Madville Times: Democracy Crashes Servers! House.Gov Overwhelmed with E-mail

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Democracy Crashes Servers! House.Gov Overwhelmed with E-mail

Financial bailout? Try a server bailout! An eager reader points me to this article from The Hill that reveals all those e-mails we've been sending to Congress have been swamping the servers:

The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill.

As a result, some constituents may get a 'try back at a later time' response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote.

"We were trying to figure out a way that the House.gov website wouldn’t completely crash,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the upkeep of the House website and member e-mail services [Jordy Yager, "House Limits Constituent E-mails to Prevent Crash," The Hill, 2008.09.30].

More citizen participation than the computers can handle—that's my kind of democracy. Keep those cards and letters coming!