Page 2 - Contact Your Lawmakers Research

Contacting Your Member of Congress - Fact or Fiction? Research Project

Some say calling Congress works, others say it does not
There are a great many ways to petition the government: phone calls, emails, writing letters, filling out

website comment forms and personal visits. Emails and comment forms are processed by a computer
algorithm which automatically sends a variety of form responses, so emails are a waste of time. How
about social media? Congressional staffers have said they only check Facebook to remove vulgar posts

and block spammers and trolls. The one reputed to be the most effective is calling your congressional
representatives. But does it work and does it really make a difference? Does any of these methods really

make a difference? This research paper is going to answer that question, and many more.

First, constituents deserve the ability to make
their voices heard - it's a fundamental part of

American democracy. So in 1898 the U.S
Government installed the first telephone
switchboard at the Capitol, and citizens across

the nation could call their members of
Congress. But as the number of citizens with

telephones increased, so did the number of
calls to the switchboard.

Almost 120 years later, the number of calls coming into the switchboard on a daily basis is double it's
maximum capacity, which has crashed it on several occasions. While citizens complain about not being able
to reach their members of Congress, congressional staffers complain about not getting any work done

because of the phone constantly ringing.

When we do call, however, we almost never speak to our representatives directly. Instead, we usually wind

up dealing with an intern or low-level staffer. Many offices enter your information in a system called
Intranet Quorum, which sends automated emails and letters and tracks correspondence. The draw back is

that most staffers seems to hate it, so many use Google docs, write it down on paper, or don't record it at
all. Being that House members can only hire 18 staff members, they have admitted that many phone calls
are deliberately not answered and not tracked. Not to be malicious, but it's just too much volume for them

to handle.

Compounding the problem are activist groups that spam their offices with hundreds of pre-scripted
robocalls and blast faxes from all over the nation.

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