Writing to Congress? First Pass a Quiz

If you think about it, conversation is crucial to a representative democracy. After all, how can elected officials represent us if we can't converse with them directly?

At the same time, quality is very important in conversation. One of the most basic aspects of quality in conversation is trust -- that is, can the intended recipient of your message easily determine that your message is authentic and relevant?

In the age of spam, this can be harder than you think.

This is why, according to the Capitol Hill newsletter Roll Call (subscription required), about 60 members of Congress have implemented "logic puzzles" on their "contact me" web forms. This kind of "captcha" is a simple arithmetic question such as "What is 6 + 5?" The purpose is to confound "bots" which can be used to automatically flood a web-based form with responses.

I can't say I blame Congress, because bots are a major pain. I can't imagine what it must be like for Congressional staffers who have to wade through thousands of e-mails daily, many of which are virtually identical, and try to figure out which might be genuine, and which might be spam intended to sway a political decision.

Considering that, a little simple arithmetic is a small price to pay for ensuring quality in a fundamental function of democracy.

But this is the mashup age, so there's more to it...

Here's the sticking point:

On June 16 the New Standard reported: "Activist groups, especially those that use web forms on their own sites to help the public send pre-written e-mails to Congress members, are outraged over the quiz. The math problems may be trivial to most would-be constituent correspondents, but they are designed to baffle the software used to carry out high-tech grassroots campaigns."

To boil that down:

• Advocacy campaigners want to get as many people as possible to write their representatives on their chosen position/issue.

• Therefore, they use web-based forms that interface with the "contact your representative" forms in order to make that process as simple as possible for concerned (but busy) constituents.

• By facilitating interaction with Congress, they're aiding democracy.

• BUT... is this approach actually a kind of spamming? And do logic puzzles (or any barriers) discourage crucial democratic conversation?

I'm wrestling with that "But."

On June 12, Washington Post columnist Jeffrey Birnbaum discussed the Congressional logic puzzles, and added a statistic to the debate. In Finding Fault With Logic of Congress's E-Mail Plan, he wrote:

"On a single day last week, of the 8,262 times the logic puzzle was viewed in the House, only 1,568 people answered it and moved on to send a message -- a 19% success rate. It's unknowable whether this means that [advocacy groups'] computers could not crack the code or whether actual humans were frustrated and gave up (though there were probably a combination of both)."

Well, if 80% of those attempts were spam (not initiated by real people), then I guess that 19% success rate is a good thing. But if it blocked legitimate messages that constituents were trying to send via a third-party site, then that's a problem.

Hmmmm... I'll have to keep mulling this over...

Anyway, Birnbaum notes, logic puzzles may soon become moot as programmers find automated ways to circumvent them. You can read more of his views in the transcript of his June 12 online chat.

What are your thoughts on this issue? Please comment below.

Comments

[Howard Owens]

Are the advocacy groups just sending the same message over and over, or are they asking members to write indivdual, unique messages.

If it's all the same, use a petition.

If unique, then Congress's IT department should set up some sort of "trusted" API or something where groups could apply for and get keys to generate e-mail from their own sites. This seems like it would be a rather simple API to build and manage.

[Amy Gahran]

Hi, Howard

My understanding is that within a representative's or Senator's office, contacts by constituents are specifically tabulated, whereas petitions might not be.

Personally, I don't have a problem with third-party groups offering boilerplate text that individuals can send to Congress, as long as people can customize that boilerplate easily. For instance, someone who really trusts the Sierra Club might think, "They've been researching this issue, they know exactly what to say and I trust them to say it well, so I'll just stick my name at the bottom of their boilerplate."

It's an interesting problem. I'd like to see Congress, rather than take measures to simply block 3rd-party sites from interfacing with their web-based forms out, instead work with 3rd-party groups and campaigns to find a way to ensure that messages sent via 3rd-party sites are legitimate, and can be tabulated easily and appropriately.

- Amy Gahran

[DickStock]

I'd bet that one written snail-mail would be worth about 10,000 emails to a staffer. Why not write?

[Amy Gahran]

I don't know whether the format of the message is really all that important -- that is, a written message vs. an e-mail. That would be interesting to research.

But I do know that congressional staffers tabulate incoming messages according to positions on issues. So numbers do matter.

Sure, it would be nice if everyone would take the time to look up their representative's name and mailing address, wrote a letter, signed it, and put it in the mail. Realistically, how many people would take the time to do that? Almost never. Just because people have busy lives and limited time, should they give up their opportunity to participate in the political process? I don't think so.

I do think it's entirely valid for third-party sites to offer boilerplate letter text and easy interfaces to allow people to send messages to Congress. In today's culture, that makes a lot of sense. Still, how do you balance that against spamming concerns?

- Amy Gahran

[John]

In answer to a previous comment, the reason to not write your representative with pen and paper is that "snail mail", due to the recent anthrax problems, is held up for automatic inspection and takes a long time.

As someone involved in activist activities, I see many websites with a "write your congressman" forms where you can fill in your name, address, and zip code, press enter, and an automatic message will be sent to Washington.

There are three problems with this approach:

First, it jams congressional inboxes with identical messages that simply inform the congressperson or staff member that some organization has a popular web site. Any group, no matter how fringe or disconnected with the real public opinion, can flood congress with e-mail. This tells the representatives nothing about how the public really feels. With little effort an industry group can send massive e-mail in support of increased pollution. A left wing group can flood congress with pleas to abolish the military.

The e-mail from the person who thinks about the issue, does some research to gather facts in support of a position, and takes the time to compose a thoughtful argument will be lost in the pile of spam.

Second, it is easy for some organization with a mailing list to flood congress with e-mail from a computer without the knowledge of the "senders".

Third, too many people will go to an organization's site, click on a link to send a message, and have the feeling that they have done something to help their cause. There is then less chance that they will do something that really will have an impact, such as calling the congressman's office (in Washington or, better yet, the local office) or write a thoughtful, well researched, e-mail discussing the issue and suggesting alternatives.