Political Science Question

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Purpose

Most people rarely, if ever, call their Representative in Congress to express their views and opinions. It can seem intimidating at first but with a little practice you can effectively and frequently communicate with them.

Tasks

  1. Find out who your Representative in Congress is by clicking here and using the search function in the upper right hand corner (Links to an external site.)
  2. Once you’ve found your Rep. head over to their official website. Click the link below their picture on the house.gov search results. It will be: their name.house.gov For example, my Rep is Julia Brownley so her official site is juliabrownley.house.gov.
  3. Peruse their site to learn more about them. What issues are they focused on? What are their priorities?
  4. Check out their social media pages to see what statements they’ve made recently. This is a good way to get ideas for the topic of your call.
  5. Choose an issue you want call your Reps’ office about. It can be anything you want just as long as it’s an issue your Rep. has some influence over. For example, a second COVID stimulus bill or national vote by mail for the election in November are great topics. A city parking issue is not because your Rep. can’t really do anything about that.
  6. Once you have a topic write a call script to use when you make the call
    1. Include your name and address to let the person who answers the phone know you’re a constitutent
    2. A brief description of the issue and your opinion about it
    3. An ‘ask’ for the Rep. to do. Post on social media about the topic, make a public statement, vote yes or no on a particular bill
    4. This script should be no more than 200 words
  7. Call your Rep! The phone number for their local and DC offices can be found on their official websites.
  8. After your call write a brief ‘Report Back’ on how the call went. This doesn’t need to be too formal. Just a brief summary of how the call went and your feelings about how well you did and what the response from the person you spoke with was (were they nice, attentive, did they have more information to share?)
    1. This report back should be no more than 150 words.
  9. Submit both your call script and report back

Criteria for Success

  • Call script contains:
    • Proof that you are a constituent of the Representative – your name and address
    • A clearly worded description of a topic your Representative can do something about
    • Your take on the topic
    • A simple ask your Representative can do to show they listened and that is easy for you to check up on (e.g. an Instagram or Twitter post
  • Report Back contains:
    • Brief summary of how the call went
    • Reflection on your feelings about the call