Signed, Sealed, And Encrypted
One small step for man, one giant step for e-advocacy groups. Congress' Chief Administrative Offices have come up with a new feature intended to lighten the email load sent to Capitol Hill offices. If you check out the "Write Your Rep" (WYR) page, certain offices have added a logic puzzle to the process of getting your congressman's contact information. Check out the demo here, or go to the main WYR page and enter California zip code 93292. As of last week, 55 House and four Senate members require the user must solve a logic puzzle (e.g. what is six minus one?) before obtaining their Congressman's contact information.
It's a small barrier for joe constituent, but the enhanced feature has gotten advocacy groups all riled up. It changes the way organizations such as AFL-CIO, ONE campaign, National Association of Realtors or Moveon.Org mobilizes its members to communicate with Congress. The organizations say this is just one more hoop for a constituent to go through to reach their elected representative. [SHIRA R. TOEPLITZ]
"They are finding themselves overwhelmed by the administrative burden of responding to email," said Bill Pease of Get Active, a provider of advocacy services to non-profits. "These are offices with very underdeveloped IT services. They're taking the easy way out."
Pease said the logic puzzle is a response to a Congressional Management Foundation study that showed half of congressional staff surveyed believe identical e-mails are not sent with constituents' consent. The CMF study also showed Congress is receiving four times more communications in '04 than in '95 due to the advent of the internet.
"We were getting incredible amounts of email," said Brian Mahar, Rep. John Larson's (D-CT)'s spokesperson. "And a lot of it was from mass e-mails from some organization using technology to mask a grassroots campaign and it impaired our ability to communicate with constituents."
Mahar, who said Larson's office activated the feature last week, went on to say: "It was a tough decision, because we obviously want to hear from our constituents. But we're limited in the amount of time and staff we have to answer some of these. I think Congress had to address this on a larger level."
And so far the offices are having mixed reviews, and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)'s office is taking it down next week. Dingell's spokesperson Adam Benson had this to say: "Like all offices, we are looking for a way to manage the enormous amount of email we receive from our constituents. We gave the system created by HIR a try, but found that it wasn't meeting our needs. It is in the process of being taken down."
I wanted to address this quote in the article:
"We were getting incredible amounts of email," said Brian Mahar, Rep. John Larson's (D-CT)'s spokesperson. "And a lot of it was from mass e-mails from some organization using technology to mask a grassroots campaign and it impaired our ability to communicate with constituents."
Despite the 50% of Congressional Staffers who believe form email campaigns are astroturf and prevent offices from communicating with their consituents, the truth is these form emails ARE FROM CONSTITUENTS.
As someone who sends email to Congress (both personalized and form email) and who helps advocacy groups organize these types of campaigns, I can assure you that when I send a form email, it is deliberate.
Rather than think of these as "click and send" emails that require no thought on the part of the constituent, think of them as the result of citizens finding organizations that represent their views on issues, subscribing to their email alerts and newsletters, depending on these groups to track legislation relevant to the issue, and alerting them when action is needed. THEN they send the email.
While it is understandable that a form email may not count as much as a personal email in the eyes of Congressional staff, it is folly for them to dismiss these emails as fake.
Form email campaigns are not astroturf. Astroturf is when a group sends email without the consent of the people on their list.
That is not how form email campaigns work.
We subscriber/constituents receive emails asking us to send an email to Congress. We CHOOSE to click through and send the email if the issue matters to us.
I recently emailed Senator Allen's office complaining that they NEVER reply to my emails, form or personalized. They finally got it. I am a real constituent. They quickly replied with a lengthy email on the issues I raised AND I got a voice mail asking me to call them to reconcile my three email addresses in their system (imagine, they didn't reply to me because I use more than one email address... even though all are active and all linked to my street address).
I was stunned by the response.
On the other hand, I have emailed Senator Allen on a few more issues since then, and have not heard back from him on these, despite klnowing that his office is capable of replying quickly.
I think that this whole issue raises some serious questions. Why haven't Congressional offices been given increased budgets for staff and technology in the past 20 years? And why are they dismissing real consituents who send form emails?
While many offices may be able to show examples of individuals who claim that they never sent a form email that arrived in their name, I guarantee that for every example provided, the remaining 99.9% of people who sent the same form email DID NOT COMPLAIN. That is because these form emails are sent by real constituents exercising their First Amendment rights.
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