When I used to work for the Hawaii Department of Budget and Finance, lo those many years ago, one of my major job functions was drafting responses for the Governor's signature. At the time, and I'm not sure if this is still true, all letters from the public got a response.
As a practical matter, no Governor can read and respond to all correspondence sent to him or her. So, if the subject matter and draft response are not politically sensitive, the Governor may never even see the original letter nor the response back. Usually, the Governor's staff will make a determination whether the Governor needs to read the original letter and response. If not, such mail is usually parceled out to the appropriate agency for review and drafting of an appropriate response.
If the response is going out over the Governor's signature, most, if not all states, have machines that can write the Governor's signature using a pen attached to said machine. The resulting signature is, for most purposes, indistinguishable from a "real" one.
Sometimes, if the subject matter of a response is particularly thorny, and the Governor (or his or her staff) wants to be insulated from having to give bad news to the respondent, the letter will go out over the subject matter department's signature rather than the Governor's.
But the absolute worst kind of response to draft is when the original letter writer refuses to accept the government's response. This occurred especially when a member of the public felt wronged by the "system" and wanted some decision reversed or other action taken.
Rightly or wrongly, these kinds of follow-up letters tended to get canned memos called "Thank you for your letter, please drop dead" responses. The drop dead memos were intended to get the person to stop writing to the Governor (and most times it worked) while politely acknowledging the sender. But at least the person writing in always got a response.
In my post on Friday criticizing O'Reilly for disenfranchising millions of US citizens by disallowing contest submissions from states outside the continental US, two Daynoters commented I should put the burden on myself and ask O'Reilly why they did this. Bowing to the greater wisdom of my fellow Daynoters, I sent the following to O'Reilly yesterday:
I was all set to enter the contest tied in to Robert Bruce Thompson's new book "Building the Perfect PC." But as is the case when I enter these things, I carefully read the contest rules. Imagine my dismay when I realized O'Reilly had [apparently] decided to disenfranchise millions of US citizens by saying only people living in the "continental" US could enter.
I realize the number of O'Reilly books sold in Alaska and Hawai'i may not count for much, but why go out of your way to create ill will?
People like to say the Internet is about conversations. Well, one way of killing a conversation is to tell people they don't count. Indeed, tell them you don't even want to hear from them is a good way of ending things real quick.
I hope, in the future, that your company will honor the fact that there are 50 states in the United States of America and that opening lines for conversations are better than saving a few bucks for shipping.
Aloha,
Dan
As of this writing, I haven't received a reply. If I do, I will post it on my site (even if it's a thank you for your letter, please drop dead response). But I'm not holding my breath because, unlike public agencies, private businesses aren't accountable to the public.
Aloha!
