Why not just call your representative?

Calling, writing, or meeting your representative is a protected right and often the most direct way to be heard, and nothing in My Vote Forward replaces it. The case for a complement rests on research about what officials hear: a 2018 study of 3,765 American state legislators found that legislators in both parties substantially overestimated their constituents’ support for conservative policies, and the authors suggest the bias may come partly from who contacts them. My Vote Forward proposes structured, aggregated priorities with published methods as an additional signal; it would inherit some of the same participation skews, and whether officials would find it useful is untested.

The objection in its strongest form

The objection to My Vote Forward here is that it reinvents a channel that already exists. Americans can call, email, write, attend town halls, testify at hearings, join organizations, donate, volunteer, and vote. Each of these carries information to officials, and many carry it with more force than a ranking would: a constituent’s story, told in person, is more persuasive than a percentage. Representatives employ staff to log and tally constituent contacts. Interest groups exist to aggregate views and press them. A new platform adds noise, splits attention, and invites officials to cite whichever number suits them.

A stronger version adds a theory of representation. Representatives are not supposed to be weathervanes. Edmund Burke told the electors of Bristol in 1774 that “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment”.⁠⁴ On this view, the right channel for public input is elections, where voters judge a representative’s overall record, and continuous measurement of priorities pushes officials toward following rather than leading.

Why the objection matters

The objection matters for My Vote Forward because a project that cannot say what it adds to existing channels has no reason to exist. It also matters because the framework could unintentionally weaken existing channels if people come to believe that ranking subjects on a website is equivalent to contacting an official, when it is not. The framework’s case depends on showing a specific gap in what existing channels deliver.

Defined terms

• Constituent contact: a call, letter, email, meeting, or other communication from a person to their elected official.
• Petition clause: the part of the First Amendment protecting the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.⁠¹
• Delegate and trustee: two classic models of representation. A delegate follows constituents’ expressed wishes; a trustee follows their own judgment on constituents’ behalf.⁠⁵ See representation.
• Aggregation: combining many individual inputs into a group result by a stated method. See aggregate.
• Signal: information that reaches a decision-maker and can change their beliefs about what people want.

Evidence

The right to contact officials is protected. The First Amendment bars Congress from abridging “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.⁠¹ Nothing about the framework touches that right.

The question is what officials learn from contacts. David Broockman and Christopher Skovron surveyed 3,765 state legislators in 2012 and 2014 about their constituents’ views on nine issues and compared their answers with estimates of actual district opinion.⁠² They report that legislators “dramatically overestimated their constituents’ support for conservative policies,” that the pattern held across methods, districts, and states, and that Republican legislators drove much of the overestimation.⁠² The authors suggest one explanation is who contacts legislators: Republican citizens had recently been especially likely to contact legislators, particularly fellow Republicans.⁠² This is one study of state legislators, and its explanation is a proposed mechanism rather than a proven cause, but it shows that the information officials receive can mislead them.

Broader research on influence points in a related direction. Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page analyzed 1,779 policy issues and concluded that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts” on United States government policy, while “average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence”.⁠³ Their findings and methods have been debated, and the study concerns policy outcomes rather than contact specifically, but it is widely cited as evidence that existing channels do not weigh voices equally. See can wealthy groups dominate?.

Theory offers a caution as well as a case. Sherry Arnstein’s 1969 “ladder of citizen participation” places “informing” and “consultation” on the rungs she calls tokenism: when they are “the total extent of participation, citizens may indeed hear and be heard,” but “they lack the power to insure that their views will be heeded”.⁠⁶ She lists “attitude surveys, neighborhood meetings, and public hearings” as the most frequent methods of consultation.⁠⁶ Her critique applies to calls and letters and equally to any priority-ranking tool.

How comparable systems have handled it

Several programs try to add structured signals beside individual contact.

• Random-sample bodies. Ireland’s 2016 to 2018 Citizens’ Assembly drew 99 members at random and sent its conclusions to parliament “for further debate by our elected representatives”.⁠⁷ It complements individual contact by hearing from people who would not otherwise contact anyone. See the Ireland case.
• Participatory budgeting. Residents propose and vote on part of a budget; officials keep the rest. See participatory budgeting.
• Polling. Officials and parties commission surveys precisely because contacts are unrepresentative. Polls are a structured signal but are controlled by whoever pays for them.

Competing interpretations

One interpretation holds that the existing system works well enough. Officials receive many signals, including polls and election results, and can weigh contacts appropriately. On this view the Broockman and Skovron finding is a correctable bias, not a reason for new institutions.

A second interpretation holds that contact is structurally skewed toward the organized, the intense, and the well-resourced, so officials systematically hear from some constituents more than others. On this view, a structured channel with a defined population and published methods adds information that individual contact cannot.

A third interpretation, drawing on Burke’s trustee model,⁠⁴ holds that more measurement of preferences is the wrong goal; representatives should exercise judgment and be held accountable at elections. Hanna Pitkin’s work, summarized in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, concludes that in the delegate and trustee debate “both sides are right,” because the represented must be both present and not present in the representative’s action.⁠⁵

What the framework answers

My Vote Forward’s answer is that it is a complement, with three specific differences from individual contact.

• Aggregation with a stated method. A release reports how many people took part, how they were verified, and how results were combined. A stack of calls has no denominator. See collective priorities.
• Priorities rather than demands. The framework asks which subjects deserve attention, which is information officials rarely get in structured form. It does not instruct anyone how to vote. See priorities.
• Private by default. People can register priorities and opinions without identifying themselves to an official, which may reach people who would not call. That is a hypothesis.
• Results create no mandate. Officials keep their judgment, consistent with the trustee view. See can an institution ignore a result?.

Hypothetical example. A city council member receives 300 calls about a proposed parking change and a My Vote Forward release in which 1,200 verified residents of the district ranked housing costs first and parking near the bottom. The release does not tell the member what to do about parking. It tells the member that the callers may not reflect what most participating residents think deserves attention, and it states who participated so the member can judge that too.

Where the objection still wins

The objection wins on several points. First, a voluntary platform inherits the same skew it criticizes: the people who use it will differ from those who do not, possibly in the same direction as the people who call. Second, a ranking is less persuasive than a person; officials may reasonably give more weight to a constituent who shows up than to a percentage. Third, Arnstein’s critique applies to the framework itself: without any power to ensure views are heeded, it sits on the consultation rung.⁠⁶ Fourth, no official has used the framework, so there is no evidence it would change what officials believe.

Unresolved questions

• Would officials treat an aggregated priority release as more or less credible than constituent contact? This could be tested.
• Does private participation reach people who never contact officials, or the same people again?
• How should a release be presented so that it informs judgment without being read as a mandate?
• What would make the framework more than consultation in Arnstein’s sense without overriding legal authority?

Related

• Broken feedback between elections
• Representation gap
• Representation
• Does this replace elected officials?
• Hard questions