Elected representatives care about what their constituents say.
No matter the issue, you are always best off contacting your own elected representatives - that means elected politicians who recognize you as their constituent, and that it’s their job to represent.
It’s not worth wasting a lot of time attempting to contact other representatives in other districts or states. No matter if your representatives is terrible or good, Republican or Democrat, disagrees with you or agrees with you… It’s worth contacting your representative speaking as their constituent.
At least Rep Cartwright always let people know right up front, by having a zip code hurdle before you could use the contact form, directing you that if you’re in a zip code in a different district. And Rep Cartwright’s replacement, Rep Rob Bresnahan, sworn in on January 3rd, 2024, also has a similar process on his contact page.
Some representatives might just let you input the form, and if it doesn’t include a physical address within the district, or no actual address at all, they will likely just disregard the message, and it won’t count toward the tallies.
Democrats Abroad - Congressional Contact Immediately identify yourself as the congressperson’s constituent and be prepared to give your U.S.-based address. Use the U.S. address which you use as your voting address*. You do NOT have to currently live there;
Instructions from the U.S. Senate also come right out and specify that you should direct all questions and comments to the senators of your own state.
United States Senate - Contacting U.S. Senators All questions and comments regarding public policy issues, legislation, or requests for personal assistance should be directed to the senators from your state. Please be aware that as a matter of professional courtesy, many senators will acknowledge, but not respond to, a message from another senator's constituent.
The key to not wasting time and doing what’s most effective means knowing how the system works so you can have the maximum leverage in your actions — the most bang for your time & effort.
Writing Letters to Elected Representatives, a guide Letters to politicians are some of the easiest and most effective actions many neglect. Chloe Humbert Jan 24, 2023 Write to the elected representatives that represent you. These are the elected officials that are on the ballot for your district. Don’t waste time writing to elected representatives in other states or in other places. Politicians care about their own constituents — people who are eligible to potentially vote for them, and who they are elected to represent. Representatives disregard contact attempts from people who are not in their district. Writing to government agencies, outside their prescribed application or public comment processes, is also not typically helpful. Writing anonymous letters or posting comments on social media are also generally not effective. Representatives care about what their actual verifiable constituents care about.
If you have any complaints at all about how the government is operating or any complaints about how society is being run, then you should strive to be someone your representatives refer to as “pen pals” or “frequent fliers” and be the person your government “has to deal with”.
How To Fight Fascism In America Leeja Miller Nov 20, 2024 The key is to pinpoint your skills for me one of my skills is communication and also being absolutely annoying I noticed a fence went up under an overpass near my house that displaced some unhoused folks that don't seem to have been provided any services or alternatives for shelter so I emailed the Minnesota Department of Transportation my city council person and my state house representative asking why my tax dollars were being wasted on a fence that didn't address the underlying issue of lack of affordable housing the Department of Transportation email was forwarded with the message “can one of you deal with this?” yeah I'm going to be a person that my local government has to deal with.
The squeaky wheel…
Congressional Management Foundation - Summary of Constituent Correspondence Tactics Some offices have found marked benefits in limiting the number of times they communicate with individual constituents. They accomplish this by responding only once per month per constituent and/or only exchanging one communication per issue rather than a prolonged back-and-forth engagement. Put more simply, they limit their responses to the so-called "frequent fliers" or "pen pals." One office estimates that this has reduced their overall volume of responses by 45%.
I will continue to say that the content of the response to me is not particularly relevant - what’s relevant is that they had to acknowledge what I have to say. But the response can inform you of their position - OR about their cluelessness on a topic and the need for repeat contact or organizing around an issue by people who do understand the situation.So often I’ve seen representative responses that reveal a lot of cluelessness just emphasizing that I need to write them on the topic again, perhaps on different aspects of how it has an impact on me. For example Senator Bob Casey’s replies about tech issues have been horrendously bizarre. No matter the substance of what I was writing about - from the infosec issues to environmental and energy grid issues, no matter what the actual substance of the issue was, if it involved AI, automation, or data centers, or even crypto, his office sends the same rather vague canned form letter talking about Turing tests.
I guess I should’ve written a letter to the editor about this.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation - Lobbying with Quakers - Help! My Representatives Never Agree with Me - Why and how to communicate with your members of Congress - Advocacy Resource When your member of Congress takes a position you disagree with, write a letter to the editor expressing your disappointment. This isn’t just a way to share your opinion with your community; when members of Congress are mentioned by name in local newspapers, they pay attention. Several letters on the same issue – written by you and your friends – will definitely get noticed.
This is a lot more effective than shouting into the void… and by void I mean social media.
”The liberals were outraged at Trump. But they expressed their outrage in cyberspace so it had no effect. Because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people who already agreed with them. Instead ironically their waves of angry messages and tweets benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. one online analyst put it simply — angry people click. It meant that the radical fury that came like waves across the internet no longer had the power to change the world. Instead it became a fuel that fed the systems of power making them ever more powerful.” - Hypernormalisation Documentary, 2016, by Adam Curtis.
Of course the people in positions in government would love for you just use social media to “let it out” like a release valve, so then you can feel like you did something, shut up, and leave them alone to just do whatever they want to do for whoever IS pressuring them in your absence.
Congressional Management Foundation - Why You Shouldn’t Contact Senators and Representatives Who Don’t Represent You - by Kathy Goldschmidt on April 17, 2017 If you send it, it will be forwarded on or filtered out. Since the dawn of time when postal mail was the only way to communicate with them, it has been customary for Senators and Representatives to NOT communicate with people they do not represent. It is not considered courteous or appropriate for legislators to build relationships with their colleagues' constituents. When volumes were smaller, many forwarded non-constituent messages on to their colleagues. These days, the volumes are so high that the messages are generally filtered out either automatically or by the staffers who process the mail. Whether it's a perfectly-crafted and compelling letter or 5,000 emails, they will not be read or responded to. It's BAD for democracy. With the average Representative representing 700,000 people and Senators representing anywhere between 600,000 (Wyoming) and 39 million people (California) they barely have the resources to manage their communications and relationships with the people to whom they are directly beholden. They cannot be responsive to all 323 million people in the nation. Even the act of filtering constituents from non-constituents takes considerable staff time that is NOT being spent legislating, hearing the concerns of constituents, and understanding the highly complex and very important issues before Congress and the nation. If you want democracy to work effectively and you want Congress to listen to you, you must communicate and develop relationships with those who represent you, whether or not you like them or their politics.
The bottom line about this is that when you are writing to your representatives, you’re representing more constituents than yourself, and you’re also potentially part of a mass movement of people who are speaking up about the same thing, without necessarily needing to personally know those people or directly organize with them. Try to keep up with what’s going on, or at least on a particular issue that’s important to you, and when you have an opinion, give it to the people who can actually do something about it - your elected representatives.