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Sigh. Yet another tool that makes it easy to write your representative. As though this is an actual problem. It isn't. The Market is saturated with so many too

by cjoh 11y ago

Sigh. Yet another tool that makes it easy to write your representative. As though this is an actual problem. It isn't. The Market is saturated with so many tools to send messages to Congress. Especially electronic ones. Whether it be Blue State Digital, Change.org, BlackBaud, Salsa, or the plethora of other online tools, this problem is solved. In fact, it's solved too well. According to the Congressional Management Foundation, Congress receives millions of messages a day, and it doesn't have the manpower to actually read the messages because their systems are so antiquated and underfunded. It's as though the market goes "Congress isn't listening to us, we need to make a tool to make our voices louder" when in fact, Congress isn't listening to us because we're deafeningly loud. Want to really solve a problem? Build software that helps members of Congress receive and sort through their messages. Using their IT systems. Build a FrontApp for Congress that can handle a million messages a day and cluster things by topic group and sentiment. For bonus points, add a public element to it so that the press and the public can see what members have been receiving from their constituents. Which leads to the second thing to build to help solve the problem: build a system that for real verifies that someone is a constituent instantly. Members want to hear from their constituents, not from the general public. But these electronic messages usually come with no verification. So do you know where they go? /dev/null As someone who has worked with these guys for years, PLEASE stop making tools like this, and work on the other side of the equation.

sinak 11y ago
Hey there, I worked on this. BSD, BlackBaud, and Salsa all deliver messages to congress, but only for advocacy organizations who are willing to pay. Beyond OpenCongress, I don't think there are any tools that make it easier for constituents to write their own non-cookie-cutter messages to Congress. Change.org, for example, doesn't deliver emails. The reason why Congress receives millions of messages is because advocacy organizations send millions of form letters. Congressional staff already have plenty of tools for separating those form letters from real, constituent-written letters. I can dig up their names, but they're built by high-level contractors. Finally, one of our plans for Democracy.io is to measure response rates from representatives, and to use that to release a public report on how well MoC respond to real constituent messages. Both in terms of timeliness, and the relevance of their response.
- Balgair 11y ago
  I mean, how can that be? How stupid easy is it to have a web app that sends out an email? Like every 2 person start-up out there has something like this for messaging them. Honest question here, are you really the first, in the year 2015, to do this for congress in one 'clearinghouse' type site? As I have your ear, some more questions then: How about a direct calling option? I've used your calling to eff then connect to a congresscritter function before and it works great. I also remember hearing that a phone call is much more important than some email. What about accountability? My emails mean nothing if I still vote for them or have no other options. I signed up for GovTracker.us to send me email on my rep's voting, but I honestly cannot make heads or tails of the 300 odd bills they all voted for the last week. Some sort of editorial function is really needed if accountability is to be implemented.
  - sinak 11y ago
    You have no idea how complicated sending message to Members of Congress is. There's no way to email legislators directly. The only way is to fill out their forms. Each form is unique, and many have CAPTCHAs. To do that, we first had to develop an open source dataset that describes to a computer the steps necessary to submit messages via each contact form for 538 representatives. That was quite a lift, but was made possible by about 100 volunteers who chipped in. The dataset is called contact-congress, and is online here: https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress Then we had to create a system to fill in the forms based on the dataset. The system we designed is called phantom-of-the-capitol and it does that by firing up 3 browser windows on an AWS instance each time a user submits a message. If the legislator has a CAPTCHA, we take a screenshot and return that to the user. The code for that system is here: https://github.com/EFForg/phantom-of-the-capitol https://github.com/EFForg/phantom-of-the-capitol
    - comrh 11y ago
      Wow that contact-congress data set alone is awesome. Thanks for doing that leg work!
    - 11y ago
jdjjdbne 11y ago
LOL, congress doesn't listen because it isn't in their interest to listen. Citizens without money are nobodies, congress fundraise 24/7, that's what they care about, saying anything else is either ignorant or maleficent. What a complete waste of time, from idea to development to posting and commenting, truth sucks but congress does not care about your opinion unless it comes attached to a big check.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  So let's stop wasting time on communicating to congress, and start building infrastructure to get people elected who represent the interests we want represented. Don't listen to your constituents? We build the tools to get you shoved out of office next election cycle.
  - simcop2387 11y ago
    We should definitely be doing both. That way we can more easily measure which ones are listening so we know who might not be being as effective as they can be, and so that once we've got someone who will be in place they'll have the tools necessary to actually listen and get the proper information. There's no reason to do just one or the other since there are problems on both sides.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    That's the core issue behind the whole situation, really. Electing people? That's totally backwards and unreliable. You should be voting on ideas and have people come in to fill the demand. This is why I appreciate interest in systems like futarchy, even if the specific mechanics behind futarchy itself might be flawed. Of course, one could say that moving away from this is just an unrealistic ideal. That's probably the case, indeed. But then "building tools to get people shoved out of office next election cycle" is pretty much doomed to be a perpetual rat race, not unlike trying to use a blacklist to catch an ever growing number of malicious ad networks, or keeping up with a reverse engineered implementation of a proprietary protocol from a vendor who has no qualms with constantly breaking API and ABI compatibility to leave you in the dust.
  - 11y ago
scrozier 11y ago
I played a very small role in this project, and did so with my eyes wide open to the issues you raise. I won't reiterate what sinak has already said well, but I see one additional benefit from this project: if public communication with Congress coalesces around this tool, then there becomes a focal point to building the Congress-facing tools you mention, perhaps even in a similarly open-source environment...solving both ends of the problem.
rezistik 11y ago
It'd be awesome if there was something to let them data mine their own emails for trends. Something like Palantir for political representatives.
ChrisAntaki 11y ago
> Yet another tool that makes it easy to write your representative. As though this is an actual problem. It isn't. The Market is saturated with so many tools to send messages to Congress. Especially electronic ones. Whether it be Blue State Digital, Change.org, BlackBaud, Salsa, or the plethora of other online tools, this problem is solved. Congrats on founding & selling Blue State Digital, Joe.
username3 11y ago
Agree. Congress needs a public ticketing issue tracking system, using it to tell us what they're working on and why they aren't working on what we spammed them to do. Or congress should run on Twitter. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-town-that-runs-on-twitter-juns-residents-tweet-to-report-crime-and-chat-to-their-mayor-10248167.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fea...
s_henry_paulson 11y ago
If you've worked on projects like this, I'm surprised you'd write such a comment to sabotage such efforts. You're never going to solve the problem of verifying people's identity without some kind of elaborate system based on public information, or a new public national id number system, and even then you'd never be fully aware that the person is who they say they are. The problem this solves is real. I move a lot, and I've gone through exactly what is in the video more times than I remember, in fact, as soon as I saw the video, I sent it to several people because I thought it was such a good idea. Your representatives don't have any way to know that any of the e-mails they receive or the submissions to their own personal web pages are strictly from their constituents.. so why do you think this is any different? Or are you suggesting that members of the legislature will read zero e-mails and zero submissions to their website? If you honestly believe that your legislators don't have the time to deal with the people they represent, then the problem is not a technical one, the problem is that you need more representatives.
tobylane 11y ago
There are some services in the UK which I think print out cards (birthday, etc) from internet orders and post them. I hear that handwritten letters work best. Maybe someone in Baltimore could hire young adults wanting to practice their writing skills to write out paid emails from legitimate citizens.

by cjoh 11y ago

sinak 11y ago

Hey there, I worked on this. BSD, BlackBaud, and Salsa all deliver messages to congress, but only for advocacy organizations who are willing to pay. Beyond OpenCongress, I don't think there are any tools that make it easier for constituents to write their own non-cookie-cutter messages to Congress. Change.org, for example, doesn't deliver emails. The reason why Congress receives millions of messages is because advocacy organizations send millions of form letters. Congressional staff already have plenty of tools for separating those form letters from real, constituent-written letters. I can dig up their names, but they're built by high-level contractors. Finally, one of our plans for Democracy.io is to measure response rates from representatives, and to use that to release a public report on how well MoC respond to real constituent messages. Both in terms of timeliness, and the relevance of their response.

Balgair 11y ago
I mean, how can that be? How stupid easy is it to have a web app that sends out an email? Like every 2 person start-up out there has something like this for messaging them. Honest question here, are you really the first, in the year 2015, to do this for congress in one 'clearinghouse' type site? As I have your ear, some more questions then: How about a direct calling option? I've used your calling to eff then connect to a congresscritter function before and it works great. I also remember hearing that a phone call is much more important than some email. What about accountability? My emails mean nothing if I still vote for them or have no other options. I signed up for GovTracker.us to send me email on my rep's voting, but I honestly cannot make heads or tails of the 300 odd bills they all voted for the last week. Some sort of editorial function is really needed if accountability is to be implemented.
- sinak 11y ago
  You have no idea how complicated sending message to Members of Congress is. There's no way to email legislators directly. The only way is to fill out their forms. Each form is unique, and many have CAPTCHAs. To do that, we first had to develop an open source dataset that describes to a computer the steps necessary to submit messages via each contact form for 538 representatives. That was quite a lift, but was made possible by about 100 volunteers who chipped in. The dataset is called contact-congress, and is online here: https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress Then we had to create a system to fill in the forms based on the dataset. The system we designed is called phantom-of-the-capitol and it does that by firing up 3 browser windows on an AWS instance each time a user submits a message. If the legislator has a CAPTCHA, we take a screenshot and return that to the user. The code for that system is here: https://github.com/EFForg/phantom-of-the-capitol https://github.com/EFForg/phantom-of-the-capitol
  - comrh 11y ago
    Wow that contact-congress data set alone is awesome. Thanks for doing that leg work!
  - 11y ago

jdjjdbne 11y ago

LOL, congress doesn't listen because it isn't in their interest to listen. Citizens without money are nobodies, congress fundraise 24/7, that's what they care about, saying anything else is either ignorant or maleficent. What a complete waste of time, from idea to development to posting and commenting, truth sucks but congress does not care about your opinion unless it comes attached to a big check.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
So let's stop wasting time on communicating to congress, and start building infrastructure to get people elected who represent the interests we want represented. Don't listen to your constituents? We build the tools to get you shoved out of office next election cycle.
- simcop2387 11y ago
  We should definitely be doing both. That way we can more easily measure which ones are listening so we know who might not be being as effective as they can be, and so that once we've got someone who will be in place they'll have the tools necessary to actually listen and get the proper information. There's no reason to do just one or the other since there are problems on both sides.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  That's the core issue behind the whole situation, really. Electing people? That's totally backwards and unreliable. You should be voting on ideas and have people come in to fill the demand. This is why I appreciate interest in systems like futarchy, even if the specific mechanics behind futarchy itself might be flawed. Of course, one could say that moving away from this is just an unrealistic ideal. That's probably the case, indeed. But then "building tools to get people shoved out of office next election cycle" is pretty much doomed to be a perpetual rat race, not unlike trying to use a blacklist to catch an ever growing number of malicious ad networks, or keeping up with a reverse engineered implementation of a proprietary protocol from a vendor who has no qualms with constantly breaking API and ABI compatibility to leave you in the dust.
- 11y ago

scrozier 11y ago

I played a very small role in this project, and did so with my eyes wide open to the issues you raise. I won't reiterate what sinak has already said well, but I see one additional benefit from this project: if public communication with Congress coalesces around this tool, then there becomes a focal point to building the Congress-facing tools you mention, perhaps even in a similarly open-source environment...solving both ends of the problem.

rezistik 11y ago

It'd be awesome if there was something to let them data mine their own emails for trends. Something like Palantir for political representatives.

ChrisAntaki 11y ago

> Yet another tool that makes it easy to write your representative. As though this is an actual problem. It isn't. The Market is saturated with so many tools to send messages to Congress. Especially electronic ones. Whether it be Blue State Digital, Change.org, BlackBaud, Salsa, or the plethora of other online tools, this problem is solved. Congrats on founding & selling Blue State Digital, Joe.

username3 11y ago

Agree. Congress needs a public ticketing issue tracking system, using it to tell us what they're working on and why they aren't working on what we spammed them to do. Or congress should run on Twitter. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-town-that-runs-on-twitter-juns-residents-tweet-to-report-crime-and-chat-to-their-mayor-10248167.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fea...

s_henry_paulson 11y ago

If you've worked on projects like this, I'm surprised you'd write such a comment to sabotage such efforts. You're never going to solve the problem of verifying people's identity without some kind of elaborate system based on public information, or a new public national id number system, and even then you'd never be fully aware that the person is who they say they are. The problem this solves is real. I move a lot, and I've gone through exactly what is in the video more times than I remember, in fact, as soon as I saw the video, I sent it to several people because I thought it was such a good idea. Your representatives don't have any way to know that any of the e-mails they receive or the submissions to their own personal web pages are strictly from their constituents.. so why do you think this is any different? Or are you suggesting that members of the legislature will read zero e-mails and zero submissions to their website? If you honestly believe that your legislators don't have the time to deal with the people they represent, then the problem is not a technical one, the problem is that you need more representatives.

tobylane 11y ago

There are some services in the UK which I think print out cards (birthday, etc) from internet orders and post them. I hear that handwritten letters work best. Maybe someone in Baltimore could hire young adults wanting to practice their writing skills to write out paid emails from legitimate citizens.