Harness the outrage over gun violence: Make it easy for voters to email their elected rep

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7 mins read

Harness the outrage over gun violence: Make it easy for voters to email their elected rep

Another mass shooting. Gun safety legislation blocked again …

How can organizers make it easy for voters to email their elected rep to demand support gun safety bills? How can the email campaign be used to build a contact list of potential supporters at the same time? There’s an app for that. Movement Digital.

Make it fast and simple for people to show their support. Who is the rep for their district? What should the email say? How can voters customize the message? How can the email be sent from a phone or laptop? How can voters also call their rep, if they want to?

Safety from senseless gun violence

Following a late Monday night shooting that killed three Michigan State University students and injured five more — mere miles from the state’s Capital of Lansing — Democratic lawmakers are vowing to deliver more than empty words in order to prevent another tragedy. “Thoughts and prayers without action and change are meaningless. Our office will continue to work tirelessly to pass common sense gun reform immediately. We will not stop until our students can attend school without fear, our communities can attend places of worship in peace, and our society is safe from senseless gun violence.” – Michigan Advance

“Rep Green (R) speaks out against gun control bills. House Bill 5644 would prohibit the manufacturing, possession, purchase or sales of what would be considered consider an assault weapon, while HB 5646 would prohibit people from openly carrying shotguns and rifles with exceptions in certain situations.” – Michigan’s Thumb

Find their rep

Use this free REP FINDER map to locate the rep(s) who should be contacted. The map includes Senators, Congressional reps, Governors, State Senators and State House reps. It provides their phone numbers and where available their online contact form. Clicking on the phone number dials them from a laptop or smartphone. This example shows how to find the reps in the vicinity of Lansing where the shooting took place. This reveals in a few seconds that two nearby reps are Phil Green and Bradley Slagh. Learn more about the map here.

Find a rep’s email

Some elected reps have a web based form for their constituents to contact them through. Michigan provides reps’ emails online here. Save your supporter time and effort by finding their rep’s email address and composing a draft email for them which they can customize. The emails are sent directly from the voter’s email to the rep.

Draft the email

Combine the rep’s email and the draft message for supporters to send in Movement Digital. This generates URLs for you to share with supporters. Clicking on the URL launches the email app on the phone or laptop. The Subject is chosen at random from the different variations you create so that the campaign does not generate dozens of emails with the same TITLE.

Users can personalize the email before they send it, but do not have to spend time finding their rep’s email address, nor ‘cutting-and-pasting’ the email message. All they have to do is add their name, personalize the message (if they want) and hit send. Each campaign has a unique URL like “https://campaign.movement.digital/main/MIgun67

Email Phil Green (MI-67)

EMail Bradley Slagh (MI-85)

Email composed automatically

Voters click on the URL for their rep and the email is automatically generated in their email app. They can then personalize the message, and their name and hit send.

Make it easy to share

Convert the URL for the email campaign into a QR Code to make it easier to share on social media. The free QR Code Generator app converts the email campaign URL into a QR Code that can be added to an image or GIF.

Build contact lists

Use a campaign or petition drive to collect emails of all the people who took part in the campaign, with their permission. This approach is fast, easy and affordable because you harness the outrage from a recent event to build a contact list of people in the area who feel strongly about that issue. Movement Digital is affordable for grassroots campaigns with pricing starting at $10/month. Learn more here.

TakeAway: Harness the outrage. Make it easier for voters to contact their elected reps to demand action.

Deepak
DemLabs

DISCLAIMER: ALTHOUGH THE DATA FOUND IN THIS BLOG AND INFOGRAPHIC HAS BEEN PRODUCED AND PROCESSED FROM SOURCES BELIEVED TO BE RELIABLE, NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED CAN BE MADE REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, LEGALITY OR RELIABILITY OF ANY SUCH INFORMATION. THIS DISCLAIMER APPLIES TO ANY USES OF THE INFORMATION WHETHER ISOLATED OR AGGREGATE USES THEREOF.

Image Credit: Marge Simpson by Matt Groening

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Democracy Labs is a hub for ongoing technology and creative innovation that serves progressive campaigns and organizations at the national, state, and local levels.

Our focus is on long term, sustainable and affordable solutions. An approach that is longer than an election cycle, and isn’t purely dependant on volunteers, can enable more qualified candidates to run for office and for more issue groups to bring about positive social change.

Democracy Labs is a project of the Tides Advocacy Fund.

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