Web Traffic Deluges U.S. House Website

by Pam Greenberg

CNN reports that U.S. House of Representatives servers have been deluged by millions of emails related to the $700 million bailout bill.  Some of the emails, according to Brian Krebs of the Washington Post, were from advocacy groups sending large batches of bulk email. Web users also have been rushing to the House Financial Services Committee site that has information about the proposal, overloading the site and causing error messages.

State legislatures have also experienced huge demands on web servers because of hot-button issues. Vermont's legislative web site experienced high web site traffic when legislation about civil unions for same-sex partners was being considered in 2000. In 2003, California legislative IT staff had to temporarily block email originating from an advocacy group after the huge volume of emails threatened to shut down the legislature's email system.

It's not always predictable which issues will catch fire. Stadium bills, tax proposals and religious issues (like this recent controversy in Ontario about nixing the reading of the Lord's Prayer in the legislature) might be a safe bet.  But overloaded web servers are telling us that citizens are engaged and looking for ways to let their representatives know how they feel.