If you were nominated by your major media bosses to cover the presidential campaign, congratulations and, I’m sorry. Although an important beat, it has also got to be exhausting, repetitive and overwhelming. The email alone must be mountainous, amounting to an inbox in every account, personal and professional, stuffed to the brim with messages from the campaigns.

Our own P+P destination site for these messages—PopandPresidents@gmail.com—is definitely suffering from a lack of attention, or information overload. Either way, there are quite a few messages that have yet to be read. And it’s not because we don’t care what the campaigns have to say, really. We simply don’t have time to hear about the latest in fall gear from the Obama campaign or to plow through a lengthy update from the Huckabee camp all about how Huck’s been “Chuck Norris Approved.” I kid you not.

Techpresident, a site that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web (and a godsend of a resource tool for journalists covering the campaign), went through the laborious task of analyzing these messages and put together a detailed article grading the campaign’s email campaigns because: “Email messages are the hallmark of online communication. Forget about Facebook applications and video mashups, email is the one tried and true avenue to communicate with constituents or customers.”

And that’s still the truth. Just think about how many times you check your e-mail on any given day. Give raises to the e-mail guru’s running these five campaigns: Clinton, Edwards, Huckabee, Obama and Romney all (not surprisingly) received the top score of a 5. They’re ahead in the polls. I expected them to be ahead in the e-mail contest. Hunter’s campaign, on the other hand, may want to think about getting someone else to inundate people with campaign messages as they scored the sole 1. Biden, Kucinich and Gravel followed close behind with a 2.

All (but semi-candidate Tancredo) have one thing in common: an overzealous need to fill our inboxes with messages. Herein lies the beauty and the beast of technology. It’s incredible to think how quickly information reaches an audience, but really, how much is too much?