July 20, 2006 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Two coalitions of advocacy groups and technology companies are fighting a new move that threatens nonprofit organizations’ ability to conduct e-mail campaigns.
The House Chief Administrative Officer has made software available to members of Congress that requires visitors to their Web sites to answer a math problem — such as “What is three minus one?” or “Which of the following numbers is largest: 102, 02, or 103?” — in order to send a message to a lawmaker’s office. The requirement, which has come to be called a logic puzzle, is designed to prove that a human being rather than a computer is sending the message.
The software is a response to the mushrooming amount of e-mail that members of Congress are receiving. Last year, a report by the Congressional Management Foundation said that in 2004 the total number of postal and e-mail communications to Congress topped 200 million, up from a little more than 50 million in 1995 (The Chronicle, July 21, 2005).
So far, 30 members of the House of Representatives and one senator have added the puzzle to the contact forms on their Web sites. Another 16 House members use the puzzles when someone sends a message to them through the Web form on the House of Representatives Web site.
The puzzles have angered nonprofit organizations, which often encourage supporters to send e-mail messages to their representatives in Congress from the organizations’ Web sites. To do that, the groups use automated software programs that currently would be blocked by the logic puzzles.
Advocacy groups play an important role in helping people participate in government decision making by informing them about the issues Congress is debating and giving them easy ways to work together on issues they care about, says Kathy Mitchell, Internet advocacy manager at the Consumers Union of the U.S., in Washington.
“What we found disturbing about logic puzzles was the assumption is that it’s real if I communicate with Congress directly in that kind of disorganized way, where I go to my congressman’s Web site and I say something,” says Ms. Mitchell. “But it’s not real, it’s not legitimate at some fundamental level, for me to do that through the National Parks Conservation Association.”
Consumers Union is one of more than 100 groups participating in the Don’t Block My Voice coalition, which is asking people to send e-mail messages to their representatives in Congress protesting the logic puzzles. The coalition says that messages to legislators using the logic puzzles will be delivered as fax messages.
Another coalition, Don’t Silence the People, which is made up of advocacy organizations and technology companies, is asking visitors to its Web site to sign an online petition protesting the use of the logic puzzles.
Together the two efforts have garnered more than 30,000 e-mail messages and petition signatures.
Nonprofit organizations in the Don’t Block My Voice coalition have started meeting with members of Congress and their aides to explain how they run their e-mail campaigns and to discuss ways that lawmakers can deal with the increased volume of messages.
“There are technology solutions that will help Congressional offices take those messages, understand their content, but not have to literally open every single one, and do a lot of manual work, which is what many offices are doing now,” says Ms. Mitchell.
Leaders of the coalition say that the meetings have shown the need for greater dialogue between advocacy organizations and Congressional offices.
“One of the first things that you hear about from members and their staffers is that they really believe that they’re getting a lot of messages from people who aren’t their constituents and who maybe aren’t even real people,” says William Greene, president of RightMarch.com, a conservative advocacy group.
Mr. Greene hopes that the coalition’s efforts will persuade lawmakers that online activism offers them “a bonanza of data.” He says that legislators can use the names and e-mail addresses that constituents provide to set up a two-way conversation.
“It’s not just, then, constituents who are hitting their members with all these messages,” says Mr. Greene. “Members are able to communicate back to their constituents and say, ‘Here’s what’s happening. Here’s where I stand on this. I’d like to hear more from you.’”
To see an example of a logic puzzle: Go to http://www.house.gov/writerep, select the District of Columbia, and enter 00000 as the zip code.
For more information about the nonprofit coalitions protesting the puzzles: Go to http://www.dontblockmyvoice.org and http://www.dontsilencethepeople.org.
