Contact Your Representatives
Any kind of contact you can make with your representative is valuable, but some methods may impact legislators more than others. Legislators have told us that a faxed letter has more value than a scripted e-mail. Face-to-face meetings count even more.
Your Message's Perceived Priority
In order of MOST to LEAST effective, these are the means of contacting legislators:
1. personal visit to the legislator's Washington DC office or home-state office
2. personally handwritten but LEGIBLE short letter
3. personally typewritten or word-processed letter
4. phone call to a key staffer in the office
5. phone call to the reception staffers in the office
6. personally written fax
7. an obvious form letter or fax
8. personally written e-mail
9. an obvious form e-mail
In order of MOST to LEAST effective, these are the kinds of people who contact legislators:
1. government officials
2. constituent organizations or corporations (entities in the legislator' home district/state)
3. individual constituents (voters in the legislator's home district/state)
4. major international, national or regional organizations or corporations
5. little-known international, national or regional orgs. & corps.
6. non-constituent individual Americans
7. foreign individuals, or foreign orgs. & corps.
This may of course vary with the circumstances of the issue at hand, but it's a good rough guide.*
To schedule a meeting with a senator, representative, or a staff member, submit a scheduling request with your name, phone number, suggested date/time to meet, and the topic of the meeting. It will probably be quicker if you fax the request, attn: scheduler. Security regulations mean that the mail system is extremely slow.
Don't see your representative?
Look up federal and state officials here.
Other Resources
*EFF's "Do's and Don'ts for Contacting Congress"
"Tips for Face-to-Face Meetings"
What About Emails, Action Alerts, and Form Letters?
List of Congressional Schedulers as of January 2009