This is the first post in a series from our latest report, The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue. Over the next ten weeks, check back every Friday for a new post outlining one of the principles, featuring accompanying resources, articles, and plans to support it.

There is no more important relationship in our democracy than between Members of Congress and those they represent. Ultimately, the legitimacy of Senators and Representatives stems from their constituents. They must facilitate and generate—even embody—trust in the government and Congress. Unfortunately, in the past 15 years congressional approval ratings have rarely exceeded 40%, and for much of that time ratings have been in the teens. That the People have so little faith in Congress is not only alarming, it means that the relationship between Senators and Representatives and those they represent has eroded to a degree that is threatening the practice of democracy.

To modernize and improve the relationship between Americans and Congress, CMF offers the following ten principles, many of which hearken back to our fundamental democratic values:

1. Congressional engagement should foster trust in Members, Congress, and democracy. Democracy cannot flourish if, as at present, Congress and the People are skeptical, dismissive, or mistrustful of one another.
2. Congress should robustly embrace and facilitate the People's First Amendment Rights. The freedoms of assembly, speech, and the press are well understood. The right to petition government for a redress of grievances, less so. Congress bears responsibility for all of them.
3. Congress must collect, aggregate, and analyze meaningful knowledge from varied sources. Email is the predominant channel for information to flow to Congress, but it is unwieldy to manage, sort, and extract insight from. Congress needs better tools to integrate and aggregate the information it receives to make good public policy decisions.
4. Senators and Representatives should strive to engage with a diverse sample of their constituents, not just those who vote for them or seek to influence them. Focusing only on the political base or on those who reach out leaves many voices and experiences out of public policy. Being inclusive is both good politics and good governance.
5. Congress should provide additional and varied avenues for public participation. As a result of vast differences in geography, connectivity, age, income, and skill that exist in our nation, phone calls, emails, social media, postal mail, in-person visits, and possibly even telegrams still need to be welcomed by Congress, even once better venues for public participation are created.
6. Congressional engagement should promote accessibility for all. When we rely predominantly on one mode of communication—whether it be online or in-person—we make it impossible for some people to participate, often those who have been historically silenced and disenfranchised from our democratic traditions.
7. While individual Members should prioritize engagement with their own constituents, Congress should develop additional venues for public policy participation and engagement. Senators and Representatives are elected to represent specific people, but requiring individual lawmakers to be the conduits for all communications to Congress is inefficient and causes important voices to be lost or ignored.
8. The People should be honest and transparent in their engagement with Congress. When seeking a redress of grievances in a court of law, there is no expectation for anonymity and attempts to provide false information or overwhelm the court are punished. The same should be true for seeking redress of grievances in Congress.
9. Constituent advocacy must prioritize content and quality over medium and quantity. Both Congress and the organizers of grassroots campaigns are stuck with an antiquated belief that the best way to demonstrate broad support for an issue is to send as many emails as possible to as many Members of Congress as possible. Our future engagement tactics should facilitate the substantive and minimize the administrative.
10. Input from the public should be integrated with other sources of information for Congress to make good public policy decisions. Public sentiment is important in public policy decision-making, but it must be combined with and balanced against the experiences of stakeholders affected by, data relevant to, and expert opinion on specific public policies.

Integrating these principles will take time—and literal acts of Congress—to create (or rebuild) systems and processes for citizen engagement throughout the legislative process, but planning how to do it is long overdue. The House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has conducted hearings and offered recommendations for the House of Representatives, but changing how Congress operates and how it engages and listens to the People will take considerable and sustained effort by both Congress and the nation. It is imperative, however, that we embark on this journey so the People feel—and truly are—heard and appropriately engaged in our national public policy decisions.

CMF's report The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue explores the current challenges to engagement and trust between Senators and Representatives and their constituents; proposes 10 principles for rebuilding that fundamental democratic relationship; and describes innovative practices in federal, state, local, and international venues that Congress could look to for modernizing the democratic dialogue.