Opinion: The Letters Top Five

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Each week, your Letters Maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.

After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, from which she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week The Times received 985 usable letters, 836 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

Presidential election: 502 letters, including 134 reacting to the editorial board’s endorsement of Barack Obama and 76 pondering Joe the Plumber;

Gay marriage: 190 letters about Proposition 8, reacting to stories about Father Geoffrey Farrow, the California Teachers Assn.’s opposition to the initiative and other coverage;

Other election: 52 letters reacting to election day mechanics, the plight of the caged chicken, and more;

Economy: 51 letters; and

Healthcare: 41 letters, reacting to the first installment of a Times investigation of the health insurance industry.