E-mail can't be licked... or can it? Antoinette J. Pole surveyed hundreds of legislators in Vermont and New York for her doctoral dissertation at City University of New York titled E-mocracy: Information Technology & State Legislatures © 2005. Excerpted with her permission: The importance of maintaining and facilitating face-to-face contact for lobbying remains paramount, not to be replaced by information technologies. Interest group respondents in both states overwhelmingly rejected the notion that e-mail allows their organization to exert more pressure or influence over state legislators, leadership and committee chairs… 50% of interest group respondents in Vermont and 66% in New York reported that the Internet is the least effective method of lobbying. In an apologetic manner a state legislator in New York told me that while he tries to get to e-mail sometimes as many five days would pass without checking his account. This is largely because of how much time it takes to filter e-mail; meaning deleting non- constituent e-mail and advertisements and scanning messages for viruses. In New York, staff told me that there is a perception that a reply sent by e-mail is “less official” than a reply sent via US Post, which appears on letterhead and contains the state legislator’s signature. These findings do not support the hypothesis that interest groups can exert influence through e-mail and the Internet.