I just emailed one of my Senators. I’m not going to discuss why, since this is MPSIMS, not GD, but I’m curious how many of you have done this before, and what your results have been. I’m not just limiting this to email, but any personal communication with an elected official.
I’ve done this many times and it’s good – better that not letting her or him hear from you at all. Letters make more of an impact and phone calls even more of one.
Responses vary depending, apparently, on the Senator and the subject. Sometimes I hear nothing. Usually, if I have included my street address, I get a form letter. Most of these are very vague – especially if the Senator takes a different viewpoint but wants to keep my vote.
Do keep your emails and letters brief and address only one issue in each one.
Welcome to the world of activism!
I’ve written Fred Upton (one of Michigan’s congressmen) before. Got a response back surprisingly fast, too. Seemed like a fairly nice guy.
I emailed my state senator and representative yesterday. Got a reply back from the rep within 2 hours.
I’ve done it. I think I even posted it in MPSIMS a few years ago.
Nothing ever come of it except that I somehow got put on Tom Delay’s mailing list for campaign contributions.
:rolleyes:
How weird ! I was thinking of starting this exact thread yesterday when I e-mailed my Member of Provincial Parliament!
I’ve done it a few times, to a city politician that I hate, to a provincial one that I feel more positively towards, and to Mr Paul Martin, current unelected Prime Minister.
I don’t write about the issues that are most important to me, rather, the ones that the politician in question is actually in a position to do something about. (Public transit in the cases of city and provincial ones, the Tobin Tax to the PM.)
The city councillor who I hate managed to miss the venom in my e-mail and put me on his mailing list, so I got a lot of “Can we count on your support for this upcoming thing” e-mails, until I wrote back and emphasized the venom, at which point I stopped hearing from him. Thank goodness.
Haven’t heard boo from Mr Martin but I’m not particularly surprised.
Just sent the other one yesterday. I can’t wait to hear what he says. I anticipate something like:
I’ve contacted the POTUS, VP, my senators and congresscritters, my representative as well as a few others I thought were in a position to hear my messages.
Other than the canned “your message has been received and will never be read by anyone important” auto-reply, the only response I ever got was from the rep, whose email handler person asked for my address “for registration purposes” or something like that.
I’ve basically been ignored.
I do it often. I usually get responses ranging from a form email to a on-topic letter. That’s how I know that Texas Gov. Rick Perry uses a felt tip pen to print his signature. Sen. Ratliff will add your address to his Christmas Card list, or at least he did mine.
Individuals emailing (or phoning, or writing) in may be ignored/sent a canned response but the legislative office workers do keep track of the mail/calls/email by subject matter and support/oppose.
The only time I did this, I regretted it. I went to meet my husband at his office for lunch. His boss asked me to call our Senator and ask him to vote a certain way on a bill that effected their business. I did it, because I felt pressured, but I really thought the Senator should have voted the opposite way. A co-worker of my husband actually gave me the number, a phone, and waited for me to make the call. I’m such a wimp.
This is about the same range of responses I got from asking friends and acquaintances around campus. I have heard that my senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, are really good at personal response to their constituents. Levin even sent his home phone number to one friend so they could further discuss an issue. I wish everyone’s senators were so involved with those that elect them.
I email my Senators all the time. Congressmen too.
Sen. Byrd always replies with a nice letter. So does my Congressman.
Rockfeller never, ever replies, ever. Probably because most of the time I’m bitching at him.
Well, I would have met the two Senators from Montana on Tuesday if some idiot hadn’t mailed ricin to the Senate office buildings the same day, closing the whole complex down.
Other than that, I once wrote to, and got a reply from former Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnson.
I occasionally write to my senators and representatives. The rep has never responded, but both senators have, more than once. I’ve sent messages using both electrons and dead trees, depending on the urgency of the issue (being voted on that week, for example).
In one case, where I wrote on issue X, I got a long, detailed form letter with a computer-printed signature explaining the senator’s position on issue Y. :rolleyes:
Another time, the response was also pretty much a form letter, but with an actual ink signature on it, and, interestingly, what was essentially an apology that the senator couldn’t quite see her way clear to completely agreeing with the position I was advancing. “But it’s a complex matter,” concluded the letter, “and the senator’s views are evolving,” or something to that effect. The honesty was refreshing, I thought, not to mention the implicit acknowledgement that some staffer or other had actually bothered to take the time to read (or at least skim) my letter and assign me an appropriate response.
I started with a letter to my representative and then talked to the people in his office. Dad’s military info was in the part of the storage area that burned many years ago. Dad needed medical treatment and he was eligible for VA medical benefits but was not getting it since they didn’t have records of his having been thru Hiroshima after the bomb. The office of the representative got it all settled and dad is a happy camper.
I’ve emailed the president and both of my senators. All I got from the president was a message informing me that my e-mail had been received. I never received a response from Sen. Coleman (R-MN), but Sen. Dayton (D-MN) has responded every time, once with a phone call.
Last year, I contacted my Representative (Ramstad, R-MN) and senators (Dayton, D-MN and Coleman, R-MN) for help with a dragging immigration-related issue. Sen. Dayton’s office never replied, but Sen. Coleman and Rep. Ramstad’s immigration liasons both did what they could to help.
Later, I emailed the three regarding my position on issue X, and only received a reply from Sen. Dayton saying “I agree with you, but that matter is still in committee in the House, so I can’t do anything yet”. I took that as an implicit statement that Sen. Coleman and Rep. Ramstad didn’t necessarily agree with me.
In the past, I have faxed letters to my Congresscritters on behalf of various groups (EFF, ACLU, etc.). Sometimes I got a form letter, sometimes not. I remember one letter from one of my Congressmen that seemed to be not a form letter. Recently, they’ve not sent a letter at all.
Methinks I’m being ignored. I’m not surprised, considering that they’re all conservative nutbars and I’m a Left-Wing Loony, but them’s the breaks, I guess.
I emailed California’s senators a few months ago. I eventually got a canned response from Barbara Boxer, but it was a very specific canned response, so I have to assume that it’s a popular topic.
I actually just got finished with an email to Gov. Romney. I got a canned response, which is fine, but I plsn on sending a hardcopy letter as well.
I also call the White House alot. I have it programmed on my cell. No real response to those, other than “Thanks for calling, and your message will be passed on to the President”. or his interns or whatever.
-j