Three weeks for a letter? Really? Have you ever actually used the Post Office? Are you mailing from overseas? It doesn't take three weeks. I've contacted my Senators and Congressmen by phone, email and snail-mail, and I have received timely responses with each method. Another novel approach is to attend your local caucus meetings or to call the legislator's local office for an appointment, since they do come home to meet with their constituents from time to time, and many of them actually do keep public office hours. I supect that the real problem with email is the same problem with 95% of individual blogs. Most people can't write a coherent sentence, or put four sentences together into a cohesive paragraph. If I were a busy Senator with limited time to respond to email, I would instruct my aides to filter and withhold anything that doesn't meet a baseline level of literacy. You can't possibly spend all day, every day, reading messages about how "Issue X sucks". I'd be willing to bet that most of those messages arrive by email.