But who he calls is somewhat at a congressman's discretion — a recipient of the mailer won't be able to decide on his own to call in to the town hall meeting. Congressmen's staff and/or the private provider they pick to manage the meeting uses a list of registered voters' telephone numbers, said Scott Parker, Bishop's chief of staff.

"By law we can't use partisan voter lists" in the callings, said Parker. Congressmen use geography to pick which registered voters will get the mailings, which will get called.

Still, congressmen well know where most of their supporters live, and by mailing and calling into a certain geographic area would be likely to contact more of their would-be supporters in an election year.

"We may put out 20,000 or 30,000 calls and maybe 2,000 people will stay on the line to participate for some part" of what is usually an hourlong "massive conference call," said Parker. It has proven a good way to reach constituents, he adds, and is combined with a dozen face-to-face town hall meetings each year Bishop holds in his district.

Heyrend said the congressmen's telephone scripts — what they are going to talk about — in the callings also must be approved by the House committee, to make sure they are not partisan, like the mailers. And like the mailers themselves, the electronic meetings — paid for by taxpayers — can't be held 90 days before the November election.

Utah's lone Democrat in Congress will hold some Salt Lake County (Matheson's electoral base) telephone meetings before the Aug. 5 "blackout" begins, said Heyrend. Matheson, too, will send out a mailer to those geographic regions beforehand.

"You would be lucky to get 50 people showing up to a (face-to-face) town hall meeting," said Heyrend. "You can get 2,000 or more on the telephone — and you leave voice mails inviting people to contact your congressional office" on the telephones of those who don't answer the calls, she added. In short, electronic town hall meetings are easier for the congressmen and constituents alike and have more participation.

By law, political calls are exempt from any no-call rules. But Heyrend says anyone can ask Matheson's office to take them off of his town hall meeting telephone list, and he will.

Use of the U.S. Postal Services "frank" — as it is known — is nearly as old as the Congress itself.

And nearly every election cycle candidates challenging the congressional incumbents complain about it.

"Congress may be able to do this, but they shouldn't," said Bowen. "Such "constituent" pieces should be restricted to nonelection years only," Bowen added.

Hunter said that Cannon was not planning on sending out a mailer to voters just before the August deadline this summer. "We have done (mailings) before, one earlier this year," said Hunter. "But Chris has never been big on spending a great deal of money on frank mail."

---

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com