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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling part of why they don't use tech solutions is that the 'cost' of making a statement is valuable information: if a ton of people are willing to spend 10 minutes to make a call, that tells you something. Having 100 people, half of them Russian bots, click on a "+1" button, might not tell you as much.

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It's a costly signal [0], that's for sure. But what is unfortunate is that it is a signal that is far more costly for some than it is for others. It's the reason why minorities, immigrants, renters, etc., are underrepresented in local politics...angry white-haired retired homeowners with nothing better to do than complain about other people parking in "their" space are the ones that can show up to meetings. Everybody else has far more pressing things to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory

Like you say, that's especially true at the local level.

So I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think it's "just" removing the "costly signal".

Having worked myself as a constituent contact in a Congressional office, I can tell you from experience that you are exactly right. Someone who's willing to hand-write a letter and pay for a stamp is seen as a more motivated constituent -- more likely to care enough about the issue to have it decide how they'll vote in November, in other words -- than someone who makes a call; and the caller is more motivated than someone who clicks "send" on an email; and the emailer is more motivated than someone who signs a Web petition.

For a long time, in fact, this mindset meant that a really effective way to "hack" the Congressional contact system was to send your message in a telegram -- because if you were willing to pay to have a messenger run your message across town and deliver it by hand, you were assumed to be very motivated indeed!

(I doubt that's true anymore, of course; not least because I'm not sure you can send telegrams anymore. But now I'm wondering if you could get the same effect these days by sending your message via FedEx's most expensive service...)

I asked this elsewhere, but does being a donor matter at all for calls/letters? If so they check the dollar amount?

They legally aren't allowed to check but if a staffer or politician recognizes someone's name and remembers that they met at a fundraiser, it obviously influences them, at least subconsciously.

I was never asked to; Congressional offices and campaign offices are supposed to be legally distinct, and that information would have all been held by the campaign.

That being said, once the sums you contribute get large enough you will almost certainly get to be known around the office -- either explicitly (e.g. the Chief of Staff tells all the people who handle correspondence "Bob Smith is a good friend of the Congressman's, if you find any messages from him bring those straight to me") or implicitly (e.g. the staff of the Congressional office notices that when Bob Smith comes in to meet with the boss he's ushered right in and stays for a long time). So large contributors' messages can easily get special attention, even without that kind of direct connection to their contributions ever being made.

Yeah, I'm sure if you're a Big Donor that's one thing, but that's not what I want to do. Was just curious if by saying you're a donor on your phone call whether it might make a difference.

Surely these offices still have fax machines?

I know this to be the case. But then, that suggests to me that this is another place where tech has a chance to make a dent, not by short-circuiting the "proof of work", but by coordinating the effort so that people know how and when to put it in.

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