How to Contact Your Representatives

I finally did it! For the first time ever, I, Edmond the Hun, have contacted two of my representatives, and told them that I did not support one of two bills. It's really easy. Here's how to do it:

1. Find the website of your state's Congress. This can be done by a simple google search. For example: searching "Missouri State House" at www.google.com quickly gets you to: www.house.state.mo.us

2. Figure out who the representatives are in the house and senate for your district. In Missouri's page, at least, this can be done by typing in your zip code. Besides the normal six-digit code, you need the rarely-seen four-digit extension that comes after it. If you don't know those extra digits, there's a nice little button that opens a pop-up window, where you type in your address and it gives you all ten digits. Plug those in and it'll tell you who represents your district in the Missouri House, Missouri Senate, as well as the House in Congress.

3. Click on the representative's name, and it leads you to a brief facts page about him. If you're lucky, somewhere in the page is a link that says "e-mail." It will either take you directly to your e-mail or give you other simple steps to follow. If they don't have e-mail, you might have to write them a letter the old-fashioned way. But my two representatives both had e-mails.

4. Then, all you gotta do is tell them what you want to say.

I'm still waiting for a reply from my two representatives. I'm not on the up-and-up about how Missouri's Congress works (two years since Government class, you know) so those bills I don't support may not even be up for voting yet, and my representatives may not have even come across them yet, or they may never. But it couldn't hurt to give them my opinion.

I encourage you to follow these steps and contact your representatives too and tell them what you think about current bills, or even to suggest new bills that you think should be passed. In other words, take an active part in politics (that's a scary phrase).

Edmond the Hun