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Democracy is a two-way street. While our elected officials bear the lion’s share of the burden to be transparent and accountable to those they represent, the People who engage Congress have a civic duty, as well.

Since lawmakers are bound by duty and practice to focus mostly on their own constituents, however, Congress should create other means for the People to engage with Congress in meaningful and thoughtful ways. There are currently few mechanisms for a concern to be raised to Congress except through an individual’s own legislators, who have complete discretion in what issues they pursue.

Like Congress, the associations, nonprofits, and corporations that facilitate grassroots advocacy campaigns to legislators are unwittingly aiding the process of turning constituent contact into data points instead of true engagement.

Though the public image of Congress is as an institution with unlimited resources, the lack of capacity for Congress to perform its role in democracy and the impact that it is having on our practice of democracy is now well-documented. Significant increases in the U.S. population and reductions in Legislative Branch staffing and budget are some of the biggest challenges to congressional capacity.

When our tools for engaging with Congress rely mostly or exclusively on the internet, we leave out voices that need to be represented in public policy. The key is to facilitate the broadest possible inclusion. Modern methods of engagement should strive to ensure that all have equal voice in Congress, regardless of status, wealth, ability, distance, broadband access, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other dimension of difference.

What constitutes effective citizen deliberation and how can Members of Congress use it to better engage their constituents in their decision-making processes?

Refinements to our thinking about how best to implement our First Amendment rights in our engagement with Congress may add new channels and processes and make changes to existing ones, but existing channels will not easily go away. Said another way, people are still going to write letters to Congress, and Congress should read them. No one-size-fits-all solution exists when it comes to communications between Members and those they represent.

Practices by both the public and Congress have led to the relationship between Congress and the People being viewed as purely transactional, not the robust, substantive democratic engagement envisioned for a modern democratic republic.

"If Members of Congress rely primarily on engagement to which they and their staffs are reactive, they are restricting their contact to those who have the capacity and the will to engage."

One of the fundamental issues in the practice of our representative democracy is who individual Senators and Representatives feel they actually represent and the actions they take based on that understanding. Do they represent all who are counted by the census, which includes all residents, whether they are eligible to vote or not? U.S. citizens only? Those who are informed and engaged? Eligible voters? Actual voters? Those who voted for them? Though few are so craven, many Americans believe legislators primarily represent those who contribute to their election campaigns.