The Congressional Database and the Townhall Meeting

Apparently all our elected representatives, at least on the national level, have a database system to track their constituents.  They are required to select from a list of preapproved programs because of security issues.

I call my representative, Carbajal of CA 24, once a week to find out what his position is on impeachment and on removing rapists from the supreme court.  The phone is answered promptly and there is always a nice person who takes my message and says that someone will get back to me, but they never do.  

But this time it was different.  First, the nice person at the office told me that he was at a "townhall meeting" with Carbajal last March and that at the time that Carbajal was cautious on the whole topic but had not made up his mind either way.  That was not what I wanted to hear, of course, but it was helpful because the primary goal here was to find out what my representative thought.

Second, just for fun, I asked the person in my Congressman's office if he could tell how many times I had called.  And he could!  I had called 8 times plus today, for a total of 9.  

I think that this is mostly good.  They are supposed to keep track of what their constituents think, and it should be computerized in this day and age.