Grassroots advocacy by e-mail

Flooding legislators' inboxes with messages to support or oppose specific legislation is nothing new. However, there are several new sites popping up on the 'net (mylegislators.com) where anyone can enter any name and email address and send a message of their choice to legislators of their choice. I've received over 800 e-mails in the last week on several issues, but most have focused on (1) the cigarette tax, (2) illegal immigration, and (3) worshipping with guns, and many of them have come from advocacy@mylegislators.com.

I respond to each message, but I was much quicker to respond to one fairly touchy e-mail that arrived last night from an old family friend in opposition to the cigarette tax. I picked up the phone and called her, and she had no idea what I was talking about. "You can add as much tax to cigarettes as you want -- I hate 'em," she said. "Plus, don't take this the wrong way, but I have never thought about e-mailing you." Kinda makes me wonder who I'm responding to in many of these e-mail messages.