No, no, I don’t mean get out the pitchforks. Your computer is all you need – that and a little effort.

Here’s the thing. No matter how much money a lobbying group or corporate lobbyist can supply to Congressman Bob’s campaign, that lobbying can’t vote. I’m not suggesting that money is not important but think about what Congressman Bob wants to use it for; that’s right, getting more votes!

Corporations can’t vote. Most lobbyists don’t even live in the district they are lobbying so most of them can’t vote for your congressman either. But YOU CAN.

At the end of election day, it only matters who got the most votes, not who received the most in donations. And that’s where you come in.

Congressman Bob wants to be re-elected. To do that he needs as many people as possible in his district to vote for him. Simple, yes but buying votes is illegal. So Congressman Bob buys advertisements instead.

But advertisements can’t overcome bad customer service. If enough people get fed up enough to not shop at a given store, that store is on its way to bankruptcy. The same principle works with political office only without as much feed back.

Think about it – Store X notices it is losing money. It doesn’t take Store X long to figure out it has fewer customers. Store X promptly gets its act in gear to find out why and fix it.

But politicians don’t get the same kind of direct feedback until the election. Polls only tell part of the picture assuming that they are working and done well. The only way a politician knows why people are really angry with him is if they tell him.

Sure, that can be done through pollsters but it is far more effectively done through emails and letters. Congressmen have staffers to read it all that you pay for so you aren’t a nuisance or a burden. You are a constituent and one who has the power to actually vote for Congressman Bob.

Don’t assume Congressman Bob just knows what everyone is so riled up about: he deals with a lot of issues and a lot of ‘everyones’. Be fair. Just because it’s an important issue to you doesn’t mean your congressman knows it should be an important issue to him as well. Everyone is a little different and congressmen are just humans with a fancy sounding job title.

Don’t be naïve, either. Congressman Bob is playing a balancing game. He needs funding if he is going to campaign and it’s a lot easier to make one corporation happy than 50,000 small donors. He can’t risk making 50,000 supporters mad, however. So he walks the tightrope of ‘what makes the big donors happy’ and ‘what actually upsets voters enough that they will remember it at election time’.

The game is rigged but not the way you think. Complacency is the voter’s biggest enemy. We’ve spent decades allowing ourselves to be complacent – and being encouraged to remain apathetic to the political process. Some of that is our fault; some is deliberate manipulation. None of it is irreversible.

See, $50,000 doesn’t buy 50,000 votes. It turns out that there’s an upward limit to how much money will affect outcome – you can’t overcome a poor candidate with more money most of the time. But 50,000 votes can easily swing most elections. Those vote are what really counts – the game is rigged to make your vote more important than their money.

Calm down, I can already hear you; you don’t want to start a PAC or an activist group. You don’t have to – you already have one.

But let’s leave that to another time. For today, what can little you do? Write.

Aw, but it’s only one email…

Think about how many things annoy you over the course of a week. How many of them resulted in you writing an email to complain? Maybe one? Probably zero. Don’t feel bad – you aren’t alone there. Most of us don’t take the time to write even a simple email even when we’re annoyed.

But we do when we’re REALLY upset, don’t we?

Congressman Bob knows full well most of his constituents won’t ever write him. Most won’t even visit, let alone follow, his social media page. Most people have other things to do and most people either assume nothing will happen or that one letter makes no difference.

They’re wrong.

For every one person who got mad enough to write, there are probably a hundred more that didn’t. If they take the time to send snail mail, that number is probably higher by a factor of ten. Your one dinky letter represents at least a hundred voters who are also upset about the issue.

But a hundred votes doesn’t matter, you say?

Oh yes, they do! Elections have been lost for the want of less. But it’s more than that – you aren’t alone. You probably aren’t the only one writing. Two letters, three? Four hundred, five hundred letters – how many other people are upset enough to write? A lot more than actually will – but what if we change that?

A congressman who gets five hundred letters from his constituents is a fool if he doesn’t sit up and take notice; that’s potentially fifty thousand ticked off voters. THAT is more than enough to make Congressman Bob into Former Congressman Bob and he darn well knows it.

You don’t need to worry about getting others to write at first. Get yourself in the habit. Let your congressman know what is going on in his district. It’s easy to lose touch – make sure you do your part to keep him in the loop. Use that social media page and, when it’s important enough, that email address.

Writing your congressman is not only an old saying; it’s a powerful way to participate in the political process.

No pitchfork necessary.