Manipulating Voter Contact with House Representatives?
by Britney MayCom
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The United States House of Representatives is limiting email from constituents after the bailout bill was defeated Monday on a 228-205 vote. Jeff Ventura of the Chief Administrative Office (CAO) stated that "We are trying to figure out a way that the house.gov website wouldn't completely crash." This means that voters in some districts may get a try back later response in their attempts to voice their opinion on the rescue package. It seems that attempts to throttle the web traffic have failed and now the entire "write your representative" page has been taken down.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of voters got an error message when trying to contact their elected officials, that read "The House of Representatives is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high amount of e-mail traffic. The Write Your Representative function is therefore intermittently available. While we realize communicating to your Members of Congress is critical, we suggest attempting to do so at a later time, when demand is not so high. System engineers are working to resolve this issue and we appreciate your patience."

This isn't reassuring voters who would like to be heard before the House votes on the bill Friday.

"Big drop" in the Dow "had a chilling effect on a lot of our members and a lot of their constituents," House Republican Leader John Boehner stated. The bill "has a much better chance" of passage this time, he said. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, said he hoped the vote "will send a very strong signal even to the Asian markets and others."

ou may be able to contact your House Representative through their individual campaign sites.