I thought the point of forming a lobby group is so that many people might speak with a single voice? This group ought to give it a try. In the meantime I’m not surprised that the emails got blocked as spam, and ratepayers might be happy they were.

23,000 (and that was the subset the sender was able to “recover”) emails addressed to every councillor and local board member (about 160 people all up) – that is 3.7 million emails into the organisation from one source (the emails being generated by a single tool the lobby group had set up)! Apart from clogging the system, 23,000 emails would take about a month to read (at 30 seconds a go).

What a waste of time and resources, time and resources that ratepayers are funding!

Democracy Action needs to rethink their strategy – their current one is stupid and ineffective.

……..

Source and link to Whale Oil post on it: http://www.donotlink.com/dhz8

Of course right on cue the Taxpayers Union (Onion if you want parody) did a presser crying foul of Council apparently blocking the emails (http://www.donotlink.com/di47) which numbered according to Democracy Action some 22,900 (that were “recovered”.

That said if 900 people email all 160 elected representatives then that is 144,000 pieces of email sent. And as noted above there could have been a WHOLE LOT MORE!

Democracy Action state in that letter the emails were customised (so individualised) like Generation Zero allowed with the Skypath submissions. That onus goes back to Democracy Action to prove that otherwise it will be for now it will treated as a standard pro forma campaign

Already I have seen a select few say that Generation Zero did the same with Skypath. Umm no!

Very different for a few reasons:

1. Generation Zero allowed submission forms to be highly individualised despite a standard format to fill in the form. Council does this also and if you want to see how look at the Long Term Plan feedback forms
2. Generation Zero’s forms are treated by the consenting authority for Skypath’s resource consent application as individual formal submissions. Per the Resource Management Act these forms are public documents (not email correspondence)
3. In submission processes it is expected to get a high number of submissions electronically (11,000 for Skypath, 9,400 for the Unitary Plan). Elected Representatives do not expect 900 pieces of a standard letter to hit their boxes on a single issue.

Which brings me to the key point. Got an issue and you are a lobby group? Pick an elected representative who might sponsor you as they are sympathetic to your concerns. Write up a formal letter and get 900 people to sign it by hand or electronically. There is a e-petition site that allows this to happen.

I think this sums up the situation from Whale Oil and Taxpayers Union