Please Publish Your Email Address On Your Website

To

Gerald "Gerry" E. Connolly
Representative, United States of America
327 Cannon House Office Building Washington DC

From

Will Riley
Fairfax, VA

Date

April 5, 2009, 8:45 am

Grievance

Dear Gerry,

Please publish your email address on your website. Many Congresspersons fail to do this. They force their constituents to use a webform. Webforms prevent people from keeping a copy of their communication and also prevent users from sending a carbon copy or blind carbon copy to their friends. It also forces users to use your complaint categories. I know that you don't want to give out a working email address because it allows spam to enter, but your webform prevents people from publishing their grievances to you - it forces a more private form of communication. This may be good for you, but not for us. At the Petition Archives, we are trying to increase government transparency. If you cannot give out a public email to your constituents then you should not allow it to be given out to private companies like Capitol Advantage or Convio. What we need is either a public email address or a public API to send messages to Congress. If you create a public API for contituent communication, it needs the ability for people to make their messages public. We have a right to publish our grievances to any government official, and we have a right that these petitions be formally entered and preserved in the public record. Why isn't the Library of Congress doing this for petitions to Congress? Until we have something like this, we will have to use the Petition Archives. It is sad that we have to have the Petition Archives.

Response

Gerald "Gerry" E. Connolly was not sent an email because Will Riley did not provide a work-related email address for him. Sometimes this is because public figures, including government officials, do not share their work-related email addresses with the public. If you think that a public figure should offer a work-related email address to the public, please contact them and submit another petition.

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