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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCongress Phone System Is BrokenBut Its Still Your Best Shot
But Its Still Your Best Shot
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/call-congress-phone-system-broken/?mbid=nl_2317_p4&CNDID=30772003
IN TIMES OF political turmoil and controversy, Senate and House office phone lines come under siege. In 2011, Obama exhorted the American people to contact their Congresspeople about the rising debt ceiling, and the flood of callers rendered phone lines useless (and crashed a bunch of websites just for good measure.) In 2010, Lady Gagas call to action regarding Dont Ask, Dont Tell meant even Gaga herself couldnt get hold of Senator Chuck Schumer. Heck, two years after the first phones were installed in the Capitol Building in 1880, House doorkeeper Walter Brownlow was so overloaded by calls he asked permission to hire someone dedicated to answering them.
Even in 2017, in the age of Twitter and Facebook and WhatsApp and email and chatbots and internet-enabled fax machines, a phone call is the best way to not just reach your representative, but affect them. Its just a matter of how people process information, says Kris Miler, who researches politics and government at the University of Maryland. Milers book, Constituency Representation in Congress, explores the ways legislators understand and respond to their constituents. She distinguished between personal contacteither on the phone or face-to-faceand things like email and faxes. Both have an impact, she says, but the impact of personal and phone calls was much stronger.
In the ever-present turmoil wrought by the early days of the Trump administration, the volume of phone calls has been off the charts. People dont call Congress when theyre happy, says Daniel Schuman, policy director at advocacy group Demand Progress. They call when theyre unhappy. And right now theyre scared out of their minds. People complain about not being able to reach their representatives, while government officials complain about not getting any work done thanks to incessantly ringing phones. One particularly distraught staffer of California Senator Dianne Feinstein was caught on video saying all the calls broke my BlackBerry. And its close to breaking my desktop.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)State offices. Those numbers likely are working and not overwhelmed.
csziggy
(34,131 posts)Most of the Senators and Representatives have local offices in their states and districts, usually listed on their Contact page at senate.gov and house.gov. Call one - or all of those local offices - they are usually easier to reach and your call will count just as much as calling the main offices in Washington, DC.
LeftInTX
(25,103 posts)Got a few busy signals, but called again and got through