The Nonlinear Library EA - Talking to Congress: Can constituents contacting their legislator influence policy? by Tristan Williams
Mar 9, 2024
33:22
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Talking to Congress: Can constituents contacting their legislator influence policy?, published by Tristan Williams on March 9, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Summary and Key Takeaways
The basic case: Contacting your legislator1 is low hanging fruit: it can be done in a relatively short amount of time, is relatively easy, and could have an impact. Each communication is not guaranteed to be influential, but when done right has the potential to encourage a legislator to take actions which could be
quite influential.
Why do we believe that constituent communication is useful?
At the state level, we've seen two studies which have randomly assigned some legislators to receive communication[1], finding a
12% and
20% increased chance of the legislator voting towards the desired direction. At the federal level,
one survey of staffers[2] indicated that less than 50 personalized messages were enough to get an undecided member to take the requested action for the majority of offices (70%).
Anecdotal accounts, both in the literature and our conversations indicated that, despite disagreement on how much impact communication has, the possibility certainly exists for it to affect what a legislator thinks.
What is the best way to conduct one of these campaigns?
Some factors are important to be aware of. Communication is best sent for issues legislators are undecided on, and to legislators with smaller constituencies. See How to Best Execute the Communication for more.
Personalized communication goes the furthest. Many advocacy groups use form email templates where you merely add your name to a pre-generated message and hit send. These might be net negative, and staffers have made clear time and again that personal messages, written by the constituent, are best.
In-person meetings are best, but letters, emails and calls are likely nearly as effective, while social media posts and messages have a more uncertain effect.
The way you frame your concern matters. You'll have to decide whether you want to make a very specific ask to support a given bill, or want to make a more general case for concern with an issue, perhaps telling a personal story to support your position. The best messages will make use of both frames.
Know your legislators. Different legislators will have their own agendas and issues of focus[3], so being familiar with your legislator's work is important.
Introduction
This is part of
a project for
AI Safety Camp undertaken to answer one chief question: can constituents contacting their legislator influence policy?[4]
In answering this question, we're primarily speaking to two groups. First, to organizers within the broader policy/advocacy space trying to decide how to best work with Congress and if facilitating constituent communication could be a worthwhile part of that. Second, to individuals, who are concerned with the state of affairs of current risks and would like to take a further step (however small) in reducing that risk.
We hope to provide below a synthesis of our findings, so that each of these groups can make a more informed decision as to whether it's worth their time.
All in all, the below is the result of 10 discussions with current and former congressional staff, ~50 hours of collective research, and conversations with many organizations in the AI policy space. From our research and conversation with staffers, we've found little directly measuring the effectiveness of the method, but general agreement that it's likely impactful given certain circumstances, and much on how it can best be executed.
From our conversations with those in AI policy, we've found that facilitating constituent communication isn't currently a focus for groups in the AI Safety ecosystem, but that the majority of those we've talked to are neutral to positive on bringing this in...
Summary and Key Takeaways
The basic case: Contacting your legislator1 is low hanging fruit: it can be done in a relatively short amount of time, is relatively easy, and could have an impact. Each communication is not guaranteed to be influential, but when done right has the potential to encourage a legislator to take actions which could be
quite influential.
Why do we believe that constituent communication is useful?
At the state level, we've seen two studies which have randomly assigned some legislators to receive communication[1], finding a
12% and
20% increased chance of the legislator voting towards the desired direction. At the federal level,
one survey of staffers[2] indicated that less than 50 personalized messages were enough to get an undecided member to take the requested action for the majority of offices (70%).
Anecdotal accounts, both in the literature and our conversations indicated that, despite disagreement on how much impact communication has, the possibility certainly exists for it to affect what a legislator thinks.
What is the best way to conduct one of these campaigns?
Some factors are important to be aware of. Communication is best sent for issues legislators are undecided on, and to legislators with smaller constituencies. See How to Best Execute the Communication for more.
Personalized communication goes the furthest. Many advocacy groups use form email templates where you merely add your name to a pre-generated message and hit send. These might be net negative, and staffers have made clear time and again that personal messages, written by the constituent, are best.
In-person meetings are best, but letters, emails and calls are likely nearly as effective, while social media posts and messages have a more uncertain effect.
The way you frame your concern matters. You'll have to decide whether you want to make a very specific ask to support a given bill, or want to make a more general case for concern with an issue, perhaps telling a personal story to support your position. The best messages will make use of both frames.
Know your legislators. Different legislators will have their own agendas and issues of focus[3], so being familiar with your legislator's work is important.
Introduction
This is part of
a project for
AI Safety Camp undertaken to answer one chief question: can constituents contacting their legislator influence policy?[4]
In answering this question, we're primarily speaking to two groups. First, to organizers within the broader policy/advocacy space trying to decide how to best work with Congress and if facilitating constituent communication could be a worthwhile part of that. Second, to individuals, who are concerned with the state of affairs of current risks and would like to take a further step (however small) in reducing that risk.
We hope to provide below a synthesis of our findings, so that each of these groups can make a more informed decision as to whether it's worth their time.
All in all, the below is the result of 10 discussions with current and former congressional staff, ~50 hours of collective research, and conversations with many organizations in the AI policy space. From our research and conversation with staffers, we've found little directly measuring the effectiveness of the method, but general agreement that it's likely impactful given certain circumstances, and much on how it can best be executed.
From our conversations with those in AI policy, we've found that facilitating constituent communication isn't currently a focus for groups in the AI Safety ecosystem, but that the majority of those we've talked to are neutral to positive on bringing this in...