If you watch old movies, you might have heard people threatening to “write my congressman!” We may not make the threat any more, but it’s still important to contact your representative in Congress when you have something important to say.
Step 1: Find out who your rep is.
This depends on where you live, so go to Find Your Representative and put in your zip code. In some cases, different parts of a zip code will be in different districts. In that case, you’ll be asked for your street address.
Step 2: Find out how to contact your rep.
When you figure out who your Congressional Representative is, you can click on his or her name and be taken directly to the congressperson’s official website.
Many of these websites hit you with a “Subscribe” pop-up as soon as you arrive. If you don’t want to subscribe, click the X in the top right corner and it will close.
Most of the Representatives use a standard navigation for their websites, and you can find “Email Me” in a drop-down menu under the “Contact” button.
The sites don’t look the same, but they have pretty much the same navigation.
Once you click through, you’ll probably find an announcement saying that the Representative won’t respond unless you are a constituent — that is, you have to live in his or her district.
You’ll have to put in your ZIP+4 code to prove it. If you don’t know the +4 part, you’ll often find a link to the Post Office to track it down.
Don’t give up now!
Once you’ve passed the zip code test, you can send an email. You can also use our easy tool to send an email — there’s a ready-made example letter, but you can change the words.
If you’d rather tweet your congressperson, you will usually find a link to his or her Twitter account somewhere on the website — if not on the Home page, then on the Contact page.
CSPAN also has a list of Congressional Twitter handles.
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