Whoa — Video Messaging Your Lawmakers Is a Thing!
Now, telling your Representative and Senators what you think is as easy as “Click, Speak, Click.”
When it comes to talking to people, even Congress has adapted to technology when it had no other choice. Telephones made communicating with our elected officials easier than writing a letter. Email made it even easier to get in touch — just jot down some thoughts and hit send. No waiting for a staffer to answer your call.
Today, Countable is bringing constituents an even more personal way to contact their lawmakers — video messages.
Whether it’s to post on Vine, Snapchat, or Periscope, video is now one of the most widely used functions on phones. Now, it’s how many Americans will communicate with their elected officials.
We’re breaking down barriers. On the user side, we’re removing the pain of typing out opinions and thoughts on legislation from their mobile device. Now you can simply click, speak, and send a message to your lawmaker.
On Congress’ side, video messaging offers more compelling content from constituents. In our conversations with staff on Capitol Hill, we were told that seeing a live video from real people carries more weight than the written emails (many of them form letters). Reading words is one thing. Being able to see, hear, and feel a constituent’s emotions — right from the computer — is a totally novel experience for Congressional staff. Messages sent through Countable will stand out.
The process is easy on both ends. Countable provides easy-to-understand summaries on scores of legislation. A user can read summaries of bills and hit “yea” or “nay,” to trigger a message to be sent to their lawmaker, stating their opinion. But, before an email is sent, users will be asked if they want to attach a personal video message. They don’t have to, and can simply move on to the next bill.
But for those who do, after a prompt to request access to their phone’s front-facing camera, users can record a 30 second video,review it, and hit send.
Once they hit send, an email is fired off to the appropriate lawmakers. The email states the user’s position on the bill, and stresses the importance of following a link to view their personal video message. Legislative staff will be able to follow the link to view the video, which will be hosted on Countable’s servers.
Rest assured, we’re already hard at work creating add-on functionality to let Countable users rally support for their videos, and know as soon as their video has been viewed by their lawmaker’s office. Video is currently available on the web and iOS versions of Countable, we’ll be rolling it out for Android soon.
Now that it’s so easy to weigh in on any issue, there’s never been a better time to start making your voice heard (and seen!) in the halls of power. So, what are you going to video message your lawmakers about?
