When you email one of Wyoming’s citizen lawmakers, it might wind up in their inbox, quarantine or junk folders.
At least one political group feels the current system is keeping their messages from being read. This week, electeds started looking into whether the state’s email quarantine system violates the public’s free speech.
Honor Wyoming is a political advocacy nonprofit that tends to back further-right electeds. The group wrote to the state Legislature's staff office in January, accusing lawmakers of not reading emails the group had sent them.
“Wyoming citizens and legislators have brought to our attention that thousands of constituent emails have been directed to a quarantine folder, blocking constituent communications to legislators,” the letter says.
At a Management Council Subcommittee on Legislator E-mail meeting dedicated to the topic on July 15, Honor Wyoming asked for a list of email addresses that aren't ending up in lawmakers' inboxes.
“We believe it is obligatory for the Legislature to disclose what’s not getting through,” Drake Hill, an attorney for Honor Wyoming, testified.
But Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson) said constituent emails are getting through.
“They’re getting through to places that he [Hill] doesn’t agree they should be, in a spam file, or a junk file, or a quarantine file,” Gierau said.
Gierau’s solution? Lawmakers need to check all their folders regularly, not just their inboxes.
But Hill said that’s not enough. He said the effect of the state’s current email quarantine policy is censorship of the public’s communications with legislators.
In its January letter, Honor Wyoming said it might seek a court order to change the policy.
Other people at the meeting said a public list of blocked addresses could be used by bad actors to hack electeds’ emails, since it could be apparent to them that the addresses are not usable for phishing, thus tipping them off that they’ll need to impersonate someone else.
House and Senate leadership are set to review lawmakers’ suggestions for potential fixes on November 18 and 19.
The Legislative Service Office will post a notice on its website explaining how Wyomingites can check that their emails were received.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
