Electorate dismissed

I am not alone in the last few years in wondering what the advent of instant electronic communication has done to our relationships with other people. Sure, it's easier to get in touch with one another, but it's also quite easy to dismiss an e-mail from someone you don't want to deal with. Example: A friend with whom I'm not on such good terms sent me an e-mail, and I skimmed it over my morning cup of coffee one day and decided I'd stew for a while before responding. Six months later, that message is way, way way down at the bottom of my in-box and I've yet to respond. Would I have responded by now if he'd sent me a printed letter or card?

What this means for our political system is still up in the air, but I have a sneaking suspicion that e-mail will not be the great tool that will bring our representatives closer to us as it has for grade school classmates or friends of friends of friends. I don't have much faith that lawmakers read every piece of printed mail that arrives in their offices, so I pretty much have less than no faith that they read even 5 percent of the e-mails that fill their intern's Outlook boxes.

Johnson offers a (somewhat frightening) brief history of the House and Senate e-mail systems, but every time I turned a page I stopped to wonder if any of it mattered. My senator could have the best e-mail system ever designed, but I still don't think he'll read any messages I send to him, let alone consider the contents.