Congress members seem to shut out voices from outside their state or district.

[LuckyLib]

When I want to rant on email, I find that contacting someone from another area means you are relegated to a different status. I consistently write to committee members in the House and Senate about my concerns, but get the "unfortunately, for citizens outside my state . . ."

Does their staff actually read mail (email or otherwise) from outside their state/district?

Is it worth creating fictitious addresses from their state to get their attention?

[MineralMan]

1. For most members of Congress, communications from outside

their state or district are irrelevant. Even when they're committee chairs and the like, the only people who matter are the ones who can vote for them. It's basically a waste of time to try to communicate, since your message will go into a real or virtual trash can anyhow.

Instead, communicating with your own Congress members and Senators on a regular basis, and with people who do influence the ones outside of your state or district, makes a lot more sense. It's all a matter of time and effort. You want both to work as well and efficiently as possible.

Using fictitious names and addresses isn't all that effective, either, although it will get an email through. But, your IP address reveals where the email came from, and it's a trivial matter to create an email filter that simply deletes unwanted email. You may not know how to do it, but any decent IT guy does. Your IP address is in the extended header of any email you send, and that's available to anyone in the IT department.

So, focus on influencing people you can influence. That's the best use of your time. If you want to support or fight with someone outside your state or district, get in touch with organizations in the other state or district. They'll have ways for you to help.

[LuckyLib]

5. Thanks. No wonder right wingers have no idea what the rest of the country

is thinking. They live in two bubbles -- DC and their own district.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Those other people were not elected to represent you or us.

But they will listen to groups that represent members from multiple districts or states. So if you belong to a group that has issues with legislation than you have a way to communicating with Congress members from outside your district through your political action committee.

[LeftishBrit]

3. In the UK, MPs are essentially not allowed to respond to other people's constitutents

With some specific exceptions, such as when you write to someone specifically in their capacity as Cabinet Minister.

While this is personally frustrating to me, as I live just on the wrong side of the constituency boundary between having an intelligent Labour MP and a Tory twit, I can see the reasons for it. Demands on MPs for constituency services are increasing, and most MPs end up being accused either of being insufficiently responsive to their constituents, or of being so preoccupied with their constituencies that they neglect their parliamentary duties. My MP takes forever to respond to my letters/ e-mails as it is; if she were responding to people outside the constituency too, I would never get any response from her at all, not that this would necessarily be a huge loss in her case. (Latest response was a long self-righteous justification of the NHS reforms, which was obviously a form letter.)

[saras]

4. You can always fake being a big business owner, in which case they always listen.

It's not an easy fake to pull off, though. Even harder if you have to keep it together for a while.

[trof]

6. I've read faxes and letters get more attention/response.

Emails?
Not so much, whether you live in the district or not.
having said that, I sent my repug congressman several faxes during the 'first' tea-assholes threatened government shutdown.
I heard...cue <crickets> from him.
putz

[madamesilverspurs]

7. Our alleged rep shuts out voices from within the district.

We spend a good deal of time monitoring his activities and statements. We want to ensure that residents of the district know what he's doing in spite of what he says he's doing. He is, like his staffers, aware of who's in his corner; they don't like us, and repeatedly blow us off when we seek conversation. We have no realistic expectation that he will change his perspective anytime in this lifetime. But he will NOT be permitted any illusion of having rendered us voiceless.

Happily, a couple of the nearby districts have excellent representation; those reps are every bit as responsive to us as to the residents of their home districts. We go to them to ask questions because we know that, at the very least, we will get answers. Meanwhile, we are committed to working our butts off for a Democratic candidate to replace the slimeball.

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