Email Your Legislator Pages

Email Your Legislator Pages let your supporters email a pre-drafted, customizable message to their local legislator.

At the moment, we support emailing legislators for:

• Federal: US House of Representatives and US Senate (full coverage)
• State: 40+ state legislatures with email capabilities (some states like Idaho House, Minnesota House, New Hampshire House, New Mexico, Vermont House, and Puerto Rico have limited or no email support)
• Local: LA County Board of Supervisors and LA City Council

Please reach out to our support team with your requests for additional legislatures not currently supported, and we can typically add support for state and large city legislatures within 1 week.

Email and zip code are required form elements for Email Legislator Pages.

Choose legislature

Choose the legislator that you want to target. Your supporters will have to provide a zip code within the bounds of the selected legislature in order to have their message sent to the legislator. Otherwise, the supporter will be informed that there weren't any available targets within their provided zip code.

Legislature Selection Rules

Important: You can only select one legislature at a time, with one exception:

• Federal Exception: You can select both US House of Representatives and US Senate simultaneously for federal campaigns
• All Other Legislatures: You must choose only one (state, county, or city legislature)

Contact our support team at [email protected] to request new legislatures be added.

How Message Delivery Works

Our system uses different delivery methods depending on the legislature you select:

Federal Legislatures (US House & Senate)

US House of Representatives:

• Uses the Communicating with Congress (CWC) API for direct, official delivery
• Requires additional federal contact information fields
• Messages are delivered through official congressional communication channels

US Senate:

• Primary method: Communicating with Congress (CWC) API (when supported by the senator's office)
• Fallback method: CongressForms automation - automatically fills out and submits the senator's official website contact form when CWC is not available
• Many Senate offices don't support CWC, so CongressForms ensures comprehensive coverage

State, County, and City Legislatures

Email Delivery:

• Messages are sent directly to legislators' email addresses in our database
• Your supporter's email is included in the "Reply To" field so legislators can respond directly
• Important: Email delivery success depends on having current, working email addresses for legislators

Delivery Reliability & Testing

Testing Recommended: We strongly recommend testing your Email Legislator page with your target legislature before launching your campaign to ensure:

• All targeted legislators have working email addresses
• Messages are being delivered successfully
• No technical issues with the specific legislature

Potential Issues:

• Some legislators may have changed their email addresses
• Some legislative bodies may have updated their policies to block automated emails
• Email addresses in our database may become outdated

If you encounter delivery issues: Contact [email protected] with:

• The specific legislature and legislators affected
• Any missing or outdated email addresses you've discovered
• Requests for new legislature coverage

Delivery Methods

Next you can select the delivery method:

1. None: Emails won't be sent to the legislators.
2. Individual: Emails will be sent to each legislator individually.

Email messages delivered individually will attach the supporter's email address in the "Reply To" field, so any email replies will be sent to them.

If you are preparing a mass mobilization where you anticipate each legislator will receive hundreds of emails, please reach out to our support team. It may be best to work out a batch delivery method, if you want to avoid inundating legislators (if that doesn't matter, then proceed with individual delivery).

Federal-Specific Requirements

When targeting federal legislators (US House or Senate), additional organization information is required:

• Organization Contact Name: Primary contact person for your organization
• Organization Contact Email: Official email for your organization
• Organization Contact Phone: Phone number for your organization (required format: ###-###-####)
• Organization Name: Full legal name of your organization
• About Your Organization: Brief description (minimum 50 characters)
• Library of Congress Topics: Select relevant policy topics for proper categorization

These fields ensure compliance with federal communication requirements and help legislators properly categorize and route your messages.

Alternative messages

You start by composing a default message that will be sent to all legislators. This is the main message - which will typically be encouraging legislators to support specific action or piece of legislation.

You can add additional messages if you want to target particular legislators with alternative messages (e.g. thank some legislators for supporting a policy, while encouraging holdovers with a separate message). Click the "Add alternative message" button at the bottom of the page, and you can add as many message variations as you wish, and select all legislators that you want to have receiving that alternative message.

Alternative messages are optional, but you may want to consider whether all legislators within the targeted legislature ought to be receiving the same default message.

Technical Implementation

Our Email Legislator system is powered by:

• CWC API Integration: Official congressional communication channels
• CongressForms Library: Automated form submission for senators without CWC support
• Direct Email Delivery: SMTP-based delivery for state and local legislators
• Geographic Targeting: Zip code-based legislator matching using legislative district boundaries

For technical questions or integration support, contact [email protected].