The buzz all over my fb feed for a while has been that we should all be calling our congresspersons’ offices and registering our views on whatever they’re supposed to vote on soon. My fbfriends are leaving posts telling who they called and what they said. Posts are circulating in which people who work in politics claim simply calling and leaving a message en masse is just about the most effective way people at the ground level can affect things politically, at least in the “things you can do right now, on the spot” sense of things.
Is there any validity to this?
I am dubious. I find it hard to believe a legislator is going to be affected by a flood of phone messages received the day of or a few days before a vote–presumably all the politics have been done and his or her decision has been made by that point, I would think?
Out of desperation, I once called my local congress person about my cable company. They were continually billing me wrong, charging late fees, and it was impossible to get them on the phone to correct it.
I actually came to suspect they were doing it intentionally to run up customer cost, and said so. The congressional office discounted this suggestion, but a few days later it was all cleared up and I got a special phone number to call if it happened again.
Congressmen do care about what the voters in their district think. That’s just self-interest. So while they might ignore a handful of protests, they’ll pay attention if they get a significant number of people calling them on some issue.
A real letter, signed, 1st class mail and everything gets the most attention. Phone calls are a crap shoot. Emails are counted, maybe a canned response. Perhaps even personalized.
I think the only factual answer here is “it depends”. It depends who you are, and it depends if the congressperson is unsure of how his constituents feels about an issue.
Many elected officials travel around their districts and conduct town halls to gather input, while others may depend on how many phone calls, postcards or letters they get on a particular issue. It also depends on who you are. Did you contribute in a major way to their last campaign? Your input may count more than somebody else.
The short answer is that it doesn’t hurt to express your views to your congressperson, but don’t expect them to vote based on what you or anyone else tells them. Their votes are based on other considerations than mere public opinion polling.
This is the more common way in which calling your congressman really works. If you have a constitutent complaint, particularly if it is about government services, calling your congresshuman is a good way to get it cleared up. As far as opinions on legislation, they are taken into account in the aggregate, and a congressperson who gets a very one-sided response on an issue is likely to give it more consideration before voting.
I’ve had great results just e-mailing my Congressman … he answers me when I ask him to … and quickly solves any problem I have if it’s within his power to do so … and this is a common story throughout our district … 17th term in office I believe, the fella knows how to serve us, no easy task when half the district is in the State of Jefferson …
It certainly can work, at least on complaints. This happened in 1960, but I see no reason it wouldn’t today. After my brother completed basic the Air Force wanted to send him to Morocco. My mother got on the phone and was actually able to speak to her congresswoman (Kathryn Granahan, IIRC) and said, “You can’t send a Jew to Morocco.” She agreed and they didn’t. They sent him to western Alaska (from which you almost can see Siberia) instead.
First, do you think that not calling your congressperson would be more effective?
But, if you take the time to make a phone call, rather than an email or a tweet, that means it is likely you will make the time to vote.
You may even talk to your voting friends about how the phone call went. If you are lucky, you sometimes can even get the actual rep on the phone, rather than staff. (Not so hard for smaller offices like state congress.)
My experience is that they are most responsive to phone calls, but depending on the situation, a well written letter may be more effective.
ETA: Though if they are calling congress critters outside of their own district, I do not really expect them to even be granted the time of day.
It works if there’s something a congressman can do. IRS problems, you can give it a shot, they may get you in contact with someone who can help, if anything can be done at all. State and local government issues also may get resolved with a word from a congressman. If it’s serious you can give it a try. Useful or not you’ll end up on the fund raising list.
Yes. Congressmen have staffers that handle all such correspondence, who have a lot of latitude about which ones will be given more than cursory attention. I have had a congressman go through quite an extensive process of checking out a complaint I had, which involved several exchanges of correspondence over a number of weeks.
But very few calls/letters actually come to the attention of the congressman himself, but every one is evaluated by somebody with the power to move it forward. They are more than just flunkiies, the congressman hires staffers that he feels he can trust to make good judgments about such things.
I called Paul Ryan’s office when he set up that ACA phone poll. I’m feeling really positive about my contribution, and I have every confidence my input was both taken seriously and given all the weight appropriate for an anonymous phone poll regarding an issue Mr. Ryan has already made up his mind about. Yup. Feeling really positive.
Only speaking at the federal level: Yes, phone calls make a huge difference. They do not like to get hammered with angry calls, and are bolstered by supportive ones.
You will not reach the elected person directly (most of the time), but Hill staffers are extremely powerful.
So like, is the idea that the staffers are basically (not to put it unkindly but this is the word that comes to mind) annoyed enough by negative calls done in masse to actually try to do something to put a stop to them–which means influencing the elected person to vote in their favor?
But in case you might, don’t think of staffers as the political equivalent of kids working at McDonalds. They are in charge of making major policy recommendations and handling most of the heavy lifting in lawmaking. They do the reading, the writing, the gatekeeping, etc. They are major players (though extremely young) not drones with a phone.
Mrs. Gap and I had a machine shop in Florida. One of our clients, a major aerospace contractor, had gone to paying invoices in 30 days to 120-180 days. We were on the razors edge of staying in biz, having to pay our suppliers and not getting money from our customer. She called our Congressman, talked to a staffer and magically, a few days later, a check appeared in our mailbox for the full amount owed to us. This, after the clients accounts payable department claimed “we don’t have any invoices outstanding from you, including the one you’ve emailed and sent copies of”.
In the end, the business collapsed from too much of this type of problem, but at least we got our money.
My wife read me an exchange from Facebook where some guy was gloating that “finally we’ll get rid of that Obamacare abomination” and boasting that he wasn’t worried about repeal because he got his health insurance through the ACA not Obamacare. hilarity ensued, with someone’s final comment “I can’t believe he hasn’t deleted his post by now…”
Something I read once about PR from a large corporation (McDonalds or some such) is that they paid attention to letters and phone calls because they estimated one phone call or letter represented ten to a hundred other people who were also annoyed but didn’t bother expressing their dissatisfaction.
One point on this: If you’re calling/writing to urge your elected officials to vote a particular way on some bill, don’t bother to give a long, impassioned speech or essay extolling all of the reasons they should vote that way. They’ve heard it all before, on both sides, and are just going to skip over that part. Keep it short and simple: “Dear Sir: I am a constituent in your district and have voted in the past five elections, and I urge you to vote yes on Bill XYZ. Sincerely, Joe Taxpayer”.