Why do I have to write a ransome note to comment now?

I went over to our pal EBL's site and saw that nobody has commented in quite awhile. Since most of his posts are political I can understand that but we should drop by now and then and show some support. She posts up a storm and often has an interesting take. But you have to do some bullshit with word verification and what not. Lost of blogs have instituted that. Supposedly to avoid spam. I haven't had a problem with spam so I don't do it. I can't imagine that these blogs have that problem. I don't get. But I do think the harder you make it to comment the less people want to comment.