If only calls were recorded and letters were scanned. Analyzing the trends seems like pretty powerful data for a congressman.

Then again, you could say that the congressman shouldn't need a computer to understand the people he represents.

They wouldn't if they only represented the number of people they were supposed to when the constitution was written (house members that is).

However we capped it at 435, so each congressman represents far more people than he is supposed to. I say technology has reached the point where we should remove the cap have thousands of representatives.

We used to expand the number of lawmakers as the nation grew.

We should have three times as many members of Congress to get back to the representation levels of 1900.

You've got a pretty good pattern-matcher between your ears. Staffers have them too, they can note "hey we got a bunch of calls about this issue" at the end of the day.

You are mistaken if you think that 18 and 19 year olds taking phone calls as interns are in any way an effective means of conveying information to those in charge. Sure, they can note trends. Do they? No. The primary concern was which lobbyist reception with free alcohol everyone was going to at the end of the day. And although many of them may have a good grasp on a lot of issues, some like SOPA may be lost on them. Not to mention the more fringe issues. What if 60% of your constituents call in favor of an issue and for 40% against it.. How does that get relayed effectively?

I've never worked as a staffer but from what I've heard, if there was unusual volume on something it usually got escalated. If it's bumps in the noise, yeah, no big deal.