Writing letters to your Congress member
AllThingsReform
the PC [not politically correct, I hope!], I'd like to bring up
concerns I have on the time-honored tradition of writing letters to
your Congress members.
I've been sending action alerts to users of All Things Reform
( www.AllThingsReform.org or bit.ly/dw ) for over one year, to the
tune of about 125 alerts from various NGO's. Most have been on
government reform issues in Congress and the executive branch. Now, I
have a Representative that is proud of the fact that his conservative
rating is about 93 (out of 100, which is excelente). I have sent him
at least 50 letters over the last year on issues many claim are
leftist but I believe are mainstream, like corruption and campaign
finance and fiscal discipline. My question is: How influential are
constituents' letters to their representatives on Capitol Hill?
Doubtless, they are under pressure from other influences, such as
lobbyists, their peers, their philosophy or ideology and urgent
emergency situations.
What do you think? Have I wasted my time? Or am I neglecting a more
influential manner of reaching my own Rep. on those issues? God knows
I could be wrong on those issues, but it would be nice to get 1 out of
15 letters replied to by at least his staff....
David Weller
Josh Tauberer
> My question is: How influential are
> constituents' letters to their representatives on Capitol Hill?
> Doubtless, they are under pressure from other influences, such as
> lobbyists, their peers, their philosophy or ideology and urgent
> emergency situations.
>
> What do you think? Have I wasted my time?
With the caveat that I have no personal experience with this....
I recently wrote up some tips for communicating with Congress, basically
based entirely on the CMF report of the same name and on CMF's
conference of the same name last October (my it's been almost a year
already!). I am not sure to what extent I believe the survey results in
the CMF report, though. Here's part of what I wrote:
Over the last decade or so, the number of letters to Congress
has nearly quadrupled, with more than 200 million emails now
received by Congress each year (that's around one email per adult!).
...
What Congressional staff say is that two things happen with
letters and other communications. First, Representatives and
Senators use the information essentially like a poll: They tally
up responses and use the totals to guide their decision making.
Second, on rare occasions they use some letters as case studies
in speeches on the floor, to support their point with a little
personal touch. A letter turning into a case study is especially
rare, especially in terms of the volume of communications
received, which means by and large the actual personal content
of messages (beyond what can be tallied) is pretty much unread.
Moreover, your personal communication is worthless in isolation.
As part of a movement, when the tally will add up to something,
it might have an impact. I'm sure there are some representatives
that take tallies seriously, but I don't know how many. No House
staffer says they actually read the letters carefully: They are
frank that they don't have the resources to do it. (Of course,
they can vote on their own resource levels, so there is some
mystery there.)
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/communicatingtips.xpd
(Comments surely welcome.)
(And the CMF report:
http://www.cmfweb.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63 )
I've also started reading Kingdon's Congressmen's Voting Decisions
(third edition 1989, but based on interviews with congressmen in 1969)
and found this part worth sharing for its particular relevance to
today's astroturf... mail.. whatever the term is:
'...when an interest group headquarters asks their members to
write. Congressmen say they can readily spot this "inspired" or
"stimulated" mail. ... Another [congressman] spoke of a thousand
mimeographed letters simply signed at the bottom, including one
man who signed his upside down. This sort of mail is seen very
differently from [mail that] "just sort of welled up." ...
Stimulated writers, however, are usually seen as being neither
intense about their preferences nor numerous enough to count
much. One congressman summed up the prevailing attitude when
asked if he discounted inspired mail: "No, you just evaluate it
and avoid getting stampeded by it.'
But against the cynicism, Kingdon quoted one representative as saying:
' "When I first came here, I voted on principle, and I got beat
over the head for it. That made me take a second look. You'll
find most guys operate this way. If they vote one way, and it's
used in the next campaign to beat them over the head and about
the ears, they'll be pretty cautions about doing it again. I
came here with a lot of idealism, but I've sure lost it." '
Now the question is today who is doing the beating over the head?
--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
John Wonderlich
citizencontact
elected representatives. It is important to understand that there is a
difference with writing a government federal branch agency versus a
Member of Congress. The agency has rules that govern the transactions
with those that write the agency especially when the message is in
response to a public comment period on proposed regulations. For
public comment, for example, each message must be considered and
stored for public viewing. On the flip side, Members of Congress have
no rules on how to deal with incoming mail, even in terms of storage
much less consideration of the message. Nonetheless, most Members of
Congress spend considerable office budgets and staff time to deal with
correspondence. This is a tradition, for some a political necessity
and a good practice by any elected official.
So why are there messages that are unanswered. One reason is that some
offices do not have the resources sufficient to deal with the high
volume of correspondence whether that is caused by lack of staff with
the training and skills or just not enough hours in the work day.
Another reason may be that the Member does not abide by the tradition
and honor of properly representing his or her congressional district.
This can be a serious political error as each Member goes before the
public every two years and in most states congressional district lines
change. Not answering constituents is also a serious charge that some
in the press will write about. If you are not being responded to, I
would recommend calling your congressperson's office (main number is:
202-225-3121 and ask for the office) and complaining. If not you have
various options, most important being exercising your right to vote
for someone else who would.
The question of the political nature of correspondence, whether it
makes a difference is a subtle one. First, it is your duty and right
to petition grievances to your government (check out the
Constitution's First Amendment (see: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights.html
). Second, your elected representatives are not machines with formulas
on how to make decisions. In politics, it takes great skill to
persuade others to ones point of view and there is no easy or obvious
answer. One of the most important, but underrated things is to do
research. In the rush to alert elected officials of their opinions is
the lack of clarity and grounding of the argument. And the next is to
speak with a loud voice, preferably by joining with many others to all
raise your voice. When you do, try and make sure you are all speaking
in one voice as often campaigns are ruined by the noise of differing
opinions. Reach out to the press especially as part of a group, even
if only an ad hoc group. And nowadays each of us can be our own mass
media by getting a blog or web site and making our views and arguments
reachable by a greater group.
I would continue to write, and like your message here I would let
others know, but next time say who your Member is. May be others will
have had the same poor experience and that itself will be a message to
the congressperson and other constituents.
Let your voice be heard!
Daniel Bennett
On Aug 30, 9:23 pm, AllThingsReform <poetspi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hope you're having a great Labor Day weekend! And for those hooked to
> the PC [not politically correct, I hope!], I'd like to bring up
> concerns I have on the time-honored tradition of writing letters to
> your Congress members.
>
> I've been sending action alerts to users of All Things Reform
AllThingsReform
Randy Neugebauer is my Congress member from the Great State of Texas
(Lubbock/ Abilene) and is a very loyal Republican. Nevertheless, I am
emboldened by your words of encouragement and tips for improvements.
And there is more than one way to reach our reps.:
**** Using their official web site form
**** Calling them at their Washington office
**** Snail mail a letter to him
**** Call his regional office
**** Personally meet him in his Washington or regional office
**** Attend a citizen's meeting held by him or attend a campaign
function of his
**** Pay $2,000 to have breakfast with him (he had one in his
Washington home last Spring)
**** Fax him a letter and perhaps an attachment
**** Blast fax or petition him through an advocacy group
**** Contract with a lobbyist?? (Mayor Sarah Palin did so and receive
$28M in earmarks for her town of 6,000)
It would be interesting to compare my degree of difficulty in reaching
my rep. with that of a typical, high-powered lobbyist stationed in
DC...
David Weller
www.AllThingsReform.org