Happy belated Earth Day! To celebrate, we’re sharing our process for writing political letters to our representatives! Our chapter at Sayre recently wrote letters about H.Res 29 which we mailed them today.
First, we choose a piece of legislation to write it on. This takes a lot of research on govtrack.us where we filter bills by topic and pick one that is slated to be discussed in Congress within the next month. Once we have a bill or resolution, chapter leaders summarize it in their next meeting.
That’s when the letter writing starts. There are some set rules to writing a political letter. The letter is usually typed up on Word or Google Docs and then printed out to be mailed. Here’s my template that I created for my club to give an idea of what that formatting looks like.
As you can see, your full name and address goes at the top, followed by the date, then the address of the representative you’re writing to. In this case, I wrote to my district representative Andy Barr. You’ll notice that I have a signature in between the “Sincerely Yours” and my name. This signature doesn’t have to be drawn on Google Drawings, you can write it on the printed letter with a pen. I just did it that way so people could get their letters to me to mail in the most efficient way possible.
For the body of the letter, you want to make sure you mention what piece of legislation you’re advocating for or against immediately. Next, you’ll make your argument. I always think using statistics and personal experiences combine to be very convincing. The entirety of the letter does not need to be a full length novel. Mine didn’t exceed a page. By making the letter short and breaking up the paragraphs, I’ve made my letter easy to read.
That’s all there is to it! Writing political letters doesn’t take up more than fifteen minutes of your time so it is a perfect way to get involved in your community and fight for a cause you believe in!