Baton Rouge, LA – In an attempt to reduce or slow down the ever-growing volume of unwanted emails that hit staff inboxes, some Congressional offices have installed authentication programs such as logic puzzles, hoping to screen out what they claim are machine or mass generated messages.

Communications filtering is not new to Congress, but these programs imply a new motivation toward technology. Advocacy groups claim authentication programs discourage political participation by confusing or frustrating legitimate grassroots message-senders.

Congressional offices began using webforms several years ago as a means of collecting information beyond the content of a sender’s email message – such as requiring a home address to help identify constituency or classifying the subject of interest so as to assign follow-up by specific staffers.  

Logic puzzles require a person to manually read and respond to a simple question, like “4 minus 3 equals what?” or view and comment on an image that is unreadable by machine. 

“So far, we’re managing the process by virtually passing the puzzle to the supporter for a response.  This unfortunately adds a couple extra steps to the message sending process” said Neal Fuller, CEO for voterVOICE. “And if we encounter a new web form puzzle, we’ll queue the message temporarily so that voterVOICE staff can manually read and answer the question on behalf of the supporter; then we send the message on as originally requested.”

Some online advocacy vendors have had to rely on alternative delivery methods such as fax or hand delivery, resulting in slower communications between constituents and their elected officials.  These alternatives are politically dangerous on time critical votes because “hard copy” messages must be manually processed by Congressional staffers.

voterVOICE software helps organizations implement a smart, proactive approach to grassroots lobbying and political advocacy, overcoming the misconception that those types of activities have to be costly, difficult, and staff intensive. Using proven internet-based technologies, voterVOICE clients easily and affordably manage governmental affairs by automatically matching constituents to their public officials at the local, state, and national levels.