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Ask Slashdot: How Can I Get Through To a Politician By E-mail?
wytcld writes "Sending an individually-written e-mail to my state senator resulted in an automated response saying that since she receives hundreds of e-mails a day, there might be no personal response, but please don't take that to mean she hasn't read my e-mail. So I contacted her again suggesting that was a pretty poor answer. Most of the e-mails she receives are mass mailings coordinated by various interest group websites. Why doesn't she put those to the side, I asked, and prioritize response to individual e-mails from constituents who've taken the time to actually write? Her response? She often can't tell the difference at first, so spends time drafting responses to the first instances of group e-mail spam, and gets diverted from responding to those who really write her. Are there tools out there which a politician can use to identify the incoming group-think blasts and put them to to side? It's easy enough to imagine sorting by repeated content or headers, if I ran the mail server, but I'm looking for packages already out there that a state-level representative, with no staff to speak of, might use to cut through the mess and prioritize communication with constituents who care enough about an issue to draft their own thoughts."
Then let him forward it
These two devices solve literally every problem you are trying to solve.
Scan and attach the big fat check you will be sending to her reelection campaign.
And they will respond to your questions.
Duh.
Many politicians are overwhelmed by email campaigns at the moment, and are paying more attention to phone calls. At least that's what my politically connected friends tell me.
She could be smart, and just copy/paste the draft she JUST wrote for all the other mass mailings she gets. That way, she has an answer to them, AND has time to answer individual email...
Print your email out and mail it via USPS, or call her and read it to her (or, more likely, to her aide).
Here's the bottom line: the more you care, the more she'll care. When an advocacy group pushes their members to all send a form email, a lot of them will, because it doesn't take much effort. Your senator realizes this, and mostly ignores these. But if you go to the effort to write a letter yourself, and the additional effort to mail it, you've signaled that this matters to you more than the people who simply clicked send on a pre-written email.
If you can't be bothered to mail or call, though, you're signaling that it's not that important to you.
The Obama adminstration actually solves this problem, as I understand it. Here's what I know about their process :
1. Somehow they filter the spawn and mass mailings
2. A group of staffers actually DO read and respond to every email message with a reasoned reply taken from some kind of script consistent with Obama's position.
3. A small number of these messages are printed out and the President does read this. I think they are chosen randomly or perhaps a single exceptional message sneaks through directly.
With all this said, just because you email Obama, even if you are the smartest person on the planet, it doesn't mean he will pay any attention. Now, if you are a rich or powerful person, then you might get a meeting.
Use conventional snail-mail. Make it obvious it is not a mass-mailing. Then you have a good chance that at least a staffer will read it. Really quite obvious. This is one area where the spammer scum have ruined email.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
My experience has been very different. I've emailed one of senator's (in this case Bob Corker) office twice in the past. I did receive back the auto-response as you say. In the first case, I was asking him not to support an internet tax of some kind that was cropping up. In the second case, I was asking him why he did not support the DREAM Act which I felt was a good idea. However, in both instances, I received back an email a week or two later answering what I was asking for. I have no idea if it came from him directly or a staff member, and in at least one case I didn't like the response, but at least I got an answer.
Attach a picture of your weiner. You might actually get some sex out of it before she fucks you in Congress.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
They have their official politician email address that you used, and that is it. If you want a personal response from your politician, you need to contact their staff and see if you can arrange to meet them in person. In fact, there are generally rules prohibiting politicians from using other email addresses for official business (remember the Bush white house lost GOP email controversy?)
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Hopefully you mean "consolidate and apply a weight" (based on the size of the group) to organized email efforts instead of "put them to to[the] side." Our representatives, after all, are supposed to "represent" their populations while not stepping on minorities.
The people cutting and pasting mail campaigns from various anti-this-or-that websites have just as much right to be heard as the person who wishes to spend 20 minutes typing an email that's not a cut& pasted form letter.
The "special interests" aren't contacting your representatives by email, she takes those phone calls and meetings in person. YOUR burning missive does not have any special weight simply because you took the time to construct a poorly worded, ill-advised rant about your favorite pet conspiracy theory. What makes you think you have the right to jump to the head of the line?
Welcome to democracy, ain't it grand?
On the federal level, I just get form letters that very often have little to do with anything that I was writing about. However, on the state level, my representitive, (Joe Schmick), always responds directly to my emails that I send him. He's done a great job representing the 9th district of WA state, and even though I disagreed with him on the legalization of marijuana for taxation purposes, (I am pro, he is nay), I will still vote for him because he seems to care about representing all of his constituents, and actually bothers personally responding to my inquiries..
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I know it doesn't fulfill the criterion of helping a politician manage her email but, in terms of "getting through" to politicians, the MPs in the UK with whom I've spoken have said that they treat written correspondence with the following priority (low to, well, not so low):
These were casual conversations, rather than anything official, and were with only three (then) MPs, but it seems that, for real reaction, the effort of a handwritten letter was needed. (Sadly, it was at an event in the House of Commons a few years ago, and I can't remember which MPs they were...)
If naked I am sure someone will knock on your door.
If you want to get through to your local politician, show up at their district office. If you care enough to go to their office, you'll at least get a few minutes with a staff person.
Politicians do get tons of emails, and it is functionally impossible to tell the difference between a constituent sending an individual e-mail on their own and a constituent paid to send an individual e-mail.
I've visited my representatives many times, sent individual emails and been part of organized lobbying efforts. The more you talk with your representatives, the more they will respond to and respect you. Our system is very slow and sometimes very frustrating, but it is possible to get things done. You will get personal emails back after the automated responses, but it may be months later. If they're doing their job well, they're going to figure out what stance they should take and not simply agree with you.
Write your letter on a computer. Print it out. Sign it with blue ink. Then fold the letter carefully, and mail it via registered mail. Make sure you have your contact details like your email address in the top part of the letter. Chances of your letter being read are now dramatically better than if writing an email. Remember that these people get hundreds of thousands of emails a day. And that only a few - maybe with a heading that stands out from the crowd - actually get read. Good luck.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Email to most State politicians is pointless. Between Nigerian scammers, interest groups, astroturfing, spam, automated "news alerts" from whoever, links to blogs, etc., the signal gets lost in the noise. Send a fax or a letter instead, that way an actual person will read your correspondence and appropriately categorize it. Or try calling them.
Case example: in the early to mid 2000's, my State Senator turned Congressional representative, Jackie Speier (D--Hillsborough, CA), was very responsive to actual letters and either dictated or at least approved multiple responses. The level of detail was, I must admit, incredible. OCD? Probably, but I'd rather have an OCD politician who responds to inquiries or policy comments than not. My current Federal rep in a different district was fairly responsive to use of his online email form, in which he provides categories (help with an agency, policy comments, etc.). Calling him re SOPA also worked.
...I see a problem with filtering email that you may not have noticed.
Let's ignore all of the cynical "people who only communicate by email don't deserve to have a voice in government" responses and assume that email in itself is fine, it just depends on whether or not the email in question is a robocall. The problem here is that it's not a binary question. The interest groups I'm familiar with allow part or all of the email to be personalized; for example, a mass email protesting attacks on women's rights may start out with some boilerplate stuff but give an individual woman a space to relate her own personal experience with contraception or abortion. Whatever filtering method you use has to recognize this issue to be effective.
Rob
I found it took almost exactly 48 hours from the time I pressed send and when he would be on tv using the sound bite I sent him. It's really easy to do if ya rite good.
In Vermont, you can reach your senators just by shouting loudly enough. In Wyoming, they use smoke signals.
Gently reply
One thing that is done in my state, I found out, is that they give different people different addresses. The public at large gets a form on their website or address A, both of which actually go to their assistant (the representative only see it if the assistant forwards it to them). Then, their business card's address sends you to their primary address, which is the default one that they send from. Then they have the secret address that they only give out to people they deem important. Note that all of these addresses all use the domain name (the part after the "@") of the General Assembly.
This whole thing was (should have been) blown open when an FOIA request revealed that some of the emails sent by a representative was from a different address than his official one but used the GA domain name. This surprised some people, but not too many. But, it was never mentioned by the newspapers or TV. So, I asked a friend of mine that works at the GA and another that is a lobbyist, both said that everybody who does anything down there knows this.
Incidentally, they also have 3 phone numbers: the switchboard, their assistant's number (which is on the business card) and their direct number.
There are a few simple steps you can take to guarantee your email will stand out above the background noise...
1) Greet her by her full name - if you can do the research to find some endearing nickname only used by her friends, so much the better!
2) Mention the names of her husband and kids - show you're not like the other constituents. YOU take the time to get to know her!
3) Include photo attachments of her house (both in Washington and in your home state), her car, and her husband's car - again, this shows you care about this communication enough to put some time into learning more about her!
4) Describe, specifically and in the strongest terms possible, the issue you care about - getting to know her is nice, but don't let your message get lost in all the friendly banter!
5) In closing, be friendly! Mention that she or her family might run into you sometime!
6) (optional) If you can get hold of her personal cell phone number, follow up a few times with friendly phone calls! Script them, though - be sure to follow the steps I've listed above. But remember, she's a busy person; so call when she's more likely to be free - late at night is best.
#DeleteChrome
Shouldn't be too hard to figure out who the interest groups are, then dump them in a separate folder. Possibly for a hapless intern to get frustrated with writing summaries thereof. Really now, people who put themselves in positions where efficient communications handling is essential should have the skills, though most don't even know what a header is nevermind not to top-post. Time to learn, buncha slackers.
Anyway, procmail is just one way. SIEVE support on your IMAP server would be another. Plenty mail clients have custom filtering, there exist toolsets to run commands on an imap, again possibly in conjunction with procmail, and maybe there already exists a GUI to ease such use for the lesser educatable beings among us, or else it is easily whipped up.
If rules won't do, then train a bayes filter (like spamassassin) on an interest group mass-mailings set and have it dump them in a separate (non-spam) folder. You can use the same technology for multiple targets, not just spam/non-spam. I haven't actually tried but it shouldn't be too hard to adapt, the idea is the same.
Work this out and offer your services to your representatives, for a modest fee. Should be a nice weekend-earner. Royalties to the usual address please.
Print it out and enclose a check for $250,000.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When the staffers (or politician themselves) recognize you as someone involved in the community, it's very easy to get a word to the politicians. Go to events and bend their ear about your issue when the time is right, but not in front of the camera, and know who's on which committee... If it's in their portfolio they'll be much more interested.
I talk to my MLA (like state congressman) and the MLA from the next riding over and my MP (like federal congressman) about issues several times a year. Under a previous provincial administration this has landed me a meeting with the Attourney General and Premier (like State Governor), as well as the leader of the official opposition.
What makes you think your personally crafted message deserves more attention than my message that happens to agree with many other people? Do we all need to send unique messages to suit your sense of democracy? Is your opinion more valuable because you've got the free time to write a personal note? So the busy fellow merits a diminished voice in democracy?
This is quite possibly the most important piece of information in your question. Most states have totally non-professional legislatures. This means that even Senators have a single, part-time staffer, and are supposed to have full-time jobs. Many states are proud of this, so if you're in TX or NH you're just screwed. Cali, NY, and my home-state of Michigan aren't that bad; but most states are officially still of the opinion that the best way to avoid tyranny is bar Legislators from working more then 20 hours a week, three months out of the year.
In general the solution is call your State Senator's office. It shows a certain level of commitment to your position, because you actually took the time to call, and spent Cell-phone minutes. OTOH lots of people send email blasts and promptly forget what they were for.
I strongly suspect the main issue here is that a) the State Senator in question isn't terribly tech-savvy, b) the State Senate is under-funded for the reasons I gave in the opening paragraph, or c) a and b.
Include a large donation with it. If not, forget it, they don't care.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Accuse him of being a priest and pedophile.
Plain and simple.
In order to do that you will have to clean his tubes first ... then he'll probably give you his disposable cell phone number anyway, making the e-mail somewhat pointless.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There is likely a staff person physically closer to where you live that has an office for dealing with more with local constituent issues. Find this person's name, and hopefully, email. Make a case as a local constituent to the staffer. I received a very thoughtful and non-standard response to an issue this way, perhaps written by a staffer as well (you can never know) but it sure sounded like someone spent some time in researching my issue.
The idea of attaching something that costs you something is actually a good idea. As slashdot knows, the only viable (but impossible to implement) cure for spam would be to require postage charges on all e-mail. But in this case it is possible to implement. here's two possible suggestions
1) send a dollar. the dollar does not need to go to the congressman, but instead could go to general revenues or perhaps a reserve for general capitol hill IT support.
2) certify your e-mail address with a trusted proxy sender. For example, the democratic and republican parties could vouch that your e-mail is legit. They would want to do this honestly because if they were dishonest the'd lose the privilege. The way you do this is to give people e-mail accounts from which to send. They can establish those e-mail accounts using visa card numbers or by snail mail or any way that would filter out mass spam.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Isnt the whole point of that service to detect when multiple submissions are fancy copy pasta?
Make Big Brother work for you.
These two devices solve literally every problem you are trying to solve.
Exactly.
From the article: "Why doesn't she put those to the side, I asked, and prioritize response to individual e-mails from constituents who've taken the time to actually write?" The truth of the matter is that sending an email is *not* considered taking the time to *write*, and there is some truth to this perspective. An email is far more convenient than a handwritten letter.
Correspondence gets ranked according to the medium used and level of personalization:
Personal handwritten letter (most highly valued correspondence)
Personal typed/printed letter
Personal email (low valued correspondence)
Mass paper mailing
Mass emailing (a virtually ignored corresondence)
If you want to be taken more seriously you need to act accordingly. I realize this seems completely unfair, and in some ways it is - ideas are not being evaluated completely on their merits, but people who get lots of mail need to prioritize it somehow. Taking into consideration the effort that the sender put in is somewhat rational, it demonstrates a more strongly held opinion and a more motivated individual (i.e. a more likely to show up on election day). Plus politicians also consider that greater effort suggests more people who feel the same way but were deterred by the effort (i.e. handwritten gets a far larger likely voter multiplier than email).
Do whatever you can to make yourself seen as an independent more likely voter. The only thing that matters to politicians (well those that intend to run again) is independent voters. People who don't vote can be ignored. People who are loyal members of the politician's part can be ignored, they have that person's vote. People who are loyal members of the other party can be ignored, they can't get that person's vote. Only independent voters and disloyal party members are important.
As noted, emails are essentially worthless to representatives. PCATt attempts to address this, but it's basically an academic data/response coding system being shoe-horned into a general purpose product. PCAT doesn't get that legislative staffers are not research assistants. It might work within some major bureaucracies that have departments dedicated to handling public requests (like FOIA) or lots of solicitations for public comment (like the FCC) but it's waaaaay to complicated for occasional use.
I think that a simple challenge-response system like what your congress person set-up above is a good start, at least they are trying. I don't know how Gmail's priority and auto-tagging features would handle the load, but it is probably the best system you can find that an unpaid poly-sci intern could operate.
In terms of just communicating to your rep, if you really want to make a difference, I would suggest you arrange a face-to-face meeting either in their office during the legislative session or over coffee when they are back in your district. After asking around about their use of polling and feedback analysis, they mostly told me that their polling happens on the campaign trail while knocking on doors. Most state-level reps (at least around here) are not the blood sucking parasites they are made out to be, even the rich ones are doing it because they want to make a difference, not because they get any actual power.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Maybe things in Washington state are different but even our senators reply to written mail.
Maybe not to the President, for all of your elected officials below him it does seem to work.
You people make it sound like politicians actually care about you.
Deep down you know they wouldn't cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire. (This is esp. true if you live in the UK.)
I suppose if you are a GOP gov't is evil type, then , yes, if the politician is responding to email, they ain't doin anything else, which allows the magic of free enterprise to work.
On the other hand, if you actually expect your State Senator to be working hard - and at least mine, here in MA, have a lot of issues to deal with - then why would you expect them to respond to your email ?
I mean, would you actually want your State Senator to spend many hours a week reading random emails, many of which are probably poorly phrased or hard to understand , or full of factual errors, or advocating things that are silly (gold standard) ?
Get a Grip
You really want something done, get off your a**, form a group, and raise some noise
Otherwise, stop whining
Anyone know this freak?
"Why doesn't she put those to the side, I asked, and prioritize response to individual e-mails from constituents who've taken the time to actually write?"
The real question is, what douchetard believes they ever listen to their constituents, when their only true constituents are the lobbyists?
On Sesame Street, happiness prevails and analytical thinking is always to be avoided.
Whose wife was behind Sesame Street? The same fellow who wants to end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and has worked to offshore as many American jobs as possible over the past thirty years.
The Sesame Street choice: either the vile sleazoid and financial parasite, Romney of Wall Street, or the pseudo-nice guy and rightwinger, Obama of Wall Street.
The Sesame Street choice is zero choice ----- zero options!
Sesame Street, as it turns out, isn’t our street nor the street we wished we lived on, but Wall Street posing as “entertainment education.”
Today, mind-altering propaganda is spread forth through “entertainment education” --- when it’s good, you get the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show; but when it’s bad, when it’s really, really bad, you get NCIS (where they flipped reality, spinning it as “conspiracy theory”), FoxFiction, CNN, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, NPR and PBS.
The corporate media’s construction of reality ain’t reality and that’s a fact, Jack! ! !
[I’ll be writing in Bernie Sanders for president this upcoming election. Screw the Sesame Street choice!]
sgt_doom (for some reason it's not logging me in today ???)
Try forming a SuperPAC. Just Kidding......
Actually, I think it might be hard to quantify how many *citizens* are heard. Good idea for a Slashdot Poll: How many people on Slashdot can verify personal interaction with their representatives.
DISCLAIMER: I work for the company I'm about to plug!
Symplicity (www.symplicity.com) has a product that does just that called VOICE. It's a system for sorting, categorizing, and replying to e-mails sent by constituents to members of congress. We have quite a few senators that use the software already and it's a huge success. Further, we do all the work to set it up, manage the software, support, etc. Have your senator give our sales folks a call. :)
FTA: "interest group websites" and "put to the side."
The sad truth is the ones that pay the bills (interest groups, by and large) get more attention than a mere voter...the proposal is illogocal in the current political climate...as always...
Pen and paper PLUS large check should do it.
Mention a few key words in an email such as "hijack", "Allah" and "jihad" and the computers in the basement of the NSA will kindly forward it for you to the relevant politicians.
Yesterday, I sent in a letter to Wally Herger, who is the Representative for my district. I spoke with the secretary, and informed her that I wanted to send in a thought-out letter. She directed me to their web site, which, as it turns out, was broken (404 after clicking "submit"). Of course, such a submission would likely not be taken note of, but I suspect that telling the person it's coming, and your own email address can help.
Ultimately, though, I ended up asking how to send it in, since email was broken, and she gave me their fax number (which, as it happens was also on the web site). I faxed the letter in, then called to confirm its receipt (including number of pages).
I haven't yet gotten a response from the Representative, and I don't know for certain that I will, but I do suspect that calling ahead, then getting it there by fax, followed-up by calling to verify they received it is a decent way to go. Also, if the submission looks like a well-thought-out and respectful essay or similar at first glance (mine was 4 pages long, and I took pains to make it look fairly professional), it'll probably have less chance of being filed in the "round bin" (A.K.A. trashcan).
Sorry I can't offer any better advice than that; hopefully it helps, though.
If by state senator you mean a person serving in your state senate, not the US Senator representing your state, then your best bet to actually getting through is to go see him/her in person. Politicians at this level often have events where they meet with constituents. These things usually aren't as highly publicized as the town hall meetings where crazies go to scream at US Reps. For example, my US Rep regularly holds meetings with my neighborhood association. There are usually only 10-20 people there and this is a great opportunity to meet him and discuss what is important to you. It is also a great opportunity to hand deliver a personal letter that is more detailed an well-reasoned.
Hand delivering a letter to the senator's office would also likely get your message some attention. If you can visit the office when the senator is actually there you might be able to speak to him/her.
Some messages are likely best delivered to the senator's staff. Find out the name of his/her chief of staff and go and visit that person face-to-face. This is obviously easier if you live in your state's capital.
So I contacted her again suggesting that was a pretty poor answer. [...] Her response?
So, you sent her an email that resulted in a form response, then you contacted her again through unspecified means and she responded personally to your complaint.
And you're asking for help with what, exactly?
From the perspective of a constituent, the question doesn't make as much sense, or the idea just seems futile and impractical. From the perspective of the representative it makes much more sense.
How can I, as a representative, sort my email to better identify relevant and actual constituent messages?
Maybe bayesian filtering. The bayesian filters that people use for sorting spam are often actually general purpose with regards to the quality you are judging your messages by. People are saying "spam" or "not spam", but they could be saying instead "relevant constituent message" or "not relevant constituent message".
The core technologies for organizing such emails are available in the litigation support industry -- they are used to group related documents/emails together so that lawyers reviewing documents to hunt for evidence can do so more efficiently. One approach is to group "near-duplicates," where documents that share some chunks of text are grouped, which allows detection of form letters or different revisions of the same document. Another option is "conceptual clustering," where the documents are grouped if they are about the same topic (they may not have any actual sentences in common). Unfortunately, all of the software that I know of is designed to analyze documents within a review platform (used by lawyers) rather than plugging into an email system for consumer use, so there would be some work needed to adapt it for the use you are talking about.
Now the shameless plug: my company makes Clustify, which does conceptual clustering and near-dupe detection.
You need to address your communication to the member of the staff that deals with your issue. Political offices are a series of interlocking gate keepers. If you call, write, or email to your local congressman's main contact points there are anywhere from 4 to 8 layers separating you from your member. By layers I mean people who's job it is to blow you off, take a message, or pass your call up the tree. Your best bet is to enter the tree at the highest possible level. Try contacting legislative assistants, legislative directors, chiefs of staff, or schedulers. Any of these people will have direct access to the member and the authority to elevate issues to their attention. You may have to contact the office multiple times to get peoples names, but if your persistent you can go a long way.
attach some child porn to your email
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
I write software that 'personalizes' mass emails, but recently many of my mails have been marked as spam.
Please describe in detail why my email was considered spam so I can fix the problem.
"Are there tools out there which a politician can use to identify the incoming group-think blasts and put them to to side?"
It's called an Aide.
After carefully editing your message, print a copy. Wrap it around a brick and throw it through your representative's office window.
Posted AC because ....
There, fixed it for you.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I'd not be too quick to put aside boilerplate emails sent by interest groups on behalf of constituents. If such a group has a position aligned with my own, why should I go to the effort of drafting a message myself?
write your letter in the comment field of a large check for his campaign fund.
'I'll get you ______ votes', where ______ is a critical number of votes the politician needs to turn over to be ahead of his closest rival in the next election.
Your problem is that you're engaged in insanity. Meaning, you keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result.
Why does it have to be email? You want to have an impact, but everyone has to come to you?
Fuck off. Seriously. You're not so important that your electronic musings should get special routing - and, if you check all the misguided posts about donations and big-money special interests, you'll see that they're all focused on making you important.
Your problem isn't importance. Which is why I call those other posts misguided. This isn't even a national figure you're talking about, it's a state-level politician. So, as a voting (you do vote, right?) constituent, you're actually important enough. You just can't expect every representative you have to come to your doorstep at a time convenient to you and ask what you want or somehow magically know it's YOU with an Original Thought. That, my friend, is your problem.
If the issue is important to you, take a day off and visit their office. They all have one, and it can't be all that far away if it's in-state. Talk to a staffer; they'll write down your name, address and concerns. If you're in their district, it WILL be seen. Or, if you call ahead, you might just be able to come at a time when your representative can actually sit down and talk to you. Or hell, offer to buy a drink after legislative hours. That is a human being in that office, you know; that sort of thing tends to work with people.
The big problem here is that, much like the occupy retards, you're not willing to get off your ass and engage the system. You expect the system to come to you and listen while you whine. That doesn't work for anything, anywhere. Wait for a town hall meeting and cuss at the microphone with the other cranks.
1) be filthy rich
2) start your own SuperPAC
Complete those steps and I guarantee your email will get their complete attention.
I don't know about US-ians, but I'm typically able to just send an email off to my elected Irish representatives and I'm pretty sure they actually read it as I have actually received personally written replies back from the representatives in question. This includes senior Ministers. And no, I haven't sent off that many emails. I might average one every two months or so.
By the way, I've also had occasion over the years to send email to two MPs in the UK. One responded personally, and the other was responded to by someone in their office(and no, it wasn't by automated script).
Basically, my impression from Ireland and the UK is that elected parliamentarians do in fact read their emails, or at the very least they are read by their staff. I'm not sure what else you can reasonably expect.
I don't know how the US works, but I would be surprised if State legislators at least weren't similar. Then again, the political lobbying industry in the US might have different ideas.
May the Maths Be with you!
I must agree with those who suggest "pen and paper", although I use my computer to compose and print my letters. I try to limit my letters to a single page. Sometimes, I even use a postcard. The shorter the content, the more likely it will be read completely.
For members of Congress -- both senators and representatives -- letters should generally be sent to their home-state offices and not to their offices in Washington. Since 9/11, letters sent to Congressional offices in Washington are delayed as much as two weeks while they are examined for harmful substances.
When I receive a form-letter reply or a reply that fails to really address the issue I am trying to raise, I copy the reply and write my own response on the copy. My response includes the fact that my elected official did not really address my issue and that I will remember that lack at the next election. Sometimes, I even place a copy of the non-responsive reply on my Web site with my commentary, which is never positive.
1) Write the email
2) Print it
3) Track down politician
4) Staple to politician forehead
5) Message Sent and Received
It's just your representative. Each is different. My U.S. House of Representative member surprises me with long, thoughtful answers that seem written for me. One U.S Senator may not answer personally, but has long, usually thoughtful responses. Another simply doesn't seem to respond except in the way most do, with a "Thanks for sharing your opinion" kind of email. I usually hope the email gets categorized correctly and counted. Anything beyond that is a bonus, although I admit I hope to sway my representatives with my own arguments.
...I have a few tips.
1) We deal with crazy... a lot of it. Everybody who has an really angry, strong opinion about matters of public importance is reaching for the phone and calling, or cranking out an email whenever they can. Remember that if the issue you're calling/writing/faxing/emailing about is a hot issue, chances are people on all sides of it are calling to yell at us a lot. We end up having to filter out a lot of emotion and anger to get to what people's truly legitimate concerns are.
2) Make sure that you are contacting the right jurisdiction. I work for a local government of a large city. I cannot help you get federal law changed, or tell the governor to sign a bill. Stop asking, you're wasting both of our time. Also, I really don't care how outraged you are about the actions of the other government. If you're outraged with the one I work for, I'm happy to talk about it. Otherwise, sorry, not going to give you much time.
3) When you're sitting down to draft your correspondence, please try to focus on relevant info, clearly identify a solvable problem, and recommend a solution that you think will work. In this case, the poster is contacting a state legislator; there are three different types of communication that that office will receive: opinions, recommendations and requests for help.
3a) If your contact is an opinion, those are the highest volume and lowest priority communications for a response. Opinions are great and help the elected get a sense for where their constituents are at politically and help them gain a more complete view if the impact of their vote on bills. If you're writing to say, "please vote NO on SB 999," great, you're added to the list of "Community NOs" and you're a statistic on a report, but you're unlikely to get much more than an automated response or a form letter.
3b) If your contact is a recommendation, find out what staff member handles that issue for the elected. Contact the staff member directly. Call the capitol office, a receptionist will answer. The receptionist fields phone calls and will have a list of all the issue areas (Transportation, Judiciary, Utilities) that staff electeds are assigned to. Say these magic words, "Hi, I'm a constituent for Senator X and I have some thoughts on a bill, can you please tell me who staffs the Senator on Transportation? What is their email address?"
Write your email to this person and open up a dialog. If you don't get a response back, call them and ask to speak to them, at least confirm if you got your message. Be specific. "I read some information about SB 999 and I think that Section 333 of the bill will cause problems for me and my family," or "I received a postcard about SB 999 and I don't like the part that requires me to file with Agency Z every time I want to build widget X." I like to follow up substantive emails with a phone call, and then follow the call up with an email to summarize and conclude the conversation. I'm more diligent than other staff members, but when I have someone who is trying to make a contribution to the process, I at least like to hear them out, even if I don't agree. Don't be afraid to debate, don't be the aggressor. If the staff member is being hostile, just ask that they pass your message along to the elected.
3c) If your communication is a request for help, call the field office. They've dealt with it all and know whether and how they can help. Emailing is not helpful when you're making a first contact, start with a call and then follow up with emails.
4) Be nice. Your first line of communication is not with the elected or the "gov'ment" but with human beings with stresses and lives and feelings and you should treat them with the same respect that you would expect if some random stranger was calling you or writing you out of nowhere asking for things.
Even a US Representative gets thousands of emails a day.
Best practice is you assign some interns to read them and the hundreds of letters you get and select a certain number for you to read if you have time and aren't reading (or not reading) 2,300 page bills you are supposed to be voting intelligently on or raising money for your campaign, raising money for your PAC, traveling back to your district on weekends or "not in session" breaks, and attending district meetings, caucuses, hearings etc. Not a job I'd ever want
Expecting a unrushed reading of YOUR email and a thoughtful response is bound to disappoint.
(Yea, I spent 60 years in DC and have friends who worked on the hill.)
all marching orders, which he reads and carries out immediately.
Those letters are quickly identified by their Wall Street, RIAA and MPAA letterheads.
I've had much better luck finding out where they hang out (bars, usually) after a session, then I bring them a small check, made out to their campaign. Once that happens, they usually give you their -real- email address or phone number.
I bought a state rep about $50 in drinks one night, cut him a check the next day, and my ideas on Net Metering made it into the next revision of the bill. I did the same for a city councilman, who is now using a few of my ideas to save money.
The great thing about contribution limits, which are usually under $1,000 per-contributor, is that you get a lot of bang-for-your-buck for a $100 or $200 contribution.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
You can't get through to a politician, regardless or method. Stop writing letters and start rioting. Nothing is ever achieved by working within the confines of the system.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
When Paul Martin was Prime Minister of Canada ... I found it took almost exactly 48 hours from the time I pressed send and when he would be on tv using the sound bite I sent him.
King Stephen went that one better.
He just brought in that fat flatulent sweaty brainless fascist-elite a**hole john "lumpy fog-horn" baird.
Now everyone immediately covers their ears, plugs their noses and sits on a cork when he stands.
I have sent emails and occasionally even letters or faxes to my representative and Senators. The trouble is that they typically don't give a shit what I think unless I agree with them[1]. I'm sure it's a side effect of having liberal tendencies in an appallingly conservative area (this used to be Roy Blunt's district), but it is still difficult to make a dent.
[1] The things I generally write them about are civil liberties issues like SOPA/PIPA, the Unpatriotic Act, &c.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The 'incoming group-think blasts' are legitimate expressions of the people's will. I suppose the best way to manage those would be to actually engage the advocacy groups and work out a better way to communicate in aggregate. Those groups do the communication that way in the fiorst place because constituant communications tend to be ignored unless it comes in in great bulk.
I don't know about your Senator (or even who she is), but often enough, even hand-written dead tree mail gets a generic form letter.
I have emailed senators and my city councle. (Alaska and Anchorage) I get responses, albeit short ones. After our botched muni election on April 3rd I email my city councle members emploring them to launch an independent investigation (along with many other Anchorage residents). I sent my emails at about 7pm on a weekend and got a response from "my" councle member from his blackberry about 10 ministers later. Honestly I felt my voice was being heard (not that the councle leadership has shown any balls and authorized an independent investigatin)
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Email is not magic.
The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
I really think the quality of Ask Slashdot stories has declined a great deal. Lately they all have the following format.
Dear Slashdot I have this problem foo, for which I have already identified the solution. The solution is bar. The trouble is that I don't like bar, how can I alter reality to suit my personal preferences?
The result is then we all post talking around the problem because there is no answer other than the one already given. A more interesting discussion starter on this subject might have been something like:What are some techniques beyond sending a letter I could use to raise my issue with my political representative? This being Slashdot I'd be especially interested ideas related to electronic media.
Could we please get some editing?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
A rock-solid, well-organized, well-presented, and perfectly true argument for whatever position you want the politician to take doesn't amount to a hill of beans. "Rightness" is not the power that politicians serve.
Numbers and money are the only way to move a politician. If the majority of their constituency are clamoring for some oppressive and wrong policy, the lone voice of reason will be naught but drop in the ocean.
You want to be heard? Find a lobby that supports your position, and give money to it. Unlike words, money is real, and makes things happen.
If the lobby doesn't exist, form one.
If nobody signs up, bend to the will of the majority.
We generally call it a letter and a stamp.
The right to offend is central to the right to free speech.
Pen and paper, combined with relentless phone calls will eventually get you the contact you seek.
He knows
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Very few of our politicians actually want to hear what the people they represent have to say. E-mail is so easy to ignore. Your best chance of getting a cold-call communication to your favorite CongressCritter is registered US mail, return receipt requested. And even then, it's an exercise in futility, because the envelopes that come with checks from K Street lobbyists or superPACS count for so much more than your missive.
I suspect that some of the commercial anti-plagiarism systems might actually be very effective at this; if a stack of emails has 99.9% similarity to each other, the same response could be sent to each, and the unique emails could be set aside for more personal response.
Further refinements might even enable a rough analysis on what percentage of people are sending in emails for or against this, and how original is each group being? (in other words, do they care enough to forward a letter, or do they care enough to compose a letter?)
Of course, a simple plagiarism check could be easily abused, but I'm not sure the market is large enough to create an arms race like the spam arms race, so it might work for at least a while, especially if the system's ranking algorithm is not disclosed for direct gaming.
Popfile..?
http://getpopfile.org/
Possibly with the IMAP extension...
write a hand-written letter. Not typed, not computer printout.Had write the envelope.
THOSE lettters get through and get responses.
Are there hints that /. users have any influence on politicians ? Well, there was a million dollar prize given to Linus Torvalds for "technology innovation", but I'm not sure there were politicians involved...
Paypal
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
In Practice - even with a lot of email volume, your state Senator should reply to you - in most states they have enough staff to at least get you a form letter back. In contexts with more email volume like the US House you receive a reply, if the representatives 'get the message' is another story.
Correlate - http://correlateanalytics.com - is product that solves the 'problem' of constituent communications in representative government. It was developed for the U.S. House of representatives in 2009 and 2010. Its in use by several offices and in a pilot in the NY State Senate.
To solve the problem of distinguishing mass emailing from individual emails we developed domain specific filters that determine message similarity and group like correspondence. This helps messages from individuals stand out from messages that are part of an advocacy campaign.
We believe that constituent communications is a 'problem' only because legislatures don't have the tools to deal with it effectively and that being able to process and respond to constituent sentiment and needs effectively is a core function of legislatures as institutions.
Correlate bridges the gap between the systems that representatives have in place to deal with correspondence and the requirements introduced increasing use of social media and email amongst constituents. We were able to get it built because of forward thinking in the US House leadership, a belief on our part that this was a critical problem that demanded attention regardless of the business case, and a minimalist design philosophy.
Implementing correlate did not require endless stakeholder meetings, costly hardware rollouts, changes to office workflow, extensive trainings, or a sky high budget. Correlate enhances constituent communications on top of existing communications systems with minimal intervention.
My company, IB5k.com built it - it solves this problem exactly - your state Legislative bodies should buy it and improve themselves as democratic institutions.
You can't "get through" to a politician in the US higher than your local city council.
They have become supremely isolated to any individuals issues. They simply don't have to care to get re-elected, so why should they? They have a good thing going, from their perspective. People even still think it's respectable - at least, respectable enough to continue *paying for*.
A paper letter is usually best. It gets through the noise of the email that's sent. After you send the letter follow up with a phone call. No email.
You could send a letter requesting a meeting in person. If it's a local or state politician you have a chance of meeting them. And even the federal politicians still hold events in their states to press the flesh.
seriously.
then he'll read it.
but really, if there were a trick to get your email read by a congress member and all 1000+ slashdotters who wanted to use it did it.. the trick would vanish.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Nothing grabs a politician's attention like a donation. Attach a note to that PayPal email and state your request.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I'm talking US mail. Snail mail. Like "write a well-written letter and put it in an envelope and apply address and postage and dust off the mailbox and use it for outbound mail" mail.
If you're feeling that persistent, send them one copy of the same letter per day, for ten days, or until you get a response. Which ever comes first. Make it clear in your letter that you'll do this until you get an answer, expect delays in cessation, blah blah blah. Doesn't need to be more than one per day, because if you send two, they all arrive at once. And don't send on Sunday or holidays, they'll get two on arrival. Short version: annoy them to the point of response, not to the point of anger.
This sig no verb.
i have worked for a small telecommunications firm that worked directly with a few politicians, and created a website for contacting them. www.democracyconnection.com
Fire her and elect someone who will respond to the people they are supposedly representing. Every time I've sent my senator an email, I've received a personalized, paper and envelope response.
But but but ..
Won't the poor politician be slashdotted ? :D
Simple, Hack the mail server!
...that you wrote a summary that assumes that anyone will read more than half of it.
If you read just the title and first half of the summary, everything everyone here is saying makes sense.
People don't read Slashdot for intelligent discussion. They read Slashdot in order to feel better that they are smarter than everyone else. It's obvious in the story selection bias. Any story about someone doing something which is clearly incorrect is instantly a favorite as everyone wants to jump in and talk about how stupid everyone is. So everyone read your title, then read half the summary, then knew everything they needed to know in order to tell you that you're a fucking moron for trying to send an email instead of writing a letter. After all, anyone who has read Slashdot for years knows that you don't send email, you write letters. Thus absolutely no one expects the second half of your summary to report an actual response from your representative.
In other words, when you find the software you are looking for, see if you can't turn it into a FireFox plugin that processes Slashdot comments so we can filter out most of these morons.
If the politician is looking for a very simple, fairly effective and no-maintenace method of filtering out lots of mass-mailing messages, just have them "sort by subject". Most automated "click this button to send an e-mail to your representative" systems use the same subject line for every e-mail. Sorting by subject makes these VERY easy to deal with. Most e-mail programs (outlook, thunderbird, etc) also have filters that will *automatically* move all messages containing "Bill Foo" to a separate folder, making the personal e-mails MUCH easier to find.
http://civicrm.org/casestudy/node/1390 ... With the backing of CiviCRM's community of developers, Bluebird's increased functional capabilities, streamlined workflows and refined user interface promises to move the State of New York forward and help improve the communication of representative governmentâs ultimately making the Senate more responsive to constituent needs. ... Several open source CRM solutions were evaluated as platforms to help improve the New York State Senate's communication and responsiveness to constituent needs through streamlined workflows, increased functional capabilities and a user interface built on principles of simplicity and efficiency. CiviCRM stood out from the other available platforms due to it's robust feature set, open source license, eager and thriving community of developers and cooperative core team."
"New York State Senate's Bluebird: Managing millions of constituents for 62 New York State Senate offices
The code is here:
https://github.com/nysenate
If CiviCRM/Bluebird can't do what the questioner asks, the feature could be added. It is a web-based PHP/Drupal application. The NYS Senate's technology group (a great group of people, who also run "Capitol Camp" http://blog.capitolcamp.org/ ) sometimes has openings for more open source developers, so for any expert PHP/Drupal developers out there who want to work in public service on open source, you might want to get your resume on file with them.
http://groups.drupal.org/node/179504
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.