This indispensable guide will give you the tools to make your
voice heard
Steps
- Learn your politician's home address.
Depending on the office they hold and the size of their district,
the politician you are writing to may get hundreds or even
thousands of letters at his or her office each day. The fact that
you went out of your way to get his or her home address
demonstrates a degree of determination and creepiness that assure
you will make an impression. It is often easy to locate the home of
a small town mayor or state senator, but you may have to get a
little more creative with folks higher up the political ladder.
Finding your U.S. senator's address, for instance, may necessitate
your exploration of leads at his or her spouse's workplace, or
child's school. Take proper precautions in this stage of your
investigation, using discardable, prepaid cell phones for telephone
inquiries, and wearing dark glasses and hooded sweatshirts for
on-site reconnaissance.
- Select a greeting that will really catch your
politician's eye. Using his or her first name can be an
effective way to break the ice. But using a stronger greeting that
reflects the degree of your concern can be even more compelling.
Salutations like "Dear Jackass" or "Governor Douche Bag" are bound
to make a lasting impression.
- For the body of your letter, employ each of the major
rhetorical strategies: flattery, bemoaning, and threats.
Some will tell you that it is best to limit any given letter to a
single strategy. What these individuals fail to recognize is the
persuasiveness of the tone of unbalanced desperation, created by
the use of all three simultaneously:
- Flattery: Compliment the politician,
preferably for something very minor, because the more minor the
subject the more disproportionately laudatory your commendations
can become. Matters of policy can be useful (i.e. "I so admire your
brilliant work on the transcendent new stop sign at the corner of
2nd and Main."), but matters of personal appearance are even more
effective (i.e. "Your delightful little moustache is both adorable
and masculine perched beneath your nose like a sweet yet manly baby
moth."). Aim for five or six effusive compliments per letter. These
should ideally be equally dispersed between passages of . . .
- Bemoaning: Now is the time to plumb the depths
of your personal misery. Studies have shown that the more miserable
and pathetic a person is the more likely they are to garner the
sympathy of politicians. Think of the speeches you hear every
presidential election. Invariably, someone will bring up Bethel,
the blind one-legged old woman who has to hop up and down the
riverbank collecting bottles in order to buy the generic brand cat
food she lives on. Explain in detail the various miseries of your
day-to-day life. Does your cable frequently go out? Did your father
miss your little league games? When you re-tie your shoes, does one
always end up too tight, cutting off your circulation, while the
other one flops around like an angry elephant-seal? These and
complaints like them will help enhance your credibility as a
concerned constituent. Whether or not these concerns bear any
relevance to the immediate subject of your complaint letter is
immaterial. These complaints are about style, not substance.
Besides, their immediate impact will be tempered by their placement
among a series of . . .
- Threats: Of course the classic "If you ever
want my vote again" never goes out of style. But a genuinely
persuasive complaint letter will bolster this old standby with some
hard hitting new ammunition, like blackmail. Here is where you can
get creative. You may not know any specific secrets, but, believe
me, your politician has them. Think of him or her as a dartboard.
Just throw a few things out and something
