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Comment by levi_n | Hacker News Reader

https://resistbot.io/ makes it real easy to contact your representatives in a manner they are more likely to see.

This service seems short-sighted to me. It might trick a few representatives the first time around, but if it actually succeeds in bringing in a high volume of low-effort responses it will only devalue itself the way email is currently devalued (possibly along with some collateral damage to the credibility of the class of high-effort correspondants it is disguising its users as).

The way to improve politics isn't to make political engagement as casual and low effort as possible.

It seems like to SOME extent it is. Seems like part of lobbyist influence comes from planting seeds in legislators minds, as their full-time job. Most people have an opinion but can't be bothered to lobby for their own interests because they have their own full time job. We need transparent ways for representatives to poll what constituents want. Really there should be a state sponsored electronic voting system for stuff like this.

#ArmChairPhilosophy

I disagree. The best option is to call. You likely won't talk to the rep themselves, but you will either leave a message or talk to one of their staffers. It will bubble up to them. If a rep gets a ton of calls against a particular piece of legislation, they may change their position for fear of not being re-elected.

https://callyourrep.co/

This is purely anecdotal, but I found the idea that calling is more effective than writing or emailing to be a myth. I interned for a Congressman in their DC office, and we interns were responsible for taking and responding to all in-bound communication. While we did assemble the metrics of which issues we received the most communication on each week, I never got the impression that those numbers impacted policy positions in the least. I don't think the Congressman or his CoS ever saw them. That said, the Congressman I served was also part of the party leadership, so my experience may have been the exception, partly for that reason.

Here's an existence proof that congresspeople pay attention to calls from their constituents: https://twitter.com/RepJudyChu/status/845044275427659776.

What's perhaps striking is the low number of total calls regarding AHCA (439 support, 6 against) compared to the total population of her district (~700k). Unless I'm misinterpreting, this seems like pretty strong evidence that a call to your representative can have a massively disproportionate impact?

Small correction: you flipped the yes/no counts.

As our resident security expert pointed it, it really depends on the office. My evidence is purely anecdotal, but it mirrors the experiences that friends of mine who interned in other offices had. One more thing that I can add is that most of the Reps we worked for had been in their seat for 15+ years, and it may be that they consider their seats safe enough that they don't need to reference the daily numbers much, or they have a deep enough understanding of their constituency that they can instinctively know how they will feel or react to an issue. Or it could be N number of other things.

I thought "NO WAY" were there 439 for and 6 against AHCA. But, I could be wrong depending on the part of the country.

I checked your link, and you did in fact put those in the wrong order. There were 439 against and 6 for AHCA.

Every NGO I've worked with as part of Tech Solidarity has stressed that phone calls are the most effective form of pressure short of face-to-face meetings.

Do you think your congressman was more receptive to constituent calls to his local office? Or did he not care about any of it?

Honestly, I was never made aware of any metrics regarding inbound comms from the district office, so I can't really say.

I think the reason people say that phone calls are the most effective is because they are the most exhausting to deal with, and thus may leave the strongest impression on those who have to deal with them. From there, it's a matter of flow of information within the Rep's office. If anything, I would suggest that callers ask how exactly their opinions will reach their representative at the end of the call. Find out if a staffer will be relayed this information, and if so, which, and then inquire how that staffer will be relaying it to the rep. Adding verbal accountability may increase the likelihood of it getting moved up the chain?

I work for the NGO that is asking people to call Congress in this article, and we also have the impression that this is a useful way for constituents to lobby their representatives (though some people say sending a paper letter is more effective, perhaps precisely because even fewer people are willing to do it). It would be interesting to hear more on this from people who've worked in various Congressional offices.

I'm honestly jealous of both you and @Idlewords. What I wouldn't give to work in the Tech Policy space.

I think it may depend on the congressperson, but we've spoken directly to staffers. All of them have told us that email is the least effective way to reach out. Some of them are even picky about where you call, and suggest that calls to the main DC line are the only ones that count; others say that calls are tallied at all regional field offices.

Nobody has advised us not to call.

Certainly, I would never suggest that someone _shouldn't_ try to communicate their views to their representative. My thoughts focus more on efficacy, and the degree to which individual voters can impact the decisions their rep makes.

I continue to be bewildered by the opacity of the process. You (the politician) are getting free market research. Why would you try to impede it?

Not to steer this conversation into campaign finance waters, but...

I'm not sure its accurate to depict constituent communication as market research, as the constituents are not always/not usually the market elected representatives are catering to. The people they need to please are the people who pay for their campaigns, rather than the people they try to reach with those campaigns.

I think politicians vote the way they're paid to vote on issues nobody cares about, but it can be dangerous to ignore voters on issues they do care about.

That may be true, but one must also consider that the public is also not well enough informed on many issues to have an opinion worth merit.

Health care, foreign policy, corporate taxes, etc. are all extremely complex issues, and its hard to derive an informed opinion from the press alone. I think that's why it's hard to be a good leader and a popular leader at the same time.

Not a joke, I believe this video will answer most of your questions about why a political thing works the way it does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

This only gave me the option to send to my senators (when starting), this issue is currently headed to the house.

EDIT: from the FAQ looks like there is a house command but it is only active to more "experienced" users.

EDIT EDIT: https://resistbot.io/privacy.html worth reading before you use, there are some clauses in there that are a little sketchy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/16/...

Resistbot, can you easily convert these texts and faxes into phone calls by providing the number of the office... So that I can call with a single tap, after organizing my message? And then ask me to report my outcome?

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