What Yglesias said.
A lot of people I know are skeptical of the value of calling or writing your member of Congress. After all, why would members of Congress care about such things when scientifically valid opinion surveys are available and few members face competitive elections anyway? Surely, congressional action is determined by some combination of public opinion as measured in polls and corruption via lobbyists. So if members donāt do the popular thing, it must be because the system is corrupt.
I doubt it. For one thing, itās unquestionably the case that members of Congress dedicate a lot of staff time to fielding phone calls and reading and coding pieces of mail. And anecdotally, things like the huge āletter gapā over the Waxman-Markey energy reform bill had a huge psychological impact on the Hill. Then you have research like this. So I do wish everyone would say to themselves, āIf I care enough about this issue to complain about it in conversation, then Iād better care enough about it to get in touch with the elected officials who represent me.ā
Several staffers told me that until we started calling and writing about the Affordable Care Act, almost every call they got came from Beck fans screaming about crap like death panels and the gold standard. The only other feedback that most of them had to work with was CNN replaying clips of Barney Frank debating whether to give up. Congress jumps at every rightwing whim at least in part because their media does an excellent job motivating a pissed-off rabble to phone their Reps. This is not even a bug – democracy should work like that. Congresspersons must respect feedback from constituents. It is their job.
Do you care about an issue? Don’t complain about it on a blog to people who already agree with you. Pick up the phone* and tell it to someone you voted for (or against)**. Then complain about it on a blog.
(*) To multiply your impact ten hundred fold, send a hand-written letter. Even Senators from big states either read or at least hear about every non-typed letter that they receive. A phone call or a fax will at least get logged. Email has zero impact. Zip. Nada. If you absolutely have to write an email, save time and shout at your cat.
(**) This part matters. Unless you vote in Connecticut Joe Lieberman will not care what you think, no matter how loudly you think it. Nor should he care. If your only choices are Republican then call and tell them they’re schmucks. Trust me, it is cathartic.
***Update***
Duncan notes that staffers like and don’t like different kinds of feedback. In my experience their favorite kind of feedback is specific, succinct, polite and not particularly loud. Say where you live/vote, name the issue, state your position and tell the volunteer what you want Representative X to do about it. Then wish the person a good day. Other stuff sounds more important than it is – instead of telling staffers how big your club of like-minded friends is, have your friends call.
Whether the office ‘likes’ feedback (whatever that means) is really less important than whether or not they respond to it. I doubt that moderate Republicans ‘liked’ the screaming loons who forced them to line up behind Paul Ryan’s suicide pact.
***Update x2***
From commenter DXM. Bolding mine.
Former student in a Senatorās constituent-service shop always said āHand-written fax. On nice stationary, so you donāt look like a nutā. (Post-anthrax-scare snail mail is slow.) Scan and send. E-mail is too easily automated.
Holden Pattern
And this is insane. Email is the primary mode of personal and business communication in the United States. But WTF ever, it explains a great deal that Congress is driven by the anger of technophobes, Beckist morons and the elderly.
Brian R.
Amen to that. I used to call Jesse Helms’ office all the time when I lived in NC. It was awesome.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Congresscritters care about getting reelected – it’s a feature in our system – so if the rep thinks that you are a person who will help them get elected, they will listen to you. It’s easy to send an email. Its more complicated to write a letter, and still more compilicated to make a phone call, and this effort almost completely maps to the likelihood of voting consistently.
gwangung
It’s also the primary mode of spammers and junk mailers.
Might have something to do with it….
kdaug
One suspects that a hand-written letter, sent in a hand-written envelope (with a bonafide stamp), indicates that the person sending it is elderly.
And old people vote.
MikeJ
@1: The problem isn’t that people on the hill are Luddites, they’re not. It’s that it is too easy to fire off an email. Handwriting a letter takes effort, and it’s not easy for one person to send a million hand written letters with fake addresses. That’s trivial to do with email.
Brian R.
Not elderly, but that the person sending it cares enough to take the time to do all that. Emails get fired off with no effort and are forgotten by sender and recipient alike.
RyMaN600
It’s times like this that I wish I had legible handwriting.
Davis X. Machina
Former student in a Senator’s constituent-service shop always said ‘Hand-written fax. On nice stationary, so you don’t look like a nut’. (Post-anthrax-scare snail mail is slow.) Scan and send. E-mail is too easily automated.
There was a funny article in SI recently around Decision Day about HS AD’s and students trying to find working faxes in an age of e-mails to send letters of intent back to their schools.
It’s a niche technology, sure, but it’s the preferred technology in those niches.
PonB
A wonderful sentiment…I’ll have to try it the next time I actually have a representative in Congress. I’m stuck with Dan Lungren (R-Venus (well, one of the moons) )…
– PonB
trollhattan
O/T: 6th Circuit upholds Affordable Health Care Act constitutionality.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/29/257409/breaking-6th-circuit-upholds-constitutionality-of-affordable-care-act/
NotOnScript
Don’t mean to burst anyone’s bubble here, but if you’re sending hand-written letters to Washington, they’ll get delayed because of anthrax screening. My Congressional rep warns of a two-week delay for letters delivered to his Washington office.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
As a person who worked as a page in his misspent youth — YES, THIS TIMES ONE TRILLION.
If half the fuckers who bitch on blogs sent letters or called their Rep. + the White House, they’d actually see some goddammed movement on the things they claim to care about.
I want to second what others are saying Re: email — the apparent authenticity of the expression is what really matters, here. Howso? Because petitions tend to get round-filed, as well (and let’s not even start on online petitions, Sanders’ latest act notwithstanding). Someone slapping a signature on a letter shows less interest than someone picking up a phone, and it’s fairly easy to do a form letter, as well.
(This should not be followed if you’re actually asking for Constituent Services, however. As the people who get a First Look at those tend to be volunteers and pages with little experience in reading crap handwriting, you really need to send a typed snail mail letter to explain your need. The more friction you present them, the more trouble you can have getting help.)
Davebo
One correction here. Joe Lieberman cares not a whiff what you think whether you’re from CT or not.
He’s already milked that constituency and doesn’t plan on trying to do it again.
Tim F.
In ten minutes, I could spend $30 on a cheap liberal contact list of 50,000 names or so, plug it into a pre-fab web app and generate four or five thousand emails to whatever Rep or Reps I want. Individually signed by constituents! impassioned! Professional sounding! Also, too, deleted without reading along with the fifty thousand other mass emails that every Rep receives every day.
TooManyJens
This is why I have an email-to-fax account. I type up the letter in Word, insert the .gif of my signature, and then send the whole thing to a special email address and it shows up in their office as a fax. It’s not significantly harder than sending an email via their web contact forms (and why do they have those things if they don’t pay attention to them?).
I have done the hand-written letter thing, but not often. Maybe I’ll start doing it more.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
This is terrific advice, but what can we do to influence the process more when we’re already represented by congresscritters who vote the way we want them to? (In my case, Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein). Use a fake address? Do staffers check postmarks?
kdaug
@kdaug
Let me flush my point out a bit:
Pretend you’re a 65-70 year old congressman. You don’t understand technology, nor all these young’uns with their Googleberries and epackages and whatnot clogging up the tubes.
But why should you care? Everyone knows the young’uns don’t vote. Why pay them no nevermind?
And that, my friends, is why a hand-written note, with shaky but legible penmanship, is likely to get noticed a lot faster. The old are legion. And they’re growing. As the boomers retire, this a one demo that they’re all going to pay attention to.
Lol
During the HCR fight, OFA asked people to call other supporters in their area to get them to call their reps as well and provided a call tool to help.
The Nutroots called OFA stupid before going back to attacking Obama for not passing single payer via reconciliation.
Valdivia
OT but ACA related, the law has just been upheld by what was supposed to be a very conservative appellate court. yay for sanity.
ETA beat to it by trollhattan @11. still good news
Holden Pattern
Yes, and the congresscritters could set up a Bayesian filter that kills emails which are almost identical, and / or come from the same IP address. But they’re technophobes themselves, disproportionately older, and underfunded for technology even if they wanted to understand it.
I understand what everyone is saying here about “showing you care blah blah blah”, but it’s a bitter irony that as we yammer on about technological advancement and the obsolescence of the post office (and even of the fax machine), that the only way to get your congresscritter to notice you as an individual is to ignore the technical advances that we claim are our future economy, and to use a pen, paper, and the post office, which we all know, because our political leaders tell us so, is inefficient, obsolete, and crappy.
Tim F.
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
Contact Feinstein. She is far from the most reliable Democrat on social and security issues. When you’ve done that, contact Pelosi’s staff and tell them they rock. Trust me. They appreciate it.
@Lol:
This particular nutroots outlet started mobilizing callers the day after Scott Brown won and kept it up until the day ACA passed. You also forget Jane Hamsher, who mobilized her minions to call in to kill the bill so that Obama would lose and President Bachmann would give us single-payer. Or something.
Cris (without an H)
And forgive me for being all starry-eyed, but most of the people in Congress actually care about serving their constituency. I mean, yeah, they want to be reelected, but they want to actually do the job they were elected for too.
My brother was a Senate staffer for the better part of a decade. To hear him talk about it, staffers take pretty personally the contact they make with constituents, and Congresspeople do listen to their staffers.
ruemara
Oh Colette, what to do in this case is tell your friends, even those in red states and then write an op ed letter to your paper. It does help, really.
Davis X. Machina
The golden bullet is $10,000 – $20,000 in bundled donations from a couple hundred individuals. Or a PAC. So join stuff, or find/create things to join. That gets you listened to. What we’re talking about is next-best, for those who don’t have that kind of money.
MikeJ
@kdaug:
The member is never going to see the mail, electronic or not. He’s going to ask the staffers how it’s running. The staffers are young enough to not be scared of email, and also young enough to know what spam looks like.
Email isn’t ignored because of the olds, it’s ignored because it’s used by lazy people, scammers, spammers, and fakers.
EdTheRed
Too bad Yglesias lives in DC. I get so sick of being implored to “Call your representative.” Call my representative?” Fuck you. How about you *get* me a representative, and maybe a senator or two, and I’ll promise to call them before important votes.
Or I suppose I could call up Del. Norton’s office and ask them to not vote the way I’d like them to not vote.
me
Send a fax for free.
gbear
I call my senators and legislator about once a month. The theme lately has been ‘Don’t back down to republicans. Don’t accept crappy compromises’. Just short and sweet. Works for damn near every issue. All my reps vote solidly democratic anyway. Hope it’s at least helping morale.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
OK, keeping the proactive train rolling here — anyone have good links to more documents around contacting your Congresscritters? I’d love to see if anyone’s found the faxing idea to be productive, for example.
Alan in SF
Obviously you folks have never met Diane Feinstein.
David in NY
Thank you, but why not a typed letter? Too easy to astroturf? Or what? I type letters to everybody else, and my kids never even learned to have decent handwriting because they were born attached to a computer or something.
David in NY
You don’t get it. In most communication, speed and ease count. In this kind, intensity is what counts. E-mail is nearly negative intensity.
srv
I’m trying to understand the concept of hand-written fax on nice stationery. The fax is on fax paper, not nice stationery. What, you want me to get stationery made “From the Office of SRV” and fax that?
Lol
Tim F:
I don’t consider Balloon Juice (or TPM) to be part of the Netroots.
Tim F.
Yes. A typed letter is basically printed-out email, though the envelope and stamp at least cost you fifty cents and a minute or two. Put it about on par with a phone call.
Davis X. Machina
@ Dave in NY Typed is fine, too. Snail mail is still, a decade post-anthrax, slow. Just be sure it looks like it came from a person. Circumstantial detail in first paragraph.
They wind up sounding like the letters in Monty Python, but that may be unavoidable.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@gbear: My understanding is that saying “thanks for what you’re doing, keep at it!” is rare and greatly appreciated.
Congressional staff get a LOT of mail, far more than you can easily imagine. The vast majority of it — at least when I did the job — is at best upset, and all too much of it is literally insane. And that was in the late 80s, when email was still a dream, and faxing only for wealthy folks — it was letters and calls, and letters won more attention.
I vaguely recall there was something special done by/for positive letters, but I don’t recall what. I’m pretty sure they were set aside for someone higher up to deal with. But that’s my crappy memory and that’s just one Senate office; however, the impression I get is that getting a positive, or even just mildly critical, letter really is rare and seen as special in the offices.
So yes, even if your Rep. is an angel, tell them. It really can make an impact on their next battle.
catclub
I heard one of those ‘get your mail noticed talks’
and he said to mail the original (expensive stationery)
to the local office, where the anthrax delays will not impact it, and then it will be noted as one from that office that the rep will need to see.
Also fax to DC office.
gwangung
We KNOW the right and their wingnuts constantly harangue their Congresscritters.
We pretty know that it’s more rare for progressives to do so. And it’s even rarer still for the mass of people to do that when they support liberal causes.
Isn’t this a case of 2 + 2?
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Every time I’ve written my senators I’ve gotten the same answer: “Thanks for your correspondance, but my ideology says you’re wrong.”
Jennifer
What Tim @ 22 said.
It’s almost as important, and probably more memorable, to call or write your representative/senator’s office to THANK THEM for their support on specific issues.
I think it also works to some degree with people who aren’t your representatives, in a way that pressure from non-constituents DOESN’T work…simply because people always appreciate a pat on the back.
As anyone who has ever trained dogs…or children…knows, positive reinforcement works better than negative.
TooManyJens
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: I get that from my Republican Rep. With an added bonus once of “only a fool would think differently,” which was a nice touch.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@catclub/39: Ooooooh, that does sound useful. Thanks of that note!
Alan in SF
@Collette:
I’m assuming you didn’t actually support the Iraq invasion, the Bush tax cuts, the unfunded Medicare Part D entitlement, the promotion of Condi Rice to Secretary of State, warrantless spying on Americans, and many many other things DiFi has voted for over the years despite the vociferous and highly organized opposition of her constituents.
BR
I keep my senators / congressperson in my phone under Sen. X, Sen. Y, Rep. F so that it’s easy for me to call them when I’m bored and tell them what I’m thinking about that day. Otherwise it’s a pain – I’d have to look up their number every time.
Danny
Great Tim! Thank you. This is exactly what is needed, each and every day. Thank you again.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
Couple of tips on what works well:
1. Don’t waste your time if you don’t live in the district or haven’t sent them money. They don’t care, and why should they?
2. Do enough homework to be sure that their mind is changeable. Positions on issues fall into three groups:
A. Fundamental belief that they have run on repeatedly, spoken about often and is one of those rare things they really care about. There is no way in hell they will ever alter it. (Usually driven by personal experience or bought and paid for.)
B. Knee-jerk support, but not rooted deeply. Could be swayed by an effective argument. (In the gay marriage debate, “Why should the government be telling people who they can and can’t marry?” jolted a couple of guys loose from their moorings. Hunters and fishermen can sometimes be swayed on environmental issues.)
C. There because it’s the position that has (so far) gotten them in the least trouble with fewest number of people. This is usually movable. The leadership isn’t insisting, nobody has bought their vote, they don’t really care and the notion of picking up a bloc of voters on a ‘nothing’ issue might be appealing.
3. Now that the Western Union Mailgram is dead (that worked great because you had to pay to send it and they knew you really cared), the best method is what a couple of people have noted: faxes of letters mailed to local office work best, because that indicates that you aren’t automated.
4. If it’s a real timely issue, call, but make sure they can verify you’re a voter. Give your name, address and phone number, Mention how long you’ve lived there and how many times you’ve voted for Old Schlomo. If you’ve worked or given money, say so.
In some cases, I’ve been put on hold and when they come back, the abruptness is gone and they talk about how much they value my support. Fairly sure my voter data and party registration got pulled.
5. Whether writing or calling, make the first part your elevator speech (whole argument in 20 seconds), with a series of bullet points following. Give the staffer lots of sound bites to copy down. No policy speeches.
No abuse. Doesn’t work. OK to sound unpolished a bit (seems real). Never recite a canned speech– after they hear it twice, they assume you’re a movement bot.
6. If the issue is personal to you, say so and say why. If they think you might really pull your support, it’ll matter more than otherwise.
7. Save your powder. The more you write or call, the less they pay attention. This is why you don’t waste time on issues the rep won’t be moved on.
8. Petitions are worth the paper they’re written on– reps know people will sign almost anything. 1 letter is worth 100 names on a petition.
Online petitions, it’s more like 10,000 names to one letter.
Chris G
One more calling anecdote: When Tim started urging people to call their members post-Scott Brown, I called Al Franken’s office and explained the “pass the damn bill” strategy to one of his staffers; I also referred her to Benen’s memo. The staffer was unfamiliar with either the strategy or the memo. It was a few days after that that Franken asked David Axelrod why the White House wasn’t trying to get the House to pass the Senate’s health care bill. I’m sure I’m not the only one who called Franken’s office, but I can’t believe my call didn’t help matters any.
acallidryas
@BR
US Capital Switchboard: 202-224-3121.
And @Collette, if your Senator or Rep votes the way you’d like, that’s great. But tell them that you appreciate it. Tell them that you want them to lead on the issue. Push them to make bills better. They still need to hear from you, and know where their constituents stand.
slag
Which I thought was a good strategery. We could use more like it.
acallidryas
@Woodrow
I strongly disagree with your number 7! If your rep/senator isn’t a swing vote and votes lock-step with the party, then you should still call/write/fax when the issue is important to you. They still need to know where their constituents stand.
Democrats get nervous, in part, because they always here when people disagree. Republicans need to know where their constituents stand, too.
jfxgillis
Tim:
Oh dear. You were not supposed to reveal that secret on the front page of a widely-viewed blog.
I’m afraid I’ll have to report this deviation to the Politboro.
FYI, I’m pretty sure we once changed Billy Tauzin’s vote on a measure to reduce- or de-fund the NEH using exactly that method. Having said that, now I have to report myself to the Politboro.
ET
The squeaky wheel gets the grease…..
I live in DC and just wish complaining to my Delegate mattered, but she has not vote on the floor of the House (i.e. when it matters) I just don’t feel my voice is heard. The Del. Eleanor Holmes-Norton did have a vote in the Committee of the Whole (just needed for quorum I think – but separate from the full House voting) but when the GOP took over they were looking to take it away from her.
Genine
Thank you for posting this!
I would think that even if a given representative disagrees with your position, if they get enough letters/faxes/phone calls, it might make them think twice before casting a given vote or reconsider their next vote.
So don’t be discouraged. It takes time, especially since liberals generally don’t contact the legislature as much as wingnuts do. But we can shift this.
...now I try to be amused
That’s what I did when I called my Rep’s office about the ACA. (I think I got that advice from this very blog.) The staffer thanked me for not screaming at her like a teabagger. Of course it helped that the Rep agreed with me.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@53 (acallidryas)
Your mileage might vary– I’ve always worked in states with full-time legislators. But most staff members have pretty good memories and most offices keep files. Calling regularly to present the party line is noticed and the value of your calls gets deprecated.
I’ve heard people say that calling often shows reps that you’re really committed. Usually it just leads to “Hey, has anyone heard from Rufus yet? It’s 10:30 and I thought he would have called by now…”
It might help if you called to argue for the opposite side (“Holy crap– even Judy supports this. Damn…”)
The thing about a letter or call that has impact is “Wow, this issue mattered to this person so much that they got off their keisters and wrote or called.” Once they figure that everything gets you going, the value is reduced.
emdee
My senators are Inhofe and Coburn. Show me one, ONE piece of evidence that even a handwritten hand-delivered letter in opposition to their position would make even one proton’s worth of difference in their votes and I’d consider it, but I don’t think you can. Coburn would rather retire than spend money on anything other than defense and snooping in the bedroom; Inhofe would rather launch a nuclear first strike than vote for a non-Birch proposal.
I like the idea in general, but these guys are dysfunctional, continually re-elected due to a dysfunctional local media that never reports on their problems and never treats any challenger as having a chance. G*d Himself could not make them put country ahead of ideology.
Binky the perspicacious bear
Post cards from their home district work great, are relatively cheap to send, won’t get caught by the anthrax screeners (to be segregated and x rayed and fumigated).
And I think if you go out and find funny or distinctive cards you will get more attention from the staff, simply because even a Beckian rant is more amusing if it is on a postcard with goofy art on it.
Stella B
During the ACA fight I used to call my neighboring blue dog rep and identify myself as a physician from her district (almost true; I am a physician and I practice in her district) about once per week. One time I went to the office with a “bribe” (warm garden tomatoes) to voice my opinion. I peeked at the tally sheet they were keeping. I represented a third of the opinions that they had received that day on the subject. Since she was wavering right up to the last minute, I like to think that it helped. We sent a large campaign contribute within minutes of her yes vote too.
MarkJ
So what does one do if one lives in our nation’s capital, given this:
I have no Congressional representation, ergo no one to complain to. I would call or write frequently if I had anyone to call or write.
Amanda in the South Bay
I think this entire thread is asinine. Oh, people raise some good points about spam, looking like you care with the style of your letter, etc. But the fact that our society has gotten to this stage, where we have to made a BFD about sending the right kind of letter to our congresspeople, is just a joke.
/bitter
russell
A lot of people whoever wrote this knows are dickheads.
If you have something you want your rep to know, CALL YOUR FREAKING REP. Make a phone call. Make several.
draftmama
Well, if your senior senator is Max Baucus**** you don’t have a hope of getting a coherent answer – just a boilerplate response. How to sell out the health care debate.
****”Max Baucus” Mother Joan married into the Sieben Ranch family (owns all the land from the hills above Helena MT to Great Falls MT i.e. most of the land on both sides of the Missouri River for almost 100 miles). Max was adopted by the Sieben family, went to law school, practiced for two whole wacking years, ran for Congress, served I think two terms, then ran for Senate and has mulched there since then. He is the totally most useless Senator there is. Has sucked on the public tit all his life, not that he needed to because he is rich like most of us will never understand, has had a pathetic history of relationships with staffers and such, and only comes back to Montana when it seems politically expedient.
Disgrace. I would love to see Brian Schweitzer to run against him, but knowing Brian personally he wouldn’t likely pollute himself by running for Senate. Max is WAY past his sell by date…….
The problem is that living in Montana is so appealing anyone with sense wouldn’t give it up for life in Washington. Knowing Jon personally I have trouble knowing he is cool with it, but at least he is trying.
Paradise is 10 acres of green pasture just outside the Helena city limits with unlimited water, organic veggie garden, draft horses, chickens, peace and quiet.
And knowing that your congressional representatives, which unfortunately include drunken Denny Rehberg, reallly don’t give a sh*t about their constituents makes us all the more inclined to ignore their shenanigans.
If Drunken Denny were to take the Senate seat from Jon I would have to move back to Canada, but we live in hope because his reputation here in Montana is so polluted.