Many Americans feel like they no longer have a voice in the political process. It’s easy to think that contacting representatives won’t do any good, especially if you live in a state far away from Washington, D.C.
But studies show that representatives care about our opinions more than we think. 88% of congressional staffers said that individualized letters had an influence on a representative’s decision.
People who go the extra mile to send personalized written messages to their representatives are important. While emails are easily ignored, sending political postcards is an easy and fast way to make your voice heard.
Want to be sure your representative knows your thoughts? Read on for why you should send political postcards to your representatives.
1. Representatives Are Listening
It’s easy to forget, but our representatives work for us. They were elected to represent the people from their district or state, so they need to take our opinions into account.
Some politicians are better at this than others, but all of them take their constituents into account when they’re making decisions on different policies. This is especially true if they’re undecided about something.
Not all communication methods are created equal, though. Form emails that you can easily send through a website are really likely to be ignored and never read. They’re actually the least effective way to reach your senator or representative.
A physical postcard, on the other hand, takes a bit more effort but is way more likely to be read. If you want your message to actually get through, send a postcard.
2. Political Postcards Are Great For Introverts
A lot of sites also advocate making phone calls as a way to make sure your representative logs your opinion. This is a great way to get in touch as well, but for introverts who hate talking on the phone, the added nerves of calling Congress can leave you tongue-tied.
If the idea of talking to a congressional staffer on the phone gives you hives, write out your message instead. You won’t have to worry about sounding eloquent on the phone and you can make edits to what you want to say before you send it off in the mail.
3. They’re A Cheap Way To Stay Politically Active
Let’s be real — money talks in politics.
Not all of us have the ability to donate tons of money to our representatives, and even small things like writing letters adds up once you pay for postage. Even if you’re not paying for anything directly, your time costs money, too.
Political postcards offer a cheap way to stay politically active. They’re much cheaper to send than a letter, and they’re fast to make. You can put in a lot of effort if you want to, but really all you need to do is buy a cheap postcard, write your message, and send it off.
The whole thing would cost you less than $5, and a postcard costs less than fifty cents to mail.
4. Postcards Are Concise
Let’s say you’re both an introvert and not the greatest writer on earth.
If you’re really passionate about an issue, it’s common to feel a lot of pressure to get the wording just right in a letter. After all, you want your representative to understand your opinion and why this is so important to you.
In a postcard, your space for a message is limited. You literally can’t write hundreds of words in support of your issue because they won’t fit.
Just write the bare bones of your message and send it off. This is great for you because it’s easy, but it’s also a way to make sure that the core of your message gets through to the representative.
All they’ll have to do is glance at it and they’ll understand what it is that you want to see. Since it’s easy for them, too, they’re more likely to pay attention to it.
5. They’re Easy To Produce
As much as we want to be civically engaged, it’s not always easy to find the time. People have other responsibilities that draw their attention — jobs, families, bills…it’s easy to push aside something like sending a letter to someone you’ve never met.
Political postcards, though, are easy to make and fit into a busy schedule. You can also make a lot of them in one batch. Letters, personalized emails, and phone calls all take a significant amount of time to do all at once. (Plus, that’s assuming your phone call even goes through and you don’t have to call multiple times to reach a person.)
Invite friends over to your house and spend just an hour or so making postcards with snacks and some music. In that short period of time, you could have made dozens of postcards to send to your various representatives.
This is especially helpful if you have multiple messages that you want to focus on — no need to pick and choose!
6. Pictures Add To Your Message
The cliche “A picture speaks a thousand words” is overused for a reason — because it’s true.
Visual information is easily processed, and sometimes a picture tells an entire story that would take ages to explain. Another benefit of postcards is that one side of it can be whatever picture you’d like.
Is there a photo that would illustrate the point you want to get across? Even if no one takes the time to read the message on the other side — unlikely — just glancing at the photo will leave an impression.
Get Started Today
Sending postcards to your representatives is easy, cheap, and a way for everyone to make sure that their representatives hear their opinions. Ready to create your own? Sending political postcards is especially easy when you can design your postcard online.
You can design, write, and send your postcards online using our website. You can even use your own photos as the design to really send a personalized message!
Get started creating your own postcards today. If you want to take your postcard designs wherever you go, download our app from the Apple Store or Google Play!
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