WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US House of Representatives website limped back to life on Tuesday after succumbing to a flood of email to members of Congress and heavy interest in the financial bailout bill.
Traffic to the www.house.gov website was "at least four times normal" on Monday, when the House rejected the bailout package for Wall Street, said Jeff Ventura, spokesman for the office of the House Chief Administrative Officer.
The heavy traffic made the web site inaccessible for many visitors for most of the day on Monday and it remained sluggish on Tuesday.
"We'd never seen anything like it since we put up the 9/11 Commission report," Ventura told AFP. "There was a rush to the digital door, so to speak.
"There was enormous interest in the bill," he added. "We also had a huge, tremendous spike of e-mails to members of Congress asking them how they were going to vote."
Things didn't get any better after the House rejected the bill.
"After the vote there was this tremendous backlash -- of support, of outrage -- and the website really reflected that," Ventura said, adding that the number of e-mails received was in the "millions."
"We were worried that the house.gov website was in jeopardy of possibly shutting down completely and installed stop-gap measures," the spokesman said
"We hoped today would be a lot less crazy but in fact the traffic is just as heavy," he added. "It's very difficult but today people are at least getting in."
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