How to Influence Legislation, and Why You Should Try
Only a member of Congress or a state legislature can introduce legislation, but all citizens have a right to propose a bill to their local, state, and federal representatives. They also have the right to let their legislators know why they think an existing bill should or should not become law.
Before contacting your representatives, research the subject to see if there is any existing legislation on the subject. Your research should include federal laws and laws in other states.
You should also research relevant background information. For instance, if you want to write to your local representative requesting that they vote ‘nay’ on a gender ID bill that is up in your state, you would want to tell them about the negative effects that a similar bill has had in another state. Make sure that the information you are sharing is from reliable sources. If sending an email, send links to good information, because constituent contacts can be an important source of news for legislators.
It’s important to take action even if your representative doesn’t listen this time. Or next time. It takes time to change minds. But your legislators want to know what their constituents think: this is why they pay pollsters thousands of dollars to find out!
Taking action has other benefits, too. For each of us, civic participation is a habit that it takes time to build. This is why voting participation is usually lower when people are younger, but tends to become more reliable with age. It’s not the age, per se, but that older people have made voting a habit.
Contacting your legislators is another habit it takes time to build. At first, you may be a little nervous. After you’ve done it a few times, it seems normal.
After you’ve written them a few emails, making a call doesn’t sound too hard. After you’ve made a call, or a few, to your legislators’ offices, you know their staff are just regular people.
Maybe an office visit doesn’t sound so hard now? It’s only going to meet one of the nice people who wrote down your opinion when you called the last time.
Maybe your legislator is having a town hall—not now, but they’ll start up again eventually—and now it doesn’t seem scary at all to just ask a question, since you’ve been in touch with their office a few times.
After all of that, you probably have a fluent understanding of how to talk about your issue(s), and how to get your point across clearly. Now you’re confident enough in your grasp of the facts that you might think about speaking up at a legislative hearing.
If you’ve been working with an organization or group of activists through some of this process, you’ll more likely hear about topics you may want to take action on, and that network will be more effective because they’ve already got contact information for engaged people like you.
When a major policy change is underway, the most effective advocacy is generally done by people, networks, and organizations, that have been working on an issue maybe for years. Then all of that preparation and habit-building comes together for maximum impact.
Being able to take effective political action requires a lot of preparation and groundwork, which may not yield immediate results. But you can’t skip that part, then hope it all comes together in a crisis. You need to put in the work first, so that you’re prepared to respond when there’s an urgent need.