Principle 5: Congress Should Provide Additional and Diverse Avenues for Public Participation

by Kathy Goldschmidt on March 29, 2022

In our 2021 report The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue, we propose ten principles for modernizing and improving the relationship between Congress and the People. All ten will require changes in the constituent engagement culture and practices in both Congress and the organizations that help facilitate grassroots advocacy. The fifth principle is: Congress should provide additional and diverse 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 and facilitated. They may look different in the future, or they may become obsolete and unused by constituents in the face of better tools and practices, but it is not likely an option at this point to close off any form of Member-constituent engagement, just to add newer and better ones.

The “Have Your Say” section of the New Zealand Parliament’s website offers a helpful example of what it might look like to provide a variety of venues to communicate with Congress. Each provides clear instructions, guides, videos, and other information to help people understand what each communications channel is for and how to use it. The parliaments of other Commonwealth countries provide a similar variety of options, but the New Zealand Parliament offers the clearest and most user-friendly example online. Some of the options include:

  • Submissions to committees. This section allows individuals and organizations to submit official feedback on questions and legislation posed by committees. The submissions are all posted publicly, usually after the committee has reviewed them, so anyone can see what advice committees are receiving from the public.
  • Direct contact to Members of Parliament. This provides information and guidance on contacting individual MPs, much like the information provided on the House and Senate websites. Unlike our Senators and Representatives, New Zealand MPs do not have official websites hosted by parliament. Instead, they each have a page with official information about them.
  • Starting a petition. Anyone can start a petition to the New Zealand House of Representatives on any issue. Petitions are all posted publicly, and anyone can sign onto them for as long as they are open. These petitions function much as our own petitions did in the first 150 years or so of Congress. We describe our process in “A Brief History of the First Amendment Right to Petition Government,” which also includes more information about the New Zealand petition.
  • Complaining about government regulations. The New Zealand Parliament also invites the public to submit complaints they have about rules developed under legal authority delegated by parliament. These are similar to the regulations developed by our own government and issued under delegated authority from Congress. These are not made public, but the committee reports on them are.

The New Zealand Parliament also provides information about seeking referenda, voting, and running for parliament. In all these ways, the public can engage with and influence parliament and its members.

The challenge for Congress has always been how to integrate the mosaic of input and information it receives into a digestible form on a shoe-string budget. This is where the independence of the administration of 541 congressional offices serves as a severe disadvantage. Institutional offices should play a greater role in facilitating the delivery and processing of the vast diversity of communications—just as their counterparts do at the state and international level. The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has developed a series of excellent recommendations on this theme which, if implemented, would allow for public engagement through a variety of venues and transmitted to Congress in a format Members and staff can more easily process, understand, and integrate into their policy decisions.

Principle into Practice:

  • Congress should develop more constructive means of constituent engagement to enhance the People’s experience interacting with Senators and Representatives and enable Congress to glean more valuable insight on public policy issues.
  • Congressional committees and the institution should develop new tools that enable the People to engage productively at different points in the legislative process, not only through individual Members, similar to methods used by other countries.
  • Member offices should conduct a Constituent Engagement Assessment to define the best venues and channels for their Members, offices, and constituents.

Additional Resources

 
citizen engagement, congressional operations