Posts by Kathy Mitchell

Emailing Congress: Why Quantity Matters

July 23, 2006

Kathy Mitchell

Last week, the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) released its own quick assessment of the logic behind "logic puzzle" (the new tool to block mass emails launched in the House). It announced that neither Congress nor advocacy groups are "completely wrong" and that both have to change their "mindsets and their practices" before email delivery can improve.

CMF wants to mediate this purported dispute and offers advocacy groups some wisdom on the changes we should be prepared to make:

The Advocacy Community must recognize that there is a difference between being noticed and having an impact on Capitol Hill. Quality is more persuasive than quantity. Short, targeted, informative, and personalized messages (even if they are part of an organized campaign) have more influence than a large volume of identical form messages, especially if those are intentionally sent to overwhelm congressional offices.

I find this kernel of wisdom pretty funny really. Of course, quality is more persuasive than quantity. The vast majority of Advocacy groups strive to bring as much personalized messaging to Congress as possible. Of course, personal messages have a greater impact than standard ones, and phone calls make a greater impression than emails. Actual office visits and real conversations make a great impression too!

Advocacy groups work to lead Americans to more and more personalized and higher level volunteer activities because those activities are critical to achieve our political goals.

But that is essentially beside the point here. Standardized messages are here to stay because Americans appreciate them and want them. Advocacy groups in turn want to give Congress options that will make those standardized messages easier to manage. Those options might include certain kinds of data that feed along with the message and help distinguish the standard message from an edited version and from a completely unique communication.

The Internet has democratized our political culture in part because it has given all Americans a way to enter into civic activity that is simple and not threatening. People don't change the standard message because they agree with it, or because they have too little time to restate the message in their own words (Americans are very busy people), or because they are intimidated by writing, or because they trust the organization to identify the best approach, and for many other reasons. Some individuals almost always send a personalized message--others almost never do. The act of reading about an issue and deciding to send a standard message still represents an affirmative decision to communicate with Congress, and millions of Americans demonstrate by their actions that they want to communicate in this way.

Once people get comfortable with an issue, learn more about it over time, and participate repeatedly, they often begin volunteer for more complex and personalized activities. Advocacy groups encourage that with all our different volunteer programs. But a substantial number of people will still send a standard message, and might not send any message if required to do more. Depressing the civic participation of Americans--by making it harder for people to send those messages--is in no one's best interest.

It seems to me that the question is not whether "quality is better than quantity"; the question is how to make the quantity more useful to Congressional offices. Advocacy groups participating in the Don't Block My Voice coalition effort are committed to doing just that.

The Congressional Management Foundation has significant grounding in Congressional mindsets and practices, after interviewing hundreds of staffers for a report released last year. It's not clear that they have the same grounding in the world of online political action. For that reason, they plan to launch elaborate research into Americans' online political activities. This may well prove interesting, but there's no need to wait for that research to resolve the current problems that Congressional offices have with email communication.

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Emailers to Congress: Don't Block Democracy

June 26, 2006

Kathy Mitchell

About a week ago, after Congressional offices began to adopt "logic puzzle," a new way to block email campaigns organized by nonprofits and political groups, the nonprofit community answered with a resounding "No"! The new tool requires someone sending a message to Congress to answer a randomly generated question like "24: What number appears at the beginning of this question?" Many legislators explain the puzzle this way on their websites:

Unfortunately, with the advent of email communication, some organizations have begun to use automated programs to send messages to Congress on behalf of constituents -- better known as "SPAM." To prevent this practice we ask that you answer the question below.

While easy for most people to solve, the puzzle is designed to force you to go to the lawmaker's own website to send your message, rather than sending it from an organizational site where you have helpful background information and assistance drafting language. Nonprofits see this in terms of our basic constitutional right to freely petition government, and agree that blocking software must go.

On Monday of last week, more than 100 major organizations-including the nation's largest conservative and liberal groups like RightMarch.com, MoveOn.org, Care2.com, the American Family Association, Consumers Union and many more faxed a letter to Congress opposing logic puzzle:

Congressional attempts to differentiate among constituent communications-accepting only unorganized communications but blocking communications where individuals are working together to deliver a strong message-raise dangerous questions about the infringement of constituents' First Amendment rights and are a disservice to you as their representative. They also denigrate the important role that organizations play in the political process. Individual citizens, who raise their voices together, with the support and leadership of organizations they choose to join for that purpose, are driving democracy - not peddling spam.

Within 24 hours the leading groups began to hear back from Congressional staff. A small number of Congressional offices-including Dingell and Roybal-Allard-turned off this blocking tool and we expect more to follow. This is an excellent first step, although while working on this campaign I learned that some Congressional staff hold surprising ideas about the email messages they get.

First, many staffers actually believe that nonprofit organizations send messages to Congress on behalf of our members without their permission. They believe we sign our members' names to messages and send them en masse ourselves. The evidence for this? A few people, after getting a reply from the Representative's office, say that they never sent a message on this topic. And staffers also think it strange that a few people send lots and lots of messages on behalf of one or more groups.

To help us respond to these kinds of comments, please take a moment to take this quick survey! Help the coalition tell lawmakers how you use the Internet to communicate with Congress.

There are a handful of predictable ways that individuals could be confused by the replies they get from legislative offices. For example, my partner might take an action through my email account and not bother to switch the personal information, and then later I get a response about something I don't remember doing. I personally take so many actions that I don't remember them all. I have, from time to time, received a standardized response back so tenuously related to my original comment that I had trouble putting two and two together.

For the most part, there's little evidence that nonprofits--and certainly none of the major groups accounting for most of the organized email communication to Congress--sign peoples' names on letters to Congress without their explicit permission. At a basic level, we need to educate Congressional staff about the systems we use and the activities our members take on our systems before a message is sent.

Last year's report by the Congressional Management Foundation, a research organization, identified this misunderstanding by staffers but did little to address it because it only surveyed staff and not the nonprofit community primarily generating the traffic.

That said, a real problem for legislative offices is the ever increasing volume of email. The Internet has expanded civic participation by making it far easier for busy Americans to express their views to Congress through organizations they join for that purpose. That is a good thing.

As a practical matter, it has increased the overall volume of communications. That too can be a good thing if it is well managed. Congressional offices have more information about their constituents-and their constituents' views-than ever before. They can use that information to improve their constituent relationships. But the increase in volume has outpaced the ability of office staff to adjust-so at a very basic level some hit a wall and just want to turn it off. "Logic puzzle" is certainly an effective way to reduce the volume of incoming email. While clearly the wrong approach, nonprofits can now take an active role in finding a solution that works for everyone.

One simple starting point--a standard message could be "bundled." Instead of 20,000 separate messages, our systems could deliver the letter once along with all the signing individual information attached. That way the legislative offices know how many people sent the message, who they are and where they live.

They can use the contact information to effectively respond by email or paper letter. All the messages carefully personalized by our members would continue to be delivered individually. That would immediately highlight for staff the messages to review more carefully, because our members may have included their personal story or other facts for consideration. Currently Congressional office websites are not set up to receive information this way, but they could be.

The many nonprofits who signed the letter to Congress have started to formalize as a coalition in order to move forward with real proposals for better constituent communication systems that ensure the delivery of all the messages. Visit Don'tBlockMyVoice.org and either send a direct message to Congress yourself or sign on your nonprofit organization to the coalition. Nearly 25,000 individuals have already asked their own Representatives not to use "logic puzzle" and we expect tens of thousands more in the coming days. Let's not turn back the clock on democracy!

Kathy Mitchell is Internet Advocacy Manager for Consumers Union and a leading organizer of the Don'tBlockMyVoice nonprofit coalition.

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