Does contacting my representative work?
There has been a huge increase in civic engagement in the U.S. over the last few months yet less than 10% of the population has ever contacted their representative, or elected official. Why?
At CivikOwl we interviewed a half dozen elected officials, looked at research from the Congressional Management Foundation, and reviewed comments from former and current staffers to discover why. We’ve summarized our findings below in the hopes of convincing the silent majority to speak up!
Why bother?
Perhaps the most common reason people cite for not contacting their official is “why bother”. Reasons range from “as if they’ll even read my letter” or “at best I’ll get a form reply” or “my official already agrees, or disagrees, with me”. Let’s tackle these one at a time.
As if they’ll even read my letter
What surprises people most is that every piece of correspondence gets read and replied to by officials. Yep… each and every email, letter or call is replied to, often in kind. Turns out doing this is a requirement of holding office.
California State Assembly Member Kevin Mullin (D) said it well at a recent townhall:
“Don’t think for a second that contacting your official doesn’t matter. You better believe we listen to you. We look at responses before we vote. This is the most-effective way to keep democracy working — talk to your officials.”
And this from Wisconsin State Assembly Member Dale Kooyenga (R):
“Policy makers are always trying to balance out their own principles and policy with the perspective of their districts. Consistent, clear and concise feedback aids the democratic process.”
Indeed, if you ever watch clips of officials pounding the floor for a bill — and I suspect you’ve seen at least one in your Facebook feed these past few weeks — you’ll often hear them reference a story from a constituent to humanize some statistic they’re talking about.
At best I’ll get a form reply
Certainly if you send a form letter, or make a call as part of an organized outreach, you may get a generic reply. But if you write a personal letter you’ll almost certainly get a thoughtful, researched reply.
Take a look at this example, from my CA State Assembly representative — Kevin Mullin — to my request on his position regarding plastics pollution:
I received this email just nine days after I wrote to him and my teammates told me I acted like a kid on Christmas morning when I got the reply.
We’ve heard from officials that response times vary based on how topical the issue is and if they need to research an answer before responding. You can expect a reply within 7–30 days in the vast majority of cases.
Of course it helps that they get your letter in the first place. Many people write emails to the official’s campaign addresses, i.e. typically gmail or yahoo, but these tend to be clogged with spam. Better to write officials at their legislative email addresses (i.e. ending in .gov).
My official already agrees, or disagrees, with me
If your official agrees with you you may think there’s no point getting in touch. But if they don’t hear your support, and instead hear many voices against the issue, they may be more tempted to believe there’s less support for their stance.
Similarly, if your official disagrees with you on an issue you may feel it’s pointless to contact them. But viewpoints of an official, like that of any human being, evolve as their understanding of an issue changes. This is why sending articles you read to officials can help educate them, and indeed here’s a great
The Congressional Management Foundation has a great report on how best to engage with your officials. In the report they cite the value of educating your official:
A recent example of citizens doing just this is mentioned in this brilliant New Yorker article by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Kathryn Schulz:
It was constituents, for instance, who educated Congress about America’s opioid crisis and got members to dedicate funds and draft health legislation to begin dealing with it
That said, deep rooted values of the official may be impossible to change — which sometimes is a good thing. If sending research doesn’t change their mind on an issue consider supporting an alternative candidate in the next election including grassroots candidates that you can find on crowdfunding sites like CrowdPac.
How can my single voice make an impact?
Most people believe that they need hundreds of people calling or writing on an issue for an official to take notice. While it’s true that officials seek to understand a representative position held by the community they serve there is no fixed number of calls or emails on an issue after which they take notice.
In fact we heard from one official how a single email made him introduce an exception clause in a bill he was drafting because the person’s case was important, even if relatively rare.
That said, most often you’ll want a few people to back up your viewpoint so here are a few tips to make this easier.
All politics is local
Many politicians are fond of saying “all politics is local”. This is particularly true in the US where we have three levels of government — Federal, State and Local — and where most of your day-to-day life is affected by State and Local government.
Just about every major social change — abortion, school choice, criminal sentencing guidelines, anti-discrimination based on sexual orientation, healthcare — was implemented at the state level before the federal government passed a nationwide law. Indeed, Republicans worked the state-focused strategy masterfully during the Obama administration.
Each Federal official represents 10–20 times more population as compared to their State counterpart. Each Member of Congress represents 700,000 people while each Senator represents an average of 3M people. Contrast with state officials where the average Assembly Member represents about 70,000 people while the average State Senator represents 150,000 people.
Given that your state official has likely heard from just 5–10% of her constituents it doesn’t take a lot to get her to respond to an issue you raise. A good example outcome of citizen-led change at the state level is here.
Make it personal
The Congressional Management Foundation points out how individualized emails matter more than even calls (calls are good for mass action but not for individual outreach because the staffer doesn’t have time to research an answer):
This is echoed by former congressional staffer Emily Ellsworth — who, by the way, is a fantastic resource for how best to engage officials. Her quote below (emphasis is mine):
When you’re first starting out with emails and letters, it’s normal to want to rely on advocacy groups or individuals for scripts and templates. However, don’t underestimate the power of your personal story. As much as you can, try to be authentic and original. There isn’t a magic combination of words that changes a legislator’s mind — it’s a slow burn of many personal stories from a variety of people that moves the needle.
I’m too busy
Most people are busy making ends meet and find it hard to make time to pen a letter or call an official. However we know nearly everyone finds time to check Facebook multiple times a day — 50 minutes per day in fact. So if connecting with your official were as easy as Facebook perhaps more would do it?
Our goal at CivikOwl is to make it this easy for the silent majority to engage with their officials. We’ve learned that people are most inclined to contact an official when they read an article on an issue that matters to them. So we’ve created a button — the Give A Damn button — which can be added to any article on our website and enables the reader to contact their official.
Or alternatively, install our Chrome browser extension and you can click to see the Give A Damn button on any article you read and take action immediately.
Once you click the Give A Damn button you’ll see your relevant officials for the issue at hand. We’ve applied the findings above to make your outreach more impactful:
- Logic to determine which level of government to contact on an issue so that you see quickest responses and results.
- Email template and call script you can easily personalize so you can send a message in less than two minutes.
- Calls that go to district offices instead of capitol offices for more personal responses.
- Emails that go to official’s legislative inbox instead of campaign addresses to avoid spam filters.
- Text message to notify you that the official has read your email while you await their reply.
- Articles that inspired you to act attached to your emails so officials can be better educated on the issue you care about.
We’ve got more work to do, including connecting you with others that care about an issue. But one indication of the ease of use is that an eighth grader used our product last week to email her elected official. So silent majority — what’s your excuse now for not speaking up?
If you like this post please click the heart icon.
If you want to get in touch with your officials any time you read an article that upsets you download our Chrome extension.
