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By Ralph Ranalli
Boston Globe

February 28, 2008 ... A little more than a decade ago, the proliferation of e-mail promised a new era of communication between state lawmakers and the people they represented. Imagine a life with less phone tag, the information technology gurus said, as well as fewer envelopes, stamps, and printer cartridges.

But now, as their inboxes are overrun daily with constituent gripes, mass mailings, and spam, some legislators admit that they are wishing for the good old days. E-mail your elected representative today and you might get a personal reply, but you could also get an automated message saying to use an old-fashioned phone line if your matter is at all urgent.

Or, you could get nothing.

"Honestly? A lot of e-mails fall through the cracks," said state Representative Kay Khan, a Newton Democrat. "We just don't have the staff to keep up. We'll get thousands of messages every week."

The results of a recent experiment with legislative e-mail suggested how mixed the results of e-mailing Beacon Hill can be. One morning in late January, e-mails were sent to all 18 of the area's state senators and representatives under this subject line: "Query from Boston Globe reporter about e-mail efficacy."

Of the 18 inquiries, four were never answered. Two received automated replies saying that, due to the large volume of e-mail received by the senator or representative, persons with urgent requests should try telephoning instead. One was returned as undeliverable (a temporary problem that was later fixed).

Of the 11 lawmakers who did respond, two used the telephone, rather than hitting the "reply" button on the e-mail program. Four sent an e-mail answer the same day, while three others did so by the end of the following day. The final two e-mail replies were received at least a week later, including one from a legislative aide who offered a mea culpa for letting the original e-mail languish unanswered for two weeks.

Two of the state representatives who responded the quickest - Democrats Khan and Alice Peisch of Wellesley - were among the most candid about e-mail's limitations and benefits as a part of the legislative process.

Khan, who responded by phone, said she at first welcomed e-mail because of the hassles of using paper mail. "We spent a lot of time on letters," she said.

E-mail, she said, made her days in her State House office more productive, because she could answer her constituent correspondence at night from her home computer. But that has also become the downside.

"Now when I go home at night, I'm driving my husband crazy," she said. "He's always telling me: 'Put down that computer and talk to me.' And I say: 'I can't, I have to keep up with all these e-mails.' "

Another problem, according to Peisch, is the large amount of what might be called benign spam. The bane of legislative in-boxes, it consists of e-mail blasts sent to legislators by nonprofit and political advocacy groups, including news releases, newsletters, annual reports, and form letters that groups urge their members to forward en masse to legislators to create the impression that there is a great public concern over a particular issue.

Such messages not only carry little weight compared with a personal e-mail sent by a concerned constituent, but - due to a quirk of the Legislature's Microsoft Outlook e-mail system - they can also prevent an individual constituent's letter from ever getting through. Lawmakers have the same file storage-size restrictions that many of us do, Peisch said, and the limitations create frequent problems.

"When our e-mail reaches a certain point, we can't respond to any messages until we have deleted enough old ones," she wrote in a response to the Globe's query. "It's a Catch-22. I often don't have the time to spend sorting the junk from the important stuff."

For people who don't get a quick response to their e-mail to a legislator, Peisch said "try calling" as a backup.

That message was also conveyed in automated replies from state Senator Harriette L. Chandler, whose district includes Berlin and Boylston, and state Representative Pamela Richardson, who represents Framingham, both Democrats.

"Thank you for taking the time to contact me via e-mail," states Richardson's generic reply. "I will make every effort to respond to you as soon as possible. Should your situation require immediate attention, please contact my office at 617-722-2582."

Both lawmakers also sent unsolicited follow-up replies, explaining that they do eventually look at all their e-mails. Richardson said she created the automated reply "to be sure that my constituents are notified immediately that their e-mail has in fact been received."

As frustrating as the system can be, people who know how to work it can often gain an advantage. Several legislators said they have alternate addresses on Google or Yahoo, which they discretely give to a select circle of constituents.

Even using the official State House system, targeting individual legislators with personal e-mails is much more effective than taking a shotgun approach, said state Senator Richard T. Moore, a Democrat whose district includes Bellingham.

Full story available at the Boston Globe.  

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