Contact Your Lawmakers

Who Should I Contact?

This depends on who is proposing BSL. If your city council is proposing BSL, then you would contact your city councilmembers. If a state legislator is proposing BSL, then you would contact your state representatives (in your state’s House and Senate).

Most towns, cities, and counties have websites that list the local lawmakers’ contact information.

All state legislatures have websites with a search box to help you find the people who represent you in the House and Senate. You may also go to Project VoteSmart’s website and enter your zip code to find your elected officials. Remember, you don’t need to contact all your elected officials; only senators and representatives will have a say in the passage of state-level dangerous dog laws, so don’t bother writing the Chair of the Railroad Commission.

Should I contact all of the officials in the legislature, or just my elected officials?

At the state level, most officials are so swamped with their own constituents’ correspondence that they are not likely to listen to anyone outside of their district. Definitely contact your elected officials.

If the bill is being considered by a committee (this usually occurs after a bill has just been proposed), you can contact the officials who are on the committee to encourage/discourage them from approving it. It is only after the bill is approved by a committee that it makes its way to the House or Senate floor for a vote.

How Should I Contact My Elected Officials?

How much time do you have before the officials vote on the law? How effective do you want to be?

E-Mail is the fastest means of communication, but it is also the least personal, least formal, and least likely to be read and acknowledged. If you choose to send an e-mail, be brief and use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation as if you were writing a business letter.

Faxes also transmit instantly, and they allow for a more formal letter format. Don’t have a fax machine? You can “fax” computer files via the Internet, using an online fax service. One free fax service is FaxZero.com.

Snail mail (real live letters sent via the post office) can take some time to get to officials, but they can be both formal and personal. If you have time, this is a good way to contact officials.

Face-to-face meetings have significant impact because they are so personal, even if they are brief. When you meet with an official, you are putting a real live face on the proposed law; the legislator now knows someone who will be affected by it. This is also an excellent opportunity to break down stereotypes and assumptions.

A speech during a city council open forum or public comment session, or testifying in front of a state legislature, also has a very personal impact on lawmakers. Again, you are showing how a proposed law personally affects real live people, and again you have an opportunity to break down stereotypes. Public speeches may need to be scheduled in advance of the meeting, so be sure to find out before you show up.

What Should I Say?

The key is to be brief and to the point. The first sentence in your letter or speech should tell the elected officials what you would like for them to do: “Please support / do not support [insert bill number or description here].”

After that, the rest is up to you, but you probably should not exceed one page of text (for a speech, follow the time limit set by forum rules). Please do not use form letters and do not copy model letters. Officials absolutely hate it when they get a bunch of letters that sound the same. They may attribute form letters to radical groups and lobbyists, not to concerned individuals.

The key is quality, not quantity. Use your own words and your own arguments, even if you think you aren’t a very good writer. As long as you manage to hit on a couple of important points, you’ve done more good by writing a personal letter than by sending a form letter.

Always remain polite, calm, and informative. Do not threaten or insult. For written correspondence, it’s a good idea to ask someone else to read your letter before you deliver it, because the tone of voice in your head as you write may not match the tone that a recipient reads into the text.

There are certain things that you should not say or do when corresponding with elected officials regarding BSL. More detailed information about BSL-specific correspondence issues can be found on the What (Not) To Say page.

Dos and don’ts for letter-writing can be found on the Write Letters page.

More detailed information about communicating in general can be found on the Communication Tips page.

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