I realize this comment makes me sound lazy (that’s because I am lazy), but the way the doc is presented gives me too much work to do, in a way that’s avoidable.
I’m not going to call my representative because I hate phone calls, so I’ll just focus on the email part. The email template requires me to look up my senator’s name and look up relevant laws from a list. I’m too lazy to do that. I would send a letter if there were a website where I could put in my state and it would auto-fill my senator’s name and the list of relevant laws. It would not be very hard to build a web form to do that.
ASPCA has a web form that requires less work on my part. It still require me to fill out a bunch of personal info but I believe that part is a requirement. Although I’m not sure it auto-fills the rep’s name, and it doesn’t give any option to customize the message.
According to a survey of Congressional staffers, they care about personalized emails more than phone calls, and phone calls (much) more than form emails:
(the way my brain works is that I’d much rather spend 5 minutes writing a personalized email than spend 5 minutes looking up the name of my representative and a relevant law to reference. YMMV)
I realize this comment makes me sound lazy (that’s because I am lazy), but the way the doc is presented gives me too much work to do, in a way that’s avoidable.
I’m not going to call my representative because I hate phone calls, so I’ll just focus on the email part. The email template requires me to look up my senator’s name and look up relevant laws from a list. I’m too lazy to do that. I would send a letter if there were a website where I could put in my state and it would auto-fill my senator’s name and the list of relevant laws. It would not be very hard to build a web form to do that.
ASPCA has a web form that requires less work on my part. It still require me to fill out a bunch of personal info but I believe that part is a requirement. Although I’m not sure it auto-fills the rep’s name, and it doesn’t give any option to customize the message.
https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/act/letter (unrelated to farm bill) is a good example of a page that auto-fills as much information as possible.
It was easy to get Claude to make a state-specific version, by the way.
I believe calling is generally thought to be much more effective than emailing
According to a survey of Congressional staffers, they care about personalized emails more than phone calls, and phone calls (much) more than form emails:
https://mdickens.me/assets/images/Congress-influence.png
(the way my brain works is that I’d much rather spend 5 minutes writing a personalized email than spend 5 minutes looking up the name of my representative and a relevant law to reference. YMMV)
Been searching for a study like this! Thank you!!