In my interviews with Congressional staff who actually work on correspondence desks, they laugh at people sending faxes in and come right out and say that sending faxes, vs any other method of communications, is ineffective.
I understand that HelloFax wants to market itself. But this campaign does more harm than good.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480712
Anyway, on the above-linked thread, there are some apparently informed comments to the effect that faxes are, well, effective. For example:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481102
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480952
However, I see from your profile, cjoh, that you also appear to be well-connected in this domain.
So, I'm not asking to be argumentative, but rather to refine my own and perhaps others' strategies for communicating with their Congress-persons, going forward. What works? What doesn't? And specifically why and how?
For my own part, and perhaps this is now somewhat dated, I understood -- well-written, individual -- faxes to be viewed as more akin to a letter, while arriving in a more timely fashion. That is, a constituent actually sitting down to write out a formal description of their concerns and reasoning and then taking the trouble to send it, typically (or historically?) more trouble than a "Send" button requires.
I guess fax processing may well be all-electronic, at this point, but my hope also lay a bit in perhaps generating a physical object within the office, as opposed to being just/yet one more message on a screen.
And I certainly wish to communicate more than just a "tick" and perhaps a ZIP code categorization in a phone call tally.
I'll typically write an individually addressed letter. I try not to be too long, but I may run to two -- perhaps even three -- pages to outline not just my concern by my reasoning. I try to write these in a top down, aka "newspaper", style, so that the most relevant statements and information can be gleaned in the first paragraphs, with further reasoning, detail, and documentation to follow.
Is this all for naught? Should I instead stick it in an envelop and hope that it gets through all the screening some claim is these days slowing down physical mail, in time to reach the Congress-person's office before a vote and before they are committed to a vote?
Any additional insight would be appreciated. And hopefully this is not too OT for HN.
P.S. I hope my comments on the original, announcement thread from HelloFax did not make the effort seem like a mere marketing ploy. I have no relationship with HelloFax other than being a customer and thinking that the fax campaign was a good idea.
I think the best thing I can do to explain this is to actually watch the video at http://informationdiet.com/live. It'll take you some time. I'm carving it up now.
But there's a lot in there.
The overarching theme though is that good persuasion is a function with two parameters: sacrifice, and effort. The more sacrifice and effort involved in your persuasion to Congress, the more likely it is to be well received. Thus, a visit to Washington, DC is much more effective than a phone call. A phone call is much more effective than an email. An email is much more effective than a form email. A form email is much more effective than a form fax. And so on.
Here are some tips:
http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-be-a-better-...
and
http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-talk-to-cong...
I can tell from your profile page that you're active in this area and you probably know what's going on.
Rather than telling 15,000 people who made an honest effort that they haven't done anything useful, maybe you could suggest better ways to reach our leaders instead?