Is Your Elected Official Really Listening?

Oliver Wendell Jones asks: "In the past few weeks, since the Sept. 11 incident, I have tried to become much more involved with what's going on politically. It started with my sending e-mails to the members of the senate committee discussing H.R. 2500 (secure encryption) and received very polite e-mails from almost eveyone stating one of two (or sometimes both) generic messages. Not one of their e-mail responses included anything stating their feelings for or against H.R. 2500, so I have no idea if my e-mails had any effect." While I'm all for automated responses to take off the pressure in terms of response time, I'd at least expect aides to take care of these things. Autoresponses aren't enough, and when someone takes the time to write a Representative, whether it be snail mail or email, someone should respond. Of course, if they don't respond to written messages, try calling them directly and make sure an aide knows why you are calling. How many of you have tried and failed when attempting to ping your Rep on government issues that were important to you?

"The two responses I was able to receive were:

• They agreed that terrorists are bad.
• If I was a constituent of their state (i.e., I could vote for them) to please respond with my mailing address in their state (I did include my snail-mail address and I do not live in their states) and they would get back to me.

Of course, the impression I got after all of this, was that if I couldn't vote against them in an upcoming election, they didn't care about my opinion.

I also sent e-mails (and one fax) to the Representatives and Senators of my state (Indiana) on this same topic and received responses similar to those I had received from the others (terrorists are bad, mmmkay?)

Last week, in response to another request from the EFF, I sent snail-mail letters to my Senators and Representative concerning the SSSCA. This time I received a two page, snail-mail form letter reiterating that terrorists are still bad, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the SSSCA.

Has anyone had any luck actually getting their point across to an elected official, and if so, what's the secret?" I think we can all agree that terrorists are bad, but so are bad laws that interfere with our rights. Several of these are trying to progress their way through the House and the Senate and it would be nice to know how the Representatives stand, one way or the other. How can one cut thru the rhetoric and get concrete information out of those who are supposed to be your duly elected representatives in government?

Comments

E-mail is too impersonal

[Skynet]

I have written my Congressman via snailmail numerous times and always been responded to, on topics ranging from video game violence to copyright law. The problem with E-mailing your congressman is that it's way too impersonal, IMO. I'm sure the Congressman is getting WAY more e-mail than snailmail and they get easily backlogged, especially in the days of SPAM. It's also easy to just setup an autoresponder and forget about it.

If you want to write your Congressman, take the time to write an ACTUAL letter, print it out on nice stationary, and use the good old United States Postal Service to deliver it. Words on paper carry more weight than words on a computer screen.

Do you really want your words to be heard?

The Senators Aren't

[Carnage4Life]

Considering that the Senate Passed the Anti-Terrorism Bill with an overwhelming 96-1 vote. Reading through the quotes in the linked article, it is particularly disturbing how most of the senators see nothing wrong with the bill and are opposed to limiting the duration of the bill as the House wants to.

The house hasn't voted on their version of the bill yet so there is still time to inundiate your representatives with phone calls, faxes and letters.

personal experience

[nanojath]

In a democracy influencing the political process is a collective and long process. It may be frustrating to write letters to your representatives and get a minimal or form response, but keep contacting them at the most personal level you have time for, and vote based on their response. How many of us have better or worse experiences with our policitacl representatives, and at election time end up voting Democrat or Republican down the line? I used to be this way but now I vote strategically, focusing only on my political objectives. There are plenty of Democrats who would pass as Republicans in a different constituency and vice versa.

I regularly write Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton in the Senate and Martin Sabo in the House. Wellstone ususally sends a fairly relevant form reply, Dayton has yet to get back to me (although he also gets less from me because he doesn't have e-mail (!) available). Sabo always sends me a letter in the mail that addresses the issue a raise, and explains how he voted on relevant legislation and why - even when he voted contrary to the position I state. I admire that a lot.

Vote in primaries. Vote in elections. If your representative dissapoints you and fails to respond to your concerns, make sure they know you will be voting against them in the next primary and why. Just you doing that won't change the world. But just a few thousand people in your state doing it could have a huge effect on the actions of congress. We all know the Religious Right is politically quite powerful compared to its absolute size. Why? Because they are active and unified. That's all. I don't like their issues or tactics but their political technique is rock solid and represents democracy in action.

What if you don't have a rep on the committee?

[beme]

I've seen that "tell me your address so I know you're one of my constituents" thing before. Makes sense to me, as long as you're contacting them about something that the entire House or Senate is considering. But what about issues that are currently in committee? I've read that this is where the real "action" happens on new bills, and is therefore the best place to get bad things changed. Even if I don't have a representative on the committee, shouldn't my opinion count just as much as anyone else's?
*starts rummaging for civics book*

Here's how to get your letter through

[firewort]

Here's how to get your letter through:

FAX - it gets read, you get snail mail back, and the snail mail may be relevant.

by this method,

Helms - wrote that he supported Ashcroft.

Edwards - sent a copied speech he made on the Senate floor, irrelevant to what I wrote him about.

Price - wrote back a letter stating that he was concerned about safe-guarding our civil liberties in the wake of the tragedy and that he shared my concerns.

I met Price briefly at a public appearance he made- he said if I wrote his office a letter and marked it PERSONAL, that he'd get it instead of an aide, and that we could schedule some time to discuss my concerns.

Email has seemed to leave a lesser impression that printing and mailing my letters, or faxing them.

My experience...

[Speare]

I wrote my first political opinion paper recently.

I found my specific three representatives' names, email addresses, and postal addresses. In case you were asleep in Civics classes, that's one Congressperson in the House of Representatives that hails from your district (area) of your home state, and two Senators who hail from your home state. I also found the same information for George Bush, the President.

I wrote my letter, which you can read at http://www.halley.cc/ed/politics/. A fair first letter; the only thing I would have changed would be to specifically reference the bill number . The features of the letter:

• A cover page with all addresses sent.
• An executive summary of my thoughts in two lines, boldface.
• A one page opinion that states my thoughts in more detail.
• Specifically closing with the fact that I am one of their constitutents, and more importantly, opening with the notice that they are my representatives.
• As I form my opinions of our government based on their attention to the words of the Constitution and intent of the First Congress, I give a quote; one of the Founding Father's wisdom on the current topic.

I got printed letters back which stated each representative's viewpoints on the exact matter (and that the issue had not yet been sent from the Congress to the Senate). The Congressperson stated how they voted and why. The Senators described their current rationale on the issue.

While the letters did not contain any quotes or specific references to my own letter, they were appropos to my opinions, very articulate, very on-point and organized. I imagine that these were cranked out form letters, but in that case, they must have a very well-tuned library of form letters on each subject that they were addressing in their representative works.

I have not heard from GWB's office on this matter.

They still don't read it

[mikemulvaney]

Money

Money

Money

Maybe if we say that a few more times, it will sink in. I had a friend who was a senior foriegn policy advisor in the office of one of the Florida Senators, and we talked about constituent mail one day. She said they usually put the lowest/newest intern on the mail answering duty, and the contents of the mail never trickle up past that person.

I asked her, that person doesn't give a report or something at the end of the day? Nope. do you even keep a tally of where people stand? Nope. Does it matter if the writers are actually constituents or not? Nope.

She said most people who write in are nuts, and they just don't care about them at all.

They do write back to everyone, but wake up: Patrick Leahy is not writing back to you, an 18 year old that just moved to DC from Vermont is.

If you want to have any impact on legislation, there is only one thing they listen to: money. Unless you can get a big enough group, say 1 million people, to all go to the capital on the same day...

-Mike

PS I lost a lot of confidence in our government that day.

Re: They Do Care...Kind of.....

[tigris]

I think it really depends on the Member you're working for. I've interned up on the Hill twice (once on the Senate side for the now-retired Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), and once for a still-serving House Member (from my original home district in Ohio, also a Dem). Metzenbaum got a lot more mail than the Rep did, which only makes sense since he represented all of the State as opposed to a district of about 500,000 (a bit smaller then the average district size, I know).

Both treated issue mail the same way though. Mail was sorted and prioritized in the following order, from highest to lowest, in both offices (more or less).

1.) On-topic mail from constituents (for the Senator, from any Ohio resident, for the Rep, from district residents). "On-topic" mail translates to snail mail, either handwritten or typed, that clearly states the bill number (the official bill name is also helpful in routing the mail to the right staff member). "Constituents" also includes businesses and interest groups based in the district or State.

2.) On-topic e-mail from constituents (which was printed out) (though Metzenbaum retired before the full advent of e-mail contact with constituents, so this is based on the Rep's policy).

3.) On-topic mail from non-constituent interest groups (NRA, ACLU, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, etc.)

4.) "Non-specific" mail from constituents. "Non-specific" ranges from letters that refer to issues in general without a direct reference to a bill number or title, e.g., "current U.S. copyright law sucks", to general rants about issues or the Member, e.g., "you take away my right to carry a firearm and I'll bust your ass".

5.) Non-specific e-mail from constituents. We printed these out and made some attempt to categorize them. As with non-specific constituent snail mail, if it's too weird, e.g., "aliens are playing around with my cows at night", "immigrants are responsible for all ills in the country", it gets pitched.

6.) Non-Constituent on-topic mail re: a particular bill sponsored by the Member or being discussed in a committee that the Member belongs too. Forwarded directly on to the appropriate Member (i.e., to the Rep. or Senator that represents the writer - if you live in CA and write a letter to an OH Rep on the Appropriations Committee they don't see it).

7.) Non-Constituent on-topic e-mail - we printed it out and forwarded it to the appropriate Member. This was before e-mail really took off as a general communications medium for Congress (1997 in the Rep's office), so they may automatically forward it or discard it now, due to the sheer volume.

and a special category

8.) "Form" mail, from either constituents or non-constituents. "Form" mail consists of those little ripout cards you get sometimes in the mail from particular interest groups (NRA used to do a lot of these). Form mail from constituents would get logged (i.e., the number of cards on a particular issue would be recorded) and the constituent would get a form letter in response. Form mail from non-constituents is forwarded on to the appropriate member. There's a variation on this where people send in a letter on their own stationary or e-mail with the exact same text, obviously in response to an interest group call to do so. This type of mail, while accorded higher priority than the little cards, was still not taken as seriously as a letter from a constituent that doesn't spout back interest group boilerplate text. So if you get e-mail from EFF telling you to write in about a particular law it's probably a good idea to come up with your own way to phrase things - don't copy and paste.

Issue-related correspondence was never forwarded onto the Member without going through a staffer first. And by the way - even if a letter was marked "Personal" the interns still open it, at least in the offices I worked in. Usually the appointment secretary (equal in influence to the Legislative Director and the Chief of Staff, since they determine who gets facetime with the Member) will do a quick scan through the mail and pick out the really personal stuff (letters from family and close friends), though sometimes they would miss things and we'd get some interesting "background" on the Member.

Besides the interns, Staff eyes are always the first pairs of eyes to see any correspondence on issues. For most issues, the letters were logged (i.e., this many people want you to vote against a bill, this many for the bill; these local businesses for, these local businesses against; these interest groups for, these interest groups against), and each constituent receives the same letter re: each bill or issue (tweaked to make it more on point if necessary if there was anything uniquely personal or important about the original letter or sender - i.e. letters from Boeing's president get a more tailored response then do those from John Q. Public in Seattle). My Members would never see issue-related correspondence unless they specifically asked to see it. In that case, staff would usually give them copies of mail falling within categories 1, 2, and 3. Letters that had personal anecdotes in them, e.g., "my business has had to lay off 20 workers due to the effects of the DMCA", were more likely to be seen by the Member than those that just talked about the issues in general. They're just more interesting to read and they make great fodder for speeches and talking points.

Several things that really impressed me (I had come to Congress under the impression that individual citizens really had little influence on their Member's opinions and votes):

1.) Your opinion DOES matter to them (particularly if you write it yourself, include a personal story about how the law or issue has or would affect you, live in their District or State, and send it via snail mail), even if you're just writing on behalf of yourself. Business letters, particularly from those businesses that employed a LOT of people in the Member's state and district, did get attention (though small businesses were not ignored). Even though it seems unfair, this really makes sense (to me at least), because though businesses often represent only their own interests that are counter to those of the public in general, they employ the people who vote and live in the Member's district or state. And the people who vote and live in the district or State are the people that really matter the most to the Member. (And yes, I know that the Congress represents all of us, even those that don't vote - I'm just telling you what the reality was in the offices I worked in).

2.) Staffers are REALLY important. Members are so busy that unless they have a particular interest or need, they don't have time to research the issues they vote on. Staffers in Congress, like those in the Executive branch, usually determine what the Member sees and what they know. If you really want to talk to the people that are going to put together the position paper the Member reads, call the D.C. office of the Member in question and ask to talk to the staffer in charge of the particular topic or bill. Follow up the call with a snail mail letter.

3.) Effort matters. One of the reasons that snail mail, fairly or not, is given more credence then e-mail is because it's seen as taking more of an effort to write, print out, and send to the Member. Effort, in the Congressional staffer's mind, translates to how much a constituent cares about an issue. If they care enough to send a personally composed letter via snail mail, they REALLY care. E-mail is just too easy to write and send.

4.) If you don't live in the Member's district or State, your opinion will probably have more weight if it's delivered via an interest group - i.e., give money to the interest groups that you support so that they can afford to send or hire lobbyists to make their case to the Member in person. Even though non-constituent correspondence is forwarded onto the appropriate Member, usually that Member will not have much of an impact on the bill in question in the all-important committee process (though this varies according to the Chamber, it's a lot harder for a House Member to get the views of his constituents considered in the drafting process if he's not on the committee that's working on the bill - Senators have a easier time of it - it's just a smaller, more personal, setting). Lobbyists that represent large interest groups with lots of money are really important - it's well worth your while to make sure that the groups who advocate positions that you support can compete with big business.

In closing, I do want to say that I was also impressed with the fact that the Members I worked for (and their staff for that matter) really had a sense of serving and representing the people of their district or State. They really cared about the opinions of the people they represented and worked for. I think their sense of service and responsibility is probably shared among most members of Congress. They're not all cynical power-hungry moneygrubbers up on the Hill.

Tig