Writing Politicians

One of the things that I've been doing with my recently graduated and still unemployed amount of free time is writing letters to my various elected officials. This was always something I'd meant to do, but never had any time for. Sadly, being a caring and informed member of the community seems to take a good bit of effort. Well, at least for someone who wants to do some research on an issue before yelling a Senator. But now that I've got the first few out and the addresses and proper letterhead figured out, it should be a good bit quicker to start spitting these out.

Then, as told to me by someone who had this job, the letters will be read by some poor intern who will then enter my opinion into some large spreadsheet that tells the politicians how their constituents want them to vote. Hopefully the adage that they assume every letter sent in represents 2000 people who felt the same way but were too busy to write a letter holds true. At least I think that's an adage.

Oh, and for anyone interested, the letters I have written or am drafting are on the subjects of greater environmental protection, reforming copyright law, anti-gerrymandering, instant runoff voting and other voting reform measures, ending the drug wars, lowering the drinking age to 18, anti-sprawl, ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, removing marriage from the legal system... actually I'm getting ahead of myself there, I haven't even started writing the last few.

Ah, but time for that later, plenty to read up on.