The list itself is not especially useful and does nothing to get the congressman's substantive message across. The Internet is a wonderful way to find, develop, and lead a group of people with an interest in a specific issue. Members do not make effective political use of the Internet because they fail to aggressively promote their own legislation and projects. A Member who wants to find a constituency for a pet project should use the Internet to find supporters and to help those supporters find each other. The biggest challenge in exploiting the capabilities of the Internet is electronic mail.
Congressional offices use a large percentage of their resources answering constituent mail.
It is a major activity for most offices. Congressional Web pages permit users to send electronic mail, but responses invariably are sent by snail mail. This is also true, by the way, for the White House Web page. There are several reasons. First, Members don't want to waste their time responding to people who don't live in their congressional districts.