I'm in the process of putting together a weekend project inspired by this (doubling as teaching me everything about webdev because I'd hadn't grasped it all fully yet).
It's going to be a super simple site, but it will simplify the process of writing to your representative. In my experiences, physical letters have yielded better results than emails. I'm basically making a site that will easily let you select a representative, type out a letter, and it will cheaply print, address, and mail the letter for you with 25% of the proceeds going to the charity of their choice.
Any thoughts on that? It's my first real project building and deploying a website from scratch, so I'm chugging along on it slowly when I get free time and learning a lot along the way. I don't expect this will be a game-changer regarding PRISM, but it will be solving a pain point for me where I want to write my representative but emails seem futile and mailing a letter is inconvenient.
I actually just commented about this same sort of thing. Except I think voice messages would be far more effective, and a rep would actually have to listen, whereas letters can be easily dismissed and thrown away. How about a website that utilizes the computer's mic and instantly sends the voice message to the rep? Wouldn't that be easier, cheaper, and more effective? (Of course, the scope of creating such as website would be much more difficult)
That sounds really cool too, and it could be a nice addition later on down the road. It'd definitely make it a little harder to put together, so I'd probably save that for after I got the initial version out into the open. Thanks for the thoughts!
We have something like this in the UK, which works very well indeed: http://www.writetothem.com/ . May be worth copying their design as a starting point.
Does that send a physical letter or an email? It looks like I'm going for the same thing, but I'm using an API that will send physical mail for a low price.
I believe that politicians still respond better to letters received through the post than in their inbox (anecdotal evidence from my friends who've volunteered for congressmen).
Sounds like a good idea—enabling the effectiveness of a mailed letter with the ease of an email. Most people don't seem willing to do more than an email to their members of Congress, so this may have real value.
It's going to be a super simple site, but it will simplify the process of writing to your representative. In my experiences, physical letters have yielded better results than emails. I'm basically making a site that will easily let you select a representative, type out a letter, and it will cheaply print, address, and mail the letter for you with 25% of the proceeds going to the charity of their choice.
Any thoughts on that? It's my first real project building and deploying a website from scratch, so I'm chugging along on it slowly when I get free time and learning a lot along the way. I don't expect this will be a game-changer regarding PRISM, but it will be solving a pain point for me where I want to write my representative but emails seem futile and mailing a letter is inconvenient.