How To Contact Your Representatives
Elected officials are accountable to their constituents.
That’s you!
We, the people, have the right — and the responsibility — to access our representatives (aka “reps”) and to express our opinions and desires on whether or not they are acting in our best interest and making governance decisions with which we agree.
Elected officials are, in turn, responsible for giving voice to our needs in the political system by representing our ideas, priorities, and concerns and making governing decisions that reflect the will of the people or propose adequate solutions to the problems that our communities face.
Here are some tips on how to contact your reps to make your voice heard.
“Contact your reps” is an umbrella term
It refers to representatives (aka publicly elected officials) at all levels of government. The rep you need to contact depends on the issue you want to discuss and what level of government is responsible for that issue. More often than not, when people say “contact your reps,” they mean Members of Congress. Your reps also include state senators and council members, among many others.
Check out our Who Are My Reps? post to learn more about your reps — and what they do — at all levels of government.
Use your voice and your vote
You can use the power of your voice and your vote by contacting your reps directly, organizing with fellow members of your community, putting public pressure on your reps to meet your demands, and holding them accountable when they don’t.
When politicians know the people they represent (aka constituents) care strongly enough to vote for or against them based on their stance on a given issue, they become bolder about taking public action. In today’s political climate, it’s important that we use our constituent power to pressure Democrats to pursue a bold progressive agenda. This includes encouraging them to resist concessions to conservative Democrats and/or Republicans when such concessions do not offer sufficient solutions to the problems we face.
Elected officials care about getting re-elected. One of the ways to get re-elected is to keep constituents happy. Making your voice heard as a constituent by letting your reps know how you want them to represent you is one of the most powerful tools in the social change toolkit.
Figure out what motivates your reps
Whether you are in a blue (mostly Democratic), purple (mix of Democratic and Republican), or red (mostly Republican) state or district — and regardless of where your reps fall on the political spectrum — your voice counts. You just have to figure out how to use your voice effectively.
Indivisible — a grassroots movement to elect progressive leaders and rebuild our democracy — offers a practical guide to understanding what motivates your specific Members of Congress and how to use that knowledge to successfully advocate your demands. Their strategy includes:
Pressuring Democrats to be bolder
We know that no matter what Democrats do, Republicans will try to paint it as a radical, socialist agenda, so let’s go big! We can support progressive representatives by letting them know we’ve got their backs, giving them confidence as they push for bold legislation and vote against legislation that fails to meet progressive demands. Simultaneously, we can pressure conservative and centrist Democrats to become more progressive by showing them that there is broad public support for a bold agenda.
Resisting the opposition
Republicans will try to delay and obstruct the Democrats’ agenda at every turn. If you have a Republican representative, it’s your job to remind them that they have a responsibility to protect the well-being of all of their constituents. Let them know that you will be working to get out the vote for a Democratic challenger in their next election.
Find your reps’ contact info using this Common Cause database, Ballotpedia tool, and My Reps database. You can also see the bills they’ve introduced, their voting history, the committees they serve on, and the political contributions they’ve received.
Follow your reps on social media and sign up to receive their emails (think: updates, invites to local events, newsletters).
Only contact your OWN reps
Remember that one of the number one priorities of elected officials is to get re-elected. If you aren’t a constituent — that is, if your vote doesn’t help re-elect that representative — your voice has less power.
The most effective use of your time, and the best way to increase your impact, is to ONLY target your own representatives.
Be aware that there can be unintended consequences to contacting a rep that is not your own. For example, an elected official might use it as an excuse to say that outside opposition does not represent the views of the community and use it as a rallying cry to gain local support against your position.
Of course, if you are someone with a high profile and public influence, you may decide to use your privilege and power to amplify the voices of like-minded voters, even when it’s not your representative.
Increase your impact by meeting with your reps in-person
Our Take Action posts often call out fast actions (actions you can do in under five minutes) that include petitions or form letters that will automatically be sent to your representative. This is a great way to get your feet wet as an everyday activist. It’s also a great way to show your support for a broad range of social justice issues.
When you decide to become more invested in a particular issue, one of the most effective ways to make your voice heard is by meeting with your representative in person. You can meet with them at their office(s), through virtual meetings, at a town hall or other public event, and on the campaign trail.
Indivisible offers advice on advocacy tactics that work, including a step-by-step guide on preparing for and successfully carrying out a meeting with your reps.
Organize with fellow constituents and join in collective action.
Attend local events. You can find a wide range of local events in the Indivisible database.
Join (or start) a local organizing group such as Indivisible, MoveOn, Poor People’s Campaign, or Swing Left. Or find a grassroots organization or local chapter of an organization focused on the issues in your community that you care about.
Volunteer. Search for volunteer opportunities with Mobilize, a tool used by campaigns and organizations to post volunteer advocacy opportunities like call and text banking and advocacy events, where you can search by location and type of event (and sign up for alerts about upcoming events).
Sign up for updates, action alerts, and volunteer opportunities. Organizations will often coordinate amplification efforts to contact representatives on important legislation.
Other ways to contact your reps
Even though meeting with your reps in person is the most effective way to make your voice heard, it’s not always feasible. Representatives keep a tally of all the contacts they receive from constituents supporting or opposing their stance on an issue. When constituents flood an office with contacts on a particular issue, it makes it harder for the representative to ignore their demands. The earlier you make your opinion known, the more impact it will have because you may be able to influence a representative before they take a public stance on an issue.
YOU CAN CONTACT YOUR REPS VIA:
Phone calls
A phone call to your representatives’ office is the number one most impactful way to contact your rep. Check out 5Calls.org. They make it easy to reach your reps by researching issues, figuring out the most influential decision-makers, providing their contact information, and then writing a script to help you clearly articulate a progressive position. All you have to do is call.
Nervous? Check out this guide from Indivisible on how and when to make calls. And remember - the more you do it, the less scary it becomes.
Personalized emails, letters, and postcards
Writing a personal email, letter, or postcard that gives specific examples of how the issue impacts you and your community and explains what your representatives’ support would mean to you is more effective than sending a form letter or signing a petition.
Form letter or petition
Search the internet for petitions on a wide range of social justice issues initiated by trusted organizations and nonprofits. Remember to read the fine print to make sure it’s a petition you agree with before signing. Make sure to write custom text in your petition or form letter about why this issue matters to you - it will be more impactful when your representative’s office receives it. Learn more in our Increase Your Impact When You Sign a Petition post.
Social media
The effectiveness of engaging your representatives on social media depends on a number of factors, including the size of your platform and how active the representative in question and their staff are on social media. Some politicians have worked hard to cultivate an online presence in which they engage with their constituents and critics in a meaningful way, while others rarely engage or do so only superficially. Part of knowing who your representatives are is gauging how receptive they appear to be to being contacted via social media.
Search for a script, petition, or online form letter from a trusted organization on the issue you want to contact your reps about in order to have a template for what to write in a personal letter or social media post. Note: If the petition is powered by The Action Network you can be fairly certain it supports a progressive position.
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Originally published July 5, 2021.
Posts identify both fast actions that you can take in under five minutes and more time-intensive actions that deepen your engagement. Our fast actions tend to be time-bound, as a result, some posts in the archive may contain expired links. Not to fret, we also recommend anytime actions that never go out of date.
