getting tons of spam, and they'll get so fed up with filtering out the real mails they'll start passing anti-spam laws.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
This confirms my belief that the simplest forms of communications are often the least effective.
Email is most anonymous and potentially anonymous, and hence has the least chance of being taken seriously.
A phone call is better, and even more so a letter. But the best (and for obvious reasons), the hardest to to is a face to face meeting.
A solution to the problem mentioned: In australia we have an electoral roll, and I am sure you guys in the US do aswell. Why can't they just allow e-mail addresses to be added to the electoral role. Obviously some privacy protections would be needed, but it is surely possible.
On the otherhand, does it really matter if people are constituents or not? Is broad public and global opinion more important that those of an individual community, county or state? Hrm... an interesting question is posed here..... damn I don't have the answer to this one.
lounge around on the blue couch
Spam first got on my nerves in '94, and at the time very few members of Congress had websites, encouraged email. What I thought would be a great idea to get Congressional action on spam would be to get a few hundred thousand people to forward each and every piece of spam they received to all 535 members of Congress. Include a sentence in the body of the email to the effect of, "Dear Congressman / Congresswoman, Please pass legislation outlawing this kind of unsolicited commercial email.... blah blah blah...."
Now if each member of congress received a few hundred thousand pieces of forwarded spam a day, what might they do? Outlawing the forwarding of spam to elected officials, with a legislative suggestion, would certainly be more of a 1st Ammendment violation than outlawing spam itself.
--
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Why not just cut Congress off from the Internet in the first place? I am sure it costs a fortune to operate and secure from hackers. If they are not using it for our benefit, what's the point? If they need to surf and read e-mail, do it at home like most workers have too. Everything that Congress does, anyways, is printed in the Federal Register so disconnecting their offices doesn't prevent them from communicating to the public electronically. Congress ran for over 200+ years without e-mail and it doesn't seem to run better with it. Its not like they have figured why I'm not getting Social Security. Instead of ignoring e-mail, they could focus on fixing that.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Put your full name and your ZIP code if it is really your rep. The aides will recognize the zip as valid info, and a full name will lend credence enough to get the item past the first sweep and under a humans eye's.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I send about two constituent emails a month. I always get responses on issues I agree with my representatives on; I never get responses on issues I disagree with them on. As a third party voter, I overlap with both the majority parties quite a bit (Republicrats on gun control, Demicrans on free speech), yet it's obvious that the candidates don't give a crap about what I think, only about their market positioning.
I collect up and forward all my spam onto various MPs every so often. It certainly seems to be doing the trick with this MP ;-)
And I quote: "The MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey told The Register that he is "sick of the excuses" and wants something done to curb the amount of spam pouring into people's in-boxes.
In particular, he's concerned about the rising quantity of pornographic spam and the impact it may have on children using the Net. "
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Here are a few simple guidelines to figure out whether it's bulk mail or not, and what to do with it:
1. Is it a Viagra ad? If it's a Viagra ad, you might want to keep it (you're getting old...), but it's not in your jurisdiction.
2. Is it an add to smuggle several million dollars out of some estranged third-world country, and all they need is your bank number? If it is, you might want to keep it (you know, "soft" money...), but it's not in your jurisdiction.
3. Is it an ad for special non-accredited diplomas? If it is an ad for diplomas, you might want to forward it to Bush twenty-or-so times in the hopes that it will somehow make him intelligent.
4. Is it a porn ad? If it is, remember that it's not spam if you request it.
[insert witty comment here]
Can the general public use these tags? I understand that this system was set up in co-operation between the government and two companies that sound like lobbiests for hire.
/dev/null.
How does my cousin in SF use this system to make sure his email will get to his senator? Does he have to go to one of these two companies and pay them to lable his email correctly?
Am I jumping to conclusions? Reading this quote.
In the House, groups could funnel their communications through the "Write Your Representative" Web form,
It sounds like you have to be a special interest group who has paid for the system to use it. This system might be used to filter all email, but if the general public aren't informed of how to use it, then their email will be sent to
Maybe there should be a web page at http://www.house.gov/ that would let you use this system, then you mom-and-pop AOL users can get "equal time".
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
Personally I doubt many people would take me as seriously if they saw my attrocious handwriting. This is due to my reliance on computers and other keyboard/keypad operated devices in place of pen and paper. I never use a pen anymore except to write the odd cheque - my hand now gets tired and aches after writing a few lines on the rare occasions I attempt it.
I can see the day coming when schoolkids are no longer taught to write, since it'll be as obsolete as caligraphy.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
trust me they do spend time, or they are supposed to. Most of them just delete in mass and forward a random few through while chatting up the hottie in the next cube. [rant]This kind of behavior also begins to explain why the Reps have such a low opinion of email, the crap they see is sorted by someone who would lose a spelling bee to a box of rocks.[/rant]
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
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.
The shareholder is always right.
window.....
"Just trying to get you to focus on the issues, M. Antoinette".
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
As to whether a person is a constituent is important, politicians are supposed to, at least in part, represent the views of their local area whilst keeping in mind the greater good of the country and the world. Therefore, I don't see any problem with them giving greater weight to constitutent contact.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I worked in a Congressional office back in the day, and your opinion doesn't count if you're not (a) a constituent in the congressional district, (b) a leader who can affect opinion in the district (e.g. Billy Graham), or (c) a personally respected acquaintance of the Member (which could include a donor). Don't get cynical or indignant about being ignored if you're not in the district; respect the congressman for focusing on the folks back home.
As has been said already, your opinion carries more weight if you go to more trouble to express it. Arrange an appointment with the congressman and he'll listen to you. Meet an aide and the congressman will get a memo on what you had to say. Send a letter from his district and your opinion will at least get tallied. If it's not a form letter, there's a good chance your congressman will read it, otherwise an aide will see it. Send an e-mail and you might get a response if you're from the district. If you don't show you're from the district, you probably won't be counted.
If you really care about an issue, don't think you've done your part by clicking a button on a website. Bundle your opinion with others THAT COUNT. Circulate a local petition, or get your civic association or student assembly or local professional organization chapter to pass a resolution, or write an op-ed for your local paper. "Think globally, act locally," is advice learned from experience.
I'm actually kinda sorry I used up my last mod point smacking down some trollers. I wish I could have used it to mod you up.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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.
If congress is flooded with spam they'll probably just write off all e-mail. These people have never experience spamless e-mail and like most people can't think outside the short term present.
In a similar case in a province I worked in, face time was the only way to communicate with the leaders of the local instutions, universities, and companies, but only after first being properly introduced by a mutual collegue.
These leaders' introduction to e-mail was usually through a dot-com IT-solution. Usually a hit-n-run job using junk like MS-0utlook, which though full of eye-candy and familiar menus, is a poor substitute for a mail client. Since they probably got in on the IPO of the dot-bomb that did the hit-n-run, they're loathe to admit that the software doesn't work, and as weak leaders loathe to admit they don't know how, why or when to use e-mail.
In a classic chicken and egg problem, none of their colleagues send e-mail either, so it just sits there as an expensive status object. So each time they checked their mail (3-4 times a month), there are no work-related messages that weren't seen on paper first, no work-related messages, but about 50 spam. None of them have a visionary bone in their body so the collective decision, after enough time, is that e-mail == spam.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What we really need is a unique email count for each congressman.
Then we need to not reelect the top 10% of these people, since they are obviously pissing off their constituents.
Email volume as more or less an inverse measure of approval...
-- Terry
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.
I often send e-mail to my congresscritters, and I always include my name address and phone number. I do get replies via snail mail on a regular basis.
Of course I've often wondered how a donation from a California movie studio, or a German record label gets into my Congressmans account if he doesn't take calls from non-constituents. They use the excuse "Well I'm on such and such commitee and that's a national thing". Well Mr Hand out for Donations, how come you will take a donation from California but won't respond to a letter or e-mail from there? Or respond to a music lover in Germany?
I cringe every time someone says that sending a fax or a snail mail to one's representative or senator is more effective than sending an email. Guess what? It's really not. Why trust me? Because I worked in Congress.
Here's what happens to your letters in most congressional offices: First, an intern or secretary gets the mail and sorts it into groups based on the contents of each letter. Many letters are from actual groups that represent one lobby or another: those get sent to various legislative assistants who can send some specifc info to each group.
Then, there is the mail from constituents, much of which consists of generic postcards...AARP postcards exceeded by far any other postcard received by the office in which I worked. Those old people sure know how to send in those damn postcards! These get counted up each day, but don't merit a personal response. More rare are actual letters from constituents. These go to a secretary or an intern who basically works off of this template:
Dear [name],
Thank you for writing about [issue]. I appreciate your input on [issue]. [Stance on issue].
Sincerely, [signature of elected official produced using a laser printer or a stamp]
Then, there is stuff marked "personal," which goes to the congressperson's personal secretary. I think the congressperson might actually read some of this, but don't try marking stuff personal when it's really just some political bullshit. That probably breaks some law, or, at the very least gets you on the congressperson's bad side.
So, you want to know what really works? One way to go is "voting with your dollars," but c'mon, you can't possibly have more money than any of the real lobbying groups that bombard your congressperson with propoganda (read: $$$) day after day. The other way is to set up an appointment to actually speak, face to face, with your congressperson. It actually happens. This may require you to join some sort of group, but if you believe strongly enough in a cause, it's worth it to get over your fear of public speaking and attempt to talk to the person who supposedly represents you. That is the only way you stand a chance of not being just another letter ignored.
PS, I don't give a fuck how you mod this, but sometimes, the truth hurts.
Much of the spam I receive via other countries' servers seems to be for products and services offered by American companies, and I see no reason why the theoretical US anti-spam legislation should allow a loophole for American biz that outsource their spamming off-shore. If you're an American company trying to make a buck by feeding the spam machine, you should be punished.
.lk can be purged sight unseen.
America wields a pretty big stick internationally and occasionally this can be an advantage without being morally reprehensible. I would imagine that lots of world leaders would be hep to hop aboard an anti-spam bandwagon led off by the US govt. They'd all get to look tech-savvy and concerned for their respective constituents (especially the porn stuff... politicians love to hate porn), "preserving the internet" etc. Ultimately you wind up with an "Axis of E-mail" list of countries that don't join in the global call for responsible commercial emails. Then you can decide what you want to do with mail from those countries. Bit bucket, sez I -- if Sri Lanka doesn't punish it's spammers, well, I'm willing to take the chance that all email to me from
I've got to assume that there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for spammers to make $$ from people non-local to them. As spam becomes outlawed throughout the developed world, people will come to associate it even more with shady disreputable merchants. Would you want to do business with someone like that, over international distances, presumably with a country that has sketchy/poorly enforced fraud legislation? And they'll have to make money from selling product, since it's not like they're gonna make a mint through banner sales.
Saying that legislation won't make a difference underestimates the importance of making a political statement. If something like this were passed, it would represent a certain level of consensus, and then the snowball starts to form.
I just completed a 10 week internship in a Congressional office where they found my technically savvy to be of a great deal of use to their office. They had we working on website and streamlining their mail system after just a couple of weeks on the job. So, here are my couple of observations from those weeks.
1) e-mails are just as important as phone calls. An office gets a phone call with someone saying "I opposed issue X", they tell that person they will "pass the comment on to the Congressperson" and if your lucky, they will tally the support on a sheet. The same goes with e-mail, except that you get a nice little letter that will actually explain the Congresspersons position. Granted it will be form letter, but it usually is enough to know where the rep stands.
2) being a constituent is EVERYTHING. Most offices in the House use something call "IQ", an awful little program written to make full use of IE activeX capabilities. IQ, for all of its failings, has an incredible address checker, and can determine if a letter is from the within their district or not. But you have to get the address to them in the right format, which means using their webform submissions... NO public e-mails.
3) I really can't stress this point enough... a constituent is a constituent, whether it be phone, fax, mail, or carrier pigeon. Any office that wants to be reelected gives every piece the same effort, because people who write are people who vote. The best way to be ignored is to say "if I e-mail it will just be processed by some staffer, so I won't bother." Everything is processed by a staffer (unless you're a personal friend), so get out their and send an e-mail. Personalize it if you wish, but it really doesn't matter... they just want to know who you are and what you think your representatives stance on the issues ought to be. Never forget, these people pay money for polling data that you are giving them for free. They are happy to receive it.
I hope this helps a bit in everyones political adventures.
Only 120 characters... who can summarize their entire world understanding in 120 characters?!
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.
1. Get your stupid idea approved
2. Sign them up on every spam list known to man
3. They don't get reelected
4. ???
5. Profit
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I thought the headline said Handling Evil Overlord in Congress and figured they finally found a way to get at Bill... Scary.
Money for nothing, pix for free
You elect someone for their judgement, not their positions on particular issues.
If you felt compelled to send your congress-person a letter, then it was because the issue was important to you, and you didn't trust their judgement on the matter enough to not explicitly voice your opinion in an attempt to sway their judgement from what you expected it to be, instead of what you wanted it to be.
Do you really want to reelect someone whose judgement you don't trust?
Do you really want to reelect someone whose judgement is so fickle that a letter-writing campaing can effect it?
No matter how you look at it, the congressperson with the most letters should probably not be reelecte.
Perhaps you can deal with galvanizing issues by having a +1 on one side and a -1 on the other, and taking the absolute value. However, if those issues are truly galvanizing, then they should result in the same level of interest, generally, meaning it's a wash: a rising tide lifts all boats, so a congressperson need not fear a galvanizing issue will lif their head up for the chop.
It still looks like a workable approach to me...
-- Terry
What part of "a unique email count" don't you understand?
If implemented correctly, the system could not be influenced by SPAM.
In any case, it's not going to change the Democrat/Republican voter ratio, so getting rid of one Democrat won't achieve anything except getting a different Democrat in power, if you live in a predominantly Democrat district. The converse is true for a predominantly Republican district.
Only an idiot would rotor through opposition candidates this way: "better the evil you know".
-- Terry
E-mail to Congressmen and Senators can be lost in the shuffle, or deleted very easily. Send a fax. A hard copy is harder to lose , and harder to ignore.
How ya like dat?
Go to a campaign appearance by your Rep. Find out the name of the aide who handles the issues you're interested in. Email directly to this aide. The format is firstname.lastname@mail.house.gov
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
In most people's minds, "good judgement" means "if given the same set of facts, the other person would come to the same conclusion or make the same decision I would".
So unless you are a "jackbooted fascist", you aren't going to elect one based on them having "good judgement".
-- Terry
Brett Glass wrote:
``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."
Now you wouldn't be thinking of a specific congressman who did this, would you? One elected from South Carolina, but who represents the Disney Corporation?
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
13 stripes first one is red, the last one is red.
get it freakin' right.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on