Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text
resist.botHow much impact do these services actually have on elected officials? They know how little effort constituents put into having a text sent on their behalf so they're probably going to put very little weight on them. Go through the effort of handwriting a letter is going to add quite a bit of weight to your message. If you are unwilling to invest a small bit of time and the cost of a stamp to send a message, why would they think it's very important to you?
I know at the federal level, pretty much all the reps/senators see compiled reports of all constituent comms, broken down by (issue / stance / method / volume).
Either way your message is "just" making it up to the member as a spreadsheet column, but text vs email vs letter might not actually make the difference you think. Some members might see letters as more serious, others might take texts as "oh my younger and more savvy constituents think X."
At the state level, this probably varies widely.
Hmmm honestly this sounds interesting. I assumed senators and such just played it by ear.
Do you have personal experience with how these are calculated or used? Good to know that some reps are actually using data haha.
I know if I received tens of thousands of duplicate texts or emails I'd divide the count by 10^n to estimate the real will for change. Or ignore them entirely. This is slacktivism.
Precisely. If finding their email address was too much for you, how likely are you to vote?
Depends on the congress critter probably. Just guessing that as younger individuals are elected to office, responses to digital might become more accepted. Also, take into consideration that the elected person's office is typcially staffed by younger people that are going to be much more inclined to reading a digital message vs and envelope that may or may not include more than just a harshly worded letter.
> Go through the effort of handwriting a letter is going to add quite a bit of weight to your message.
Really? is there even a slight chance that Rep. XYZ actually reads my letter and it doesn't get filtered out by an aide as "spam"? And furthermore, once read does my letter actually hold any weight against moneyed interests? It feels like an utterly futile and pointless exercise to pretend democracy still works.
OpenGov recently researched this and the results largely backed up conventional wisdom, and suggested a trajectory of change. You night best learn by starting with the findings summary: https://v2v.opengovfoundation.org/summary-of-research-findin...
All the examples on the splash page are current Democrat priorities. Even if you are left, you are unlikely to agree with 100% of one party's platform. (If you do, start thinking critically please.) Can this tool be used to support your own priorities or is it just a retweet/amplify button for the Democrat party line?
The first example I see is expanded access to voting rights. Since when did this become a partisan issue?
Between January 1 and December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting [1]. This should be a concern for any American citizen with the right to vote; don’t turn this into some politicized drama.
Let me be clear; this is the very foundation of our democracy. I find it simply appalling that there would be proponents for this.
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voti...
> Between January 1 and December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting [1]. This should be a concern for any American citizen with the right to vote; don’t turn this into some politicized drama.
It is a politicized drama. Voter id laws are reasonable, the majority of Americans think so, and calling them "restricted access to voting" is literally true but dishonest.
"Resistbot" (from "the resistance") is kitsch, especially since the left controls the government.
Voter ID laws are perfectly reasonable, so long as people can easily obtain ID. That is not the case.
https://225egw40g2k99t0ud3pbf2ct-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
Coupling a free and easy to acquire national ID for every citizen with the requirement to show your ID when voting is the obvious compromise. It makes one wonder why almost all the people pushing for voter ID laws refuse to engage with this compromise.
Because the people pushing for voter ID don't actually care about voter ID, they care about maintaining the current inequality in ability to vote.
100%.
As I said, this is a "politicized drama". There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any impact on voter turnout. The vast majority of Americans (80%) of all skin color support these laws. Describing them as "voter restriction laws" is literally true but dishonest and dishonesty is bad.
>There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any impact on voter turnout... Describing them as "voter restriction laws" is literally true but dishonest and dishonesty is bad.
That argument goes both ways:
There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any impact on voter fraud... Describing them as "anti-voter fraud laws" is literally true but dishonest and dishonesty is bad.
Plus the anti-voter id argument isn't even necessarily about turnout. Someone being unable to vote is still bad even if they weren't planning to actually vote. Many of these people are caught in a cycle of disenfranchisement. It isn't surprising that people who have historically had their voting rights infringed upon have decided to stop engaging with the system. One way to stop that cycle is to guarantee that these disenfranchised people will have the right to participate if they wish to do so.
> There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any impact on voter fraud... Describing them as "anti-voter fraud laws" is literally true but dishonest and dishonesty is bad.
Agreed. Republicans talking about widespread "voter fraud" are liars.
So why do you think these laws are “reasonable” to use your word if you admit that the primary reason people say we need them is a lie?
Requiring citizens to produce a photo id to vote is reasonable regardless of lies certain people tell to push the idea.
Similarly, a carbon tax is reasonable even though proponents lie and claim climate change will kill us all.
But you admit it doesn’t accomplish anything. It isn’t reasonable to create laws with no purpose.
Laws shouldn't exist just because people think they'd be a good idea. There's also no evidence that voter ID laws prevent voter fraud, or even that voter fraud happens at any meaningful rate. Advocating for unnecessary restrictions without evidence is dishonest and dishonesty is bad.
I'm not strongly in favor of voter id laws (the deep blue area I live in has them). I just think it's dishonest to refer to them as "voter suppression". And I agree that there's no evidence of substantial voter fraud.
Making it harder for people to vote is literally voter suppression. You might argue that it is ineffective voter suppression, but I don't think you can argue that adding unnecessary steps to voting, and making penalties for making mistakes harsher while making it easier to make mistakes, is anything else.
> Making it harder for people to vote is literally voter suppression
As I said upthread, it's "literally true but dishonest". Barring children from voting is literally voter suppression but calling it that is stupid.
> I don't think you can argue that adding unnecessary steps to voting, and making penalties for making mistakes harsher while making it easier to make mistakes, is anything else.
Reasonable people can disagree over whether showing an id to vote is "unnecessary". The fact remains that voter id laws are not unreasonable, not beyond the pale, most Americans support them, and this whole thing is a manufactured political drama.
> Barring children from voting is literally voter suppression
Actually, no, it's not. Maybe this is pedantic, but children are not, and have never been, putative voters and therefore are not being suppressed.
Minority groups less likely to have IDs are voters, however. 8% of white Americans do not have government photo ID, whereas 25% of African-American citizens do not[1].
[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
There is no evidence that someone will ever try to rob your house. You should remove the lock on your door.
There is plenty of evidence that people's houses get robbed.
Also, where I grew up we literally never locked our doors. Ever. Never got anything stolen.
The number of people that cannot easily obtain and do not already have a state-issued photo ID is very small, practically negligible - to our great misfortune, modern life has made it very difficult to leave your house without papers. Your own link goes into great detail about all the different photo ids the state offers and the different ways to obtain them and the initiatives to make it even easier.
This is another one of those bizarre mismatches between American and European politics, I suppose. In much of Europe (and most of the world, really), photo ID is expected and it often isn't even free, like it is in much of the US if you qualify. It certainly isn't easier to get! Your own Wisconsin-based link provides information about an IDPP process that allows you to get a state ID without any identifying paperwork for free! [1] The argument is simply that some people might find it inconvenient to get to a DMV within a couple years! (Actually, the argument in your link is also that it's 'offensive' to require a photo ID to resemble its bearer - not an exaggeration, an exact quote.)
This is definitely an example of an American issue that is very, very weird from the outside looking in. There's a lot of political and mental energy spent on a very microscopic issue.
[1] https://bringit.wi.gov/free-id-and-identification-card-petit...
Thank you for that link. Voter ID law seemed like a non-issue until I realized the problems which can arise obtaining an ID and keeping it up to date.
I can imagine lots of edge cases, like a senior citizen who doesn’t drive and has an expired ID. Is it still sufficient proof of identity? Should a voter be turned away?
I suspect these laws are most popular among young people and people who drive—-in other words, people who maintain their ID for other reasons.
People voting multiple times under different names or is so incredibly rare that it's a non-issue. In order to change the outcome of an election a significant portion (at least 1%) of the public would have to vote multiple times.
The question is why are we expending legislative effort on a non-issue when there are plenty of real issues that need to be solved.
no, whether id is easy to get or not is entirely beside the point. by constitution, we're decidedly not a papers-please nation, despite the slippery slope you seem to support.
voting should be plentiful, accessible, subsidized, and unimpeded, not gatekept, especially not by a surreptitous effort to implement national id.
> Since when did this become a partisan issue?
Right around the 70s iirc. That's roughly when the modern progressive wing of the democratic party started to coalesce, and they've always had a big focus on it.
Though it's a little weird how much heat it generates given that it's only a "top 5" issue for about 6% of people. [0] If that few people people even bring it up on polls, I'd expect any attempts to create drama out of it to fall flat much more than they do.
[0] https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AP-NORC-Decemb...
I think there's a more recent flip side to it.
The two most recent Republican presidents got into office while failing to win the popular vote. Prior to Bush, that hadn't happened since the 19th century. In that context the GOP learned from those experiences that it's more important to have the right rules keep you in power than it is to actually have the support of the governed.
That seems more likely to be because the GOP has rigorously cultivated a base that's advantaged by the electoral college.
It's just weird how much culture warring happens over this when most people are ambivalent at best, and the types of voting restrictions we're talking about don't have much of an impact on turnout.[0] I suppose everyone has to have a hobby, but I guess I kind of expect this stuff to track things that are salient to the populace.
[0] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/136/4/2615/628...
Convenience link to sci-hub for anyone wanting the full text: https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/qje/qjab019
I think it's wrong to generalize from voter id laws to "the types of voting restrictions we're talking about". Other stuff that's being pushed:
- limitations on early voting
- limitations on mail voting windows
- criminalizing helping people return their mail ballots (including disabled people)
- sending mail ballots not specifically requested
- voter roll purges
When these are paired with stuff that isn't statutory (fewer voting machines per capita causing long lines at particular polling places), I don't think it's a stretch to think there would be aggregate impacts that are significant given the narrow margins that we often tend to see.
Could be, I suppose. Though for most of those, I'd expect them to have approximately the same impact as voter id laws. The big exception being voter roll purges in states without same day registration, that one seems most likely to have an impact.
> given the narrow margins that we often tend to see.
Most elections really aren't that narrow (hence the high incumbency rate). The few that are just end up dominating the news cycles.
Can you name a single modern or western country that doesn’t require ID to vote? As tech people here, we understand the concept of authentication and KYC. Even India and Mexico, Canada, All of Europe require ID to vote. The only argument against ID to vote in order to ensure only eligible voters and only 1 vote, is blatantly political. And if it’s racist, then so too must be any form of ID based covid passport which is being pushed hard by the same people opposing voter ID.
> If you have forgotten your voting notification, you must present your ID or passport.
This is a big difference from the US. In many states you can just walk in and say your name to get a ballot.
The Texas law that requires you bring something like a bank or utility bill is considered voter suppression by opponents. [1] But this is just the same as the German requirement to bring a mailed voter notification.
> The Texas law that requires you bring something like a bank or utility bill is considered voter suppression by opponents. [1] But this is just the same as the German requirement to bring a mailed voter notification.
It really isn't the same:
> An estimated 5.4 percent of U.S. households (approximately 7.1 million) were “unbanked” in 2019, meaning that no one in the household had a checking or savings account at a bank or credit union (i.e., bank).
From https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html
And that figure is only for entire households, there are more unbanked individuals, and it is very common for households to have adults that don't have any utilities in their name.
OTOH, a mailed notification only presupposes that an individual is on the rolls.
You can also bring your TX voter registration. Or any check from the govt. Or any document from the govt with your name/address. Or any paycheck. Or various types of ID.
All right. That's a much looser definition of "like a utility bill" than I assumed.
So, easier to comply with that I thought.
> The first example I see is expanded access to voting rights. Since when did this become a partisan issue?
It has always been an issue of deep division in the USA.
> The first example I see is expanded access to voting rights. Since when did this become a partisan issue?
Since at least the fifteenth amendment (1870).
> If you do, start thinking critically please
While there are some topics where I agree with both major parties, and many issues where both are near equally bad, I have yet to come across a national policy issue where Republicans are better than Democrats (even if the Democrats' policy is still not great). So yeah, I don't agree with one party 100% of the time, but I will support them 100% of the time over the alternative.
If you scroll down even a little bit you'll see:
> Create Your Own Campaigns
> Go beyond writing to your officials and learn how to organize powerful text campaigns that drive action.
Nice initiative but I fear the principle of this design is flawed and will only prove once more that the working class as a whole has no real power. Technology can solve many of the problems of society but I don't think it will in this fashion.
Asking nicely or many times won't do much because the people who run a society are the ones who control production, not the ones who mediate policies. In short, this is not the root of the problem.
They do have power but that comes from voting and people need to be willing to vote and vote consistently.
If you are only willing to contact your elected officials using this bot and prior methods like letter writing and email were too much for you, then there is a decent chance that you are too lazy to take any other action.
Imagine if you had a manager who was only willing to tell you to work hard with a Slack bot. Messaging each employee individually would be too much work for them. Would you take that manager all that seriously?
Resistbot will also help you register to vote and will remind you when an election of interest is occurring soon.
The problem is not ignorance of the constituents interests or their volition.
The political system this claims to help was not created by and for the working class, it was thought out, designed and implemented by and for the bourgeoisie. It can't serve the majority even if it tried. There are no mechanisms for it, and, not only that, the whole system will prevent their creation. It's not about adding plugins, it's about changing the system.
This app was probably funded by the democrats to seem more radical and progressive, but is just a tool for aesthetics. They use these to gather well meaning non conforming professionals and citizens around actions that are ultimately inconsequential and also wont waste the opportunity to trigger conservatives while they're at it, adding kindling the useless culture war that owns the US.
I'm not a resident of the USA but it doesn't seem like it would be very effective. Members of Congress only seem to care about filling their own pockets via lobbying and insider trading. Improving the country seems to be an afterthought for them and even if they wanted to, they're too out of touch to do so. Hence the end of net neutrality, the constant bills to kill privacy, and the way they waste the time of big tech CEOs when they call them in every 6 months.
Members of Congress behave like mostly unmanaged employees with bad incentives behave.
If you had a team where the manager didn't ever do anything except send copy/pasted messages out via Slackbot and where the workers were in high demand from another manager who could offer them a lot more (as well as threaten their jobs a lot more), would you really expect those workers to be working in the interests of their manager?
As that is the state of American politics today.
Complain about Congress all you want, but fundamentally the people chose them and decide whether or not they get fired. Most people are just absentee managers.
Can confirm. They don't care, at least my reps in Texas don't.
I get form letters loosely related to the issue I complained about, and sometimes not even remotely related.
I recall trying this one time a few years back to contact my congressman and senators. Was disappointed to see that the only available options were canned messages with specific viewpoints, and that it seemed to let me send those messages to politicians on only one side of the aisle.
Maybe I’m missing something but I scanned the front page there… why is it called “resistbot”? This seems like more participation in the democratic process so I’m not quite sure what they are resisting.
Likely a holdover from the Trump era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Resistance_(American_polit...
"When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure."
Tools like this just make all modes of contacting officials less effective. Zeynep handled this really clearly years ago: https://www.twitterandteargas.org/
I would consider using this but don't trust their privacy policy. People have been canned for expressing political opinions or donating to political causes.
How do I know this company won't leak my information? This is especially a concern for people they would not consider political allies. Is there a more anon way to use it than giving your phone number?
I've been kicking the around to make something similar, so it's interesting.
I wonder about this part near the top:
'“Resistbot is the smartest technology to emerge from the disaster that was the 2016 election. No one else even comes close.”
Debra Cleaver, Founder, Vote.org '
Is this meant to imply that the site or/and vote.org is anti-trump or anti-republican - or imply something else?
Isn't the Cambridge analytica stuff the smartest tech to have come out of the 2016 election?
I wonder how often these things actually work. At this point officials must get so many texts that they can't possibly be reading them and they know they're highly liable to be automated rather than necessarily representing real actors.
Some of the ones that send emails on your behalf are known to harvest your email address for resale. Not sure if the same is true for the ones sending texts but wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.
They're not reading every constituent message, many reps get thousands of messages a day. But they're seeing aggregated reports.
If a rep suddenly starts getting a thousand messages a day all supporting/opposing issue X, that's going to get noticed.
Generally a handful of messages is fruitless, but a persistent big batch can change policies, especially if it's between multiple alternatives the member is already OK with.
I am not familiar with US politics, but genuine question here. How effective is this? Does the respective representative have incentive to follow through or disincentive to not follow through?
The only incentive to follow through is to appeal to your voters to get them to vote for you in the next election. But since most election districts are rigged via gerrymandering, representatives need only to appeal to a certain region's demographics.
Only if you actually care enough to follow up.
I always thought email spam was bad. Then I contacted my senators via email and they started spamming me.
Calling the office or faxes work better than e-mail. I suspect a text is a lower tier than e-mail.
Do you have a source on that? Don't they pretty much all just feed into the same channels these days?
Anecdotal, but this aligns with what I have heard from politicians.
The important part is not the message, but rather the amount of effort put into the message. Someone using this bot puts in 2 minutes of effort and no money. Someone writing a letter puts in 20 minutes of time and a dollar for envelope and stamp. Someone who flies to D.C. and protests cares a lot more.
Why? The flying protester will remember in two years. The 2 minute texter will not. The flying protestor will vote and probably work on a campaign and donate money. The 2 minute texter might vote and probably will not do much else.
Yeah, that makes sense, thanks for the insight.
I've always struggled with the best way to be politically active, because so many things feel pointless. I generally just vote and donate money.
Talking to the people who assemble the reports for the congresscritters. Those folks have a strong BS detector, and tend to assign higher engagement with higher effort. Picking up a phone and calling tends to show more effort than a text.
Are faxes really still a thing?
Yes. Faxes are still a thing and used. Amazing how many things accept faxes but not emails.
Not new, created around 2017 so think of what the climate was
Given the name - is this a tool for all constituents and parties or is it specifically for democrats?
> Resistbot is the smartest technology to emerge from the disaster that was the 2016 election
Your preferred candidate losing is a "disaster"?
Makes me wonder if this can be trusted to actually work to amplify all sides of the political compass. GoFundMe's recent example comes to mind as techs untrustworthiness to not meddle with things in the direction of the CEOs preferred political stance.
Given that candidate lost the popular vote by the greatest margin in history yet still "won" the election, ended his presidency with the lowest popularity rating in history, was the least emotionally and intellectually capable president we've probably ever had, systematically destroyed everything he could touch in the federal government (including a public health surveillance and assistance system that could have helped detect covid far earlier), literally withheld supplies from states he lost in the prior election, spent more time on vacation than any of his modern predecessors, and responded to losing the election by encouraging violent public insurrection and engaging in numerous conspiracies to subvert the election certification process by fraud...yes?
That said, I don't see how this text widget is going to do anything.
The two most hated candidates in history. The Republican Party fought tooth and nail to prevent Trump from being their candidate, but had accidentally reformed their primary process in negotiations with the Tea Party so much that their voters actually had the final say (the same thing happened under Milliband in the UK which later resulted in Corbyn winning Labour leadership.) The Democratic Party, by contrast, fought tooth and nail to attack every candidate except Clinton, despite how hated she was.
2016 was an own goal.
Unfortunately it disappointed me so much to learn that Eric Ries (the Lean Startup author) is a part of this sorry "R E S I S T" enterprise.
https://resist.bot/news/2017/09/13/the-robot-of-the-resistan...