Send your reps dead-tree email with ‘Snail Mail Congress’

As former congressional staffers have said before, don’t expect an email or snarky tweet to have much impact on U.S. Congress

Turns out that the most effective way to have your voice heard is sending congressmen actual physical real life letters with your thoughts on them. And, as Billy Penn reports, one Philly developer just went live with a website that lets you send your rep snail mail without getting off the couch for $1.28.

Snail Mail Congress is the side project of Yarn founder Ryan Epp, whom you may also remember as the creator of that rambunctious Surreal SEPTA Twitter bot. As we noted at our last check in, Epp has been cleaning up his act, as this latest activism-related project shows.

“Back in January, I was trying to leave a comment with Senator Pat Toomey’s office,” Epp told Technical.ly in an email. “No one was picking up and I ended up calling them literally 25 times in one day. I eventually gave up and decided to write Senator Toomey a letter. After I’d finished and printed my letter, I realized I was out of stamps. In that moment of frustration I came up with the idea.”

Here’s a quick video on how it works:

Sent off our first batch of constituent letters this morning! Write your own at https://t.co/T3HmjZSp8x and we'll mail it to your reps. 📬💃 pic.twitter.com/cr07uKsI4U

— Snail Mail Congress (@smailcongress) March 28, 2017

Each letter sent through the platform gets a status page where senders can track its progress. Currently, it’s just Epp himself printing and mailing the notes, with help from a couple of friends who are on deck in case demand gets crazy.