Email Contact With Minnesota Reps? Not So Fast.

July 5, 2010
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Marty Owings

After hearing from someone recently about the difficulty he had getting a response from a Congressman outside his district via email, I became curious. Why not just write them a letter I asked? No one under 35 years old writes letters, was the quick response. Well you could call them right? Yes, I suppose I could call them, but emailing allows you to keep a record and to copy others. Fair enough I thought, let's check it out.

So how easy is it to submit an email question or concern to Minnesota's Representatives. I visited each of their websites and tried to submit an email question. Here are the results of my quick test in alphabetical order:

Michelle Bachmann - After entering my zip code at the zip code screening form: "Sorry, Congresswoman Bachmann does not represent that zip code."

Keith Ellison - Allows you to submit email questions with this caveat: "Keith welcomes comments from outside the Fifth Distrct, but generally is not able to respond directly to them. If you reside outside of the Fifth District, you can find your own representative here."

John Kline - After entering my zip code: "Access to the requested form is denied. The zip code that you entered does not provide access to this form."

Betty McCollum - Your zip code indicates that you are outside of the 4th District of Minnesota. Regrettably, I am unable to reply to any email from constituents outside of the 4th District of Minnesota.

Jim Oberstar - After entering my zip code: "Access to the requested form is denied. The zip code that you entered does not provide access to this form."

Erik Paulson – After adding contact information to a contact form, and clicking the “send email” button you receive a message saying the: “The following information has been submitted:” followed by a list of the information you submitted.

Colin Peterson – After the zip code screening form, another form appears requesting name, address, phone number and a place to add the text for your concern. After submitting the form the following message is displayed. Thank you for sharing your views! Your information was recorded as: (followed by the info you entered)

Tim Walz – “Access to the requested form is denied, the zip code which you entered does not provide access to this form.”

All the Representatives listed here did provide a phone number and snail mail addresses. While I'm certain some will question the effort here, I think it could be argued that accessibility to elected officials is important especially for those in their home states. And with the advent of email and smart phones it follows that these tools might enhance that access, rather than restrict it.

The concern here for Representatives is that you run the risk of hearing from anyone and everyone, even folks outside of Minnesota, but restricting email contact to the constituents in your home district seems fairly narrow given the number of statewide and national issues that are interconnected.

I'd like to see more online, email and real time access to our elected officials. Would it be too much to ask them to allow their staff to see emails from Minnesotan's outside their districts? If you have an opinion on this feel free to add a comment.

NOTE: Minnesota's Senators, Franken and Klobuchar both allow email contact and both allow non-constituent, out of state contact.