
Ask HN: What does Congress do to verify constituent communications? - javajosh
Given the openness of communication with any elected official in the USA (see https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usa.gov&#x2F;elected-officials&#x2F;) what does Congress do, if anything, to verify the legitimacy of calls, letters, emails, etc that they receive from &#x27;constituents&#x27;? If these channels are as vulnerable as they seem, does anyone know if any groups, foreign or domestic, have executed a systematic campaign of disinformation directed at Congresspeople?
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alexmingoia
They run the names and addresses through voter registration databases, and
sometimes keep tallies for specific issues using constituent management
software.

I’ve worked in this space and written software that communicates constituent
opinions to Congress.

At the congressional level they don’t take emails seriously at all, or pay
much attention to them. They’re triaged using constituent management software
into email lists with auto-responses for different issues. Actually Congress
has an API that approved software vendors use to send constituent opinions and
group them by associates issue or bill. Congress members no longer publish
their emails and have contact forms on their website instead, that feed into
this API along with other vendors (ex: countable.us)

At the local level it’s a different story. Some use software to organize the
emails, some actually monitor and respond to emails, it depends.

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greydius
I don't think this is something to be concerned about. Unless you are donating
a significant amount of money, your calls, letters, emails, etc. are simply
ignored.

