the receipts · 2 of 7
in your own words
A message from someone who actually lives there tells an official a voter is paying attention. In a randomized test, it moved votes.
Why it's in the game
Officials hear from organized groups all the time. What's rarer is a short note from a constituent, in their own words, about one item. It tells the office this issue has a voter attached to it.
In the one randomized test with real legislators and a real bill, the ones who heard from their own constituents were noticeably more likely to support it.
Writing it yourself also changes how the process feels from your side. People judge a decision as fairer when they were heard, even when the outcome doesn't change.
the study that started it
Calls to Michigan legislators
Daniel Bergan and Richard Cole worked with an advocacy campaign in Michigan and randomly chose which state legislators would get calls from their own constituents about a specific bill. The rest got none. The legislators who were contacted were about 12 percentage points more likely to support the bill.
The receipts
Every source was checked against the original on September 25, 2026. Each one links to it.
- +12percentage points in support
Bergan & Cole (2015) Political Behavior 37, 27–42
Randomized field experiment · Michigan state legislators
Constituent contact raised legislators' support for the bill.
read it at link.springer.com ↗ Bergan (2009) American Politics Research 37(2), 327–352
Randomized field experiment · state legislators
Legislators randomly assigned to get a grassroots email campaign voted differently from those who didn't.
The abstract reports a substantial effect but gives no number.
read it at journals.sagepub.com ↗- 19% vs 1%said personal vs. form emails have "a lot" of influence
Congressional Management Foundation (2011) Communicating with Congress: Perceptions of Citizen Advocacy on Capitol Hill
Survey · 260 congressional staff
Staff said individualized emails carry far more weight with an undecided member than form emails.
read it at static1.squarespace.com ↗ Lind & Tyler (1988) The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice, Plenum Press
Book-length review
People weigh the process, not only the outcome, when they judge whether a decision was fair.
read it at ojp.gov ↗- 179people, randomly assigned
Lind, Kanfer & Earley (1990) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59(5), 952–959
Lab experiment · 179 undergraduates
Having a voice raised people's sense that a decision was fair, even when they spoke after it was made, though less than speaking before.
read it at web.mit.edu ↗
The honest part
Both experiments are with state legislators and organized campaigns, not one resident writing to a city council. Neither says whether the messages were personal or scripted.
The case for personal words rests on what staff say about themselves. The fairness research is about how the writer feels, not whether the body listens.
What you do in the game
- A letter on the counter. The first line is where you actually live, and it has to be true. Visitors say so.
- Then two sentences: I want you to, and because. The lines wrap as you write, and "see it whole" shows the finished letter.
- The game shows exactly where it goes, the clerk's address or the comment page. You send it from your own mail. The game never sends anything.
- Tap I sent it. The desk lamp comes on.
How strong is the evidence?
Controlled, for constituent contact moving votes. The personal-words part rests on a staff survey.
- Practice
- Case histories and experience. Nobody has measured it with a control group.
- Field
- Real-world data: a natural experiment, a panel, or careful observation. Strong, but not randomized.
- Controlled
- People were randomly assigned to do it or not, and the difference was measured.