[jatora]

What reason do you have to think that writing Congressmen changes the slightest thing? Even when they receive a pile of related letters? Seems to me this wouldnt shift the needle at all vs lobbying interests. Seems to me that there is a general unrealistic idealism and faith in democracy at play here.

[jacobolus]

Each congressperson's staff gathers all of the comments they get, counts them up, and reports back to the congressperson, passing along anything they think would be useful information; if you write a clear and careful letter about an obscure topic there's a decent chance the congressperson themself will see it. Congresspeople typically have local ties in their area and caring what their constituents think is their job.

It's a serious problem that there are some congresspeople who don't do any local events, send all comments straight to the trash, etc. You should vote those folks out.

In the longer term, we should push for significantly increasing the size of the US House of Representatives to 5–10x the current size and implement serious campaign finance reforms. In combination, these will help make congresspeople more responsive to constituents and less reliant on donors.

[b112]

Not an American, but I've wondered about increasing numbers myself. Certainly, giving each representative fewer citizens to represent could help.

I worry about the size of the bodies, however. Too big, and they become less wieldy. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wonder about other solutions. I was thinking of, for example, 10x the number, but each grouping of 10 has a representative, and they each give proxies on votes. Maybe best though of as, junior representatives. It'd allow more direct interaction, and in a sense you'd be electing regional representative staff for each congressperson.

I guess there are a lot of ways to handle this, but regardless I overall 100% agree.

[gpm]

With modern electronics I really don't see why we can't have arbitrary numbers of representatives.

In fact I think my preferred system would be representatives get a number of votes equal to the people who voted for them, and anyone can assign anyone as their representative. Gate things like getting speaking time on representing more than x% of the vote, and maybe even have a minimum threshold if we're insisting votes are cast in person for cyber security reasons, but generally the bar for being able to represent people should be low and there shouldn't be winners and losers in elections but just people who represent different numbers of people.

[dostick]

The modern democracy is unchanged from original Ancient Greek version to adapt to having 100,000 voters per representative from 100 when democracy was invented. It was never questioned if it supposed to work at this scale.

[WalterBright]

A 10x increase would just be chaos.

[throwitaway222]

This is correct. At this point all constituents believe something like "oh that's just a MAGAT and they don't matter" and throw it in the garbage. I personally think all congress people left or right should be thrown out if they don't personally reply. We're paying them to do this. If many people write about the same issue, they should not have to reply personally, but they should hold a press conference, recorded town hall or issue a statement.

We're losing our government and voice to radicalization.

[asveikau]

My letter opened with the fact that I generally favor reasonable gun laws, then elaborated how this is not that.

It's possible that nobody reads it and captures the nuance, but I did spend time to consider the framing. Nobody who actually reads it will think I am an extremist or that I haven't carefully considered the topic.

[jatora]

99% chance your letter ends up in the shredder without being read

[culi]

If we're talking written letters, most of these offices at least have staff that read them. I've sorta lobbied before and they don't get quite as much mail as you imagine.

And they respond more often than you'd think. Your attitude is pretty prevalent so the chance to write back and change a voter's impression is hard to pass up.

[asveikau]

By the way I also know for a fact that Scott Wiener's staff reads San Francisco's subreddit. Commenting about Wiener's vote in there will reach his staff. Given the bay area presence here it's also possible somebody "who knows a guy" will even see this thread name-drop him.

[jatora]

We'be been this way for decades, the government has been far detached from the will of any but the rich. The only thing Trump has done is demonstrate that, as a politician, you dont really have to try so hard to pretend otherwise anymore. And the people can and will do nothing but fight eachother.

[asveikau]

From what I know about legislators (I am a longtime SF resident but I am also a DC native and have known some congressional staff over the years), it is pretty rare that informed constituents write to them in a cogent and authentic voice about specific legislation, and they do pay attention to this.

Calls may work even more.

It won't work all the time and how much they do will depend on the issue and why they are supporting it etc. But it's worth a shot.

Remember I said: they should know you're paying attention. This can cause them to also pay attention.

[trinsic2]

Alright, you won me over. I emailed my congressman from the EFF website with my own message. That's the best I can do right now. I just feel like politics is a losing battle. If its taken over by special interests and there doesn't seem like there is any end in sight, as it gets easier and easier for them to sway the people that are actually suppose to be working for us. What is the point? When we are combating legislation that no sane person should have to deal with there comes a time where the whole thing is unlawful and it we should stop investing our power into it.

[VortexLain]

It is better to at least do what can be done instead of accepting a defeat without even trying.

[jatora]

Why? There are better ways to spend your time than yelling at walls. I'd say it's better to be disillusioned and realistic than idealistic and ignorant. Even if the latter feels better.

[lern_too_spel]

I've written a state rep and had legislation come out of it. I've written a congressperson and had federal bureaucracy expedite my case out of it. People who think their government is unresponsive generally haven't actually tried asking their government for a response.

[asveikau]

There seems to be a propaganda thread in the culture now to get people cynical and thinking everything is rigged against you in advance, and a prerequisite to accepting this is to ignore how to the system actually works. The end result is to prevent you from getting involved. You never know if you don't try.

As an example (maybe some of the HN audience will dislike the outcome here but the point stands nonetheless), this week two sitting members of Congress were knocked out in New York, and their party told them the previous year to not bother trying.

[culi]

So what should we do, then?

[jcgrillo]

Manufacture a bunch of guns with a lathe instead lmao. Or if they try to take that away, forge weld smoothbore musket barrels the old way with bar stock spiraled around a mandrel. Just make sure you use enough 20 team mule and hear a crack every time, or it could make a mess when you proof it ;)