Well, I kind of felt this would happen. I had a friend in college that was an intern with a state representative and he told me how things work there. A group of interns or volunteers go through letters and phone calls (this was before email was really big) and they are mainly looking for "feel good letters" to pass to the representative's staff. Then they MIGHT pass those on. The other letters are mainly sent to the circular file. The 2 ways to get a representatives attention is to be a personal friend or a big donor. Other than that, they rarely if ever see the other letters. The interns are also given a "script" to respond to phone calls and letters, basically "Rep. So and so is very concerned about said bill and is considering your input" Most of the people you talked to were probably college students and didn't want to pass along bad news in fear of not getting a job later. Case in point...watch the committee meetings and see how many of the representatives actually stayed for the testimony.
So much for being "representatives"
