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Comment by bxparks | Hacker News Reader

This assumes that the Representative is competent, and believes that they act for the good of all people in their district, not just the ones who believe in their version of God. This not true across the country, and particularly, not in the district that I live in. I would never call my Representative. My Senators, not too bad, but there are only 2 of them for the entire state.

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The politicians don’t personally do it. You won’t talk to the actual rep, you’ll talk to some recent poli-sci grad or intern or whatever.

I suppose some might be so incredibly bad at their job that they don’t have staff for constituent services, but most do. They don’t tend to ask who you voted for before helping. I’m in a very red state, vote for democrats, and have had state and federal republican rep offices help me out several times.

I'm not 100% sure of the specifics, but I'm pretty sure you get a professional on the phone at the end of the day, not your representative. The incentives are just properly aligned.

I am a very conservative person, but I've lived in deep red districts and deep blue ones, and I've honestly never had a problem with any. If anything, I've noticed that the representatives I complain to a lot want to help more because they think they can get another voter by simply being decent. That's if the rep even gets involved.

You might be surprised. I don't have any direct experience to speak of, but I've heard that some reps whose rhetoric would make you think they want tens of millions of Americans imprisoned, deported, or dead turn out to have surprisingly good staffers handling constituent services.

> have surprisingly good staffers

This is it. Calling your representative almost never results in you actually directly communicating with your representative (for better or worse). You will always get their staffers, who may have completely different moral and political agendas.

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