A Citizen Toolkit
April 18, 2010
Citizen Tool Kit, a primer on how to influence the legislative process
The following information should help you to become a citizen activist at a level that is comfortable for you. This is a primer on influencing the legislative process for the uninitiated. If you are already an experienced citizen lobbyist, you may skip this message.
Your most important tool is information. To start you need to know:
- Your legislative district, your county council district, your school district, and your congressional district. This information is on your voter card. If you have lost your voter card, call your county elections office. If you give them your address, they can tell you what districts you are in.
- The names of your state senator, state representatives, member of Congress, and US Senators. (If you live in Washington State, your US Senators are currently Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.) This information can be obtained online at www.leg.wa.gov (the Washington state legislature’s home page) or by calling the legislative hotline at 1-800-562-6000. Your local newspaper is also a good source of this information, as is the public library.
- The phone numbers, addresses, and e-mails of these lawmakers. The web site above has a lot of this information. You can also get a very nice booklet from the League of Women Voters that has everything you need in it. You can usually get these at the library. The number of the capitol switchboard in Washington, DC, is 1-202-224-3121 for the Senate and 1-202-225-3121 for the House. You can reach any senator or congressman through these numbers.
You are now ready for the next step, gathering information on bills.
Hard core activists read the bills themselves. The legislature’s web site has the text of every bill before the legislature, a digest of the bill, bill reports from the staff, bill history, and amendments. It also has the schedule of hearings for public testimony and a status report that tells you where every bill is in the process. The advantage of this is that your information comes unfiltered through someone else’s worldview. The disadvantage, obviously, is the time involved in reading through the bills. (CURE monitors every bill that comes through the Education Committees in both houses. Each year, these bills alone fill a 5-inch binder.)
The next best method is to find people whose worldview you share who do read the bills, and ask them to notify you when important stuff comes up.
The most important step: ACTION!
None of what you have done in the above steps will count for anything if you do not act on it. Everyone can take action of some kind. Some of the easiest are more effective than you might think. After you have decided that a bill is important enough to you to act on it decide your position and ACT!
In order of easiest to hardest, here are the steps you can take.
- Call the bill room at 1-800-562-6000. They will ask your district number or your address. Then you give your positions on up to 2 or 3 bills (by the bill number). Sometimes, they will let you give a one-sentence reason. Be forewarned: They write down EXACTLY what you say, so be careful how you phrase your position. Your lawmakers (and the governor, if you request it) get the results of these hotline calls at least once a day and they all look at them. This can be a very effective way of getting your message through, especially if a lot of people are also calling on the same issue.
- Call the legislator’s office directly. This will cost you a long distance call, but you get an opportunity to discuss the issue with the aide or (if you are really lucky in your timing) the legislator himself.
- Send an e-mail. The effectiveness of this depends on the personal preferences of the legislator. There are one or two who don’t do e-mail at all. Expect the e-mails to be screened by an aide.
- Write a letter. This usually is given more weight than any of the above because it takes more effort. The more effort you put in, the more weight they give it. (A rule of thumb heard once for federal bills is that phone calls represented 10,000 votes and letters represented 100,000 votes.)
- Meet with your legislator in Olympia to discuss the issue. It is best to make an appointment, but you can also drop in. They are VERY accommodating to their constituents.
- Attend a public hearing and sign in on the bill sheet. There is a place for you to indicate whether you are pro or con on the bill and whether you wish to testify. Your physical presence can be very powerful and this gives them a written record that you were there and took a position on a bill.
- Testify at a public hearing. This can be very scary the first time you do it, but they don’t bite. Be prepared to make your case in two or three minutes.
Guidelines for contacting legislators.
- No matter how strongly you feel about a bill or how angry you might be, always be polite.
- Keep your letters and e-mails short and concise. The demands on their time are unbelievable! They usually have two or three committees for which they need to be reading bills, in addition to all their correspondence and meetings.
- Always include your name and address so they can know that you are in their district.
- Try to keep your letters and e-mails to one subject.
- Your e-mails should be as well-written and correct in grammar, punctuation, and spelling as a regular letter. (I have been amazed at what people will send out as an e-mail that they would never send out in a formal letter, both on content and technical correctness.)
If you need more information, please contact CURE at
Marda@curewashington.org or cure@curewashington.org.
Tags: citizen, legislation, legislature, toolkit
Citizen Tool Kit, a primer on how to influence the legislative process
The following information should help you to become a citizen activist at a level that is comfortable for you. This is a primer on influencing the legislative process for the uninitiated. If you are already an experienced citizen lobbyist, you may skip this message.
Your most important tool is information. To start you need to know:
- Your legislative district, your county council district, your school district, and your congressional district. This information is on your voter card. If you have lost your voter card, call your county elections office. If you give them your address, they can tell you what districts you are in.
- The names of your state senator, state representatives, member of Congress, and US Senators. (If you live in Washington State, your US Senators are currently Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.) This information can be obtained online at www.leg.wa.gov (the Washington state legislature’s home page) or by calling the legislative hotline at 1-800-562-6000. Your local newspaper is also a good source of this information, as is the public library.
- The phone numbers, addresses, and e-mails of these lawmakers. The web site above has a lot of this information. You can also get a very nice booklet from the League of Women Voters that has everything you need in it. You can usually get these at the library. The number of the capitol switchboard in Washington, DC, is 1-202-224-3121 for the Senate and 1-202-225-3121 for the House. You can reach any senator or congressman through these numbers.
You are now ready for the next step, gathering information on bills.
Hard core activists read the bills themselves. The legislature’s web site has the text of every bill before the legislature, a digest of the bill, bill reports from the staff, bill history, and amendments. It also has the schedule of hearings for public testimony and a status report that tells you where every bill is in the process. The advantage of this is that your information comes unfiltered through someone else’s worldview. The disadvantage, obviously, is the time involved in reading through the bills. (CURE monitors every bill that comes through the Education Committees in both houses. Each year, these bills alone fill a 5-inch binder.)
The next best method is to find people whose worldview you share who do read the bills, and ask them to notify you when important stuff comes up.
The most important step: ACTION!
None of what you have done in the above steps will count for anything if you do not act on it. Everyone can take action of some kind. Some of the easiest are more effective than you might think. After you have decided that a bill is important enough to you to act on it decide your position and ACT!
In order of easiest to hardest, here are the steps you can take.
- Call the bill room at 1-800-562-6000. They will ask your district number or your address. Then you give your positions on up to 2 or 3 bills (by the bill number). Sometimes, they will let you give a one-sentence reason. Be forewarned: They write down EXACTLY what you say, so be careful how you phrase your position. Your lawmakers (and the governor, if you request it) get the results of these hotline calls at least once a day and they all look at them. This can be a very effective way of getting your message through, especially if a lot of people are also calling on the same issue.
- Call the legislator’s office directly. This will cost you a long distance call, but you get an opportunity to discuss the issue with the aide or (if you are really lucky in your timing) the legislator himself.
- Send an e-mail. The effectiveness of this depends on the personal preferences of the legislator. There are one or two who don’t do e-mail at all. Expect the e-mails to be screened by an aide.
- Write a letter. This usually is given more weight than any of the above because it takes more effort. The more effort you put in, the more weight they give it. (A rule of thumb heard once for federal bills is that phone calls represented 10,000 votes and letters represented 100,000 votes.)
- Meet with your legislator in Olympia to discuss the issue. It is best to make an appointment, but you can also drop in. They are VERY accommodating to their constituents.
- Attend a public hearing and sign in on the bill sheet. There is a place for you to indicate whether you are pro or con on the bill and whether you wish to testify. Your physical presence can be very powerful and this gives them a written record that you were there and took a position on a bill.
- Testify at a public hearing. This can be very scary the first time you do it, but they don’t bite. Be prepared to make your case in two or three minutes.
Guidelines for contacting legislators.
- No matter how strongly you feel about a bill or how angry you might be, always be polite.
- Keep your letters and e-mails short and concise. The demands on their time are unbelievable! They usually have two or three committees for which they need to be reading bills, in addition to all their correspondence and meetings.
- Always include your name and address so they can know that you are in their district.
- Try to keep your letters and e-mails to one subject.
- Your e-mails should be as well-written and correct in grammar, punctuation, and spelling as a regular letter. (I have been amazed at what people will send out as an e-mail that they would never send out in a formal letter, both on content and technical correctness.)
If you need more information, please contact CURE at
Marda@curewashington.org or cure@curewashington.org.
Tags: citizen, legislation, legislature, toolkit