A Response From My Senator

A few weeks ago I found a site that allows you to send a letter to your member of Congress. There is a template and you can change some of the details and whatnot. I decided to try it out and sent one to Pat Toomey about Washington D.C. becoming the 51st state. Here is what I sent: 

The Honorable Patrick J. Toomey
United States Senate
248 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Patrick J. Toomey,
700,000 regular people live in its neighborhoods pay taxes but have no
representation. 192,000 DC residents have served in the US armed forces. DC pays
$26 billion in taxes, more than 22 states. The residents of DC should be able to
govern themselves without interference from Congress, just like all residents of
states. The people of the District deserve fair and equal treatment in our
democracy.
Please send me a response to this letter.

Here is the response letter…

I get that he is not responding to each letter he receives. I get that his staffers probably just stuff a standard form letter. But, wouldn’t it be more effective to at least have someone glance at the letter and have different response letters ready to go? It would not need to be a letter about the 51st state idea, but it could have said something about looking at this issue and taking it under consideration, blah blah blah. Instead, this letter just lists his accomplishments and voting record. Cool.

I cannot tell if this is designed to just discourage people from reaching out to their Senators OR if they just receive that much mail that there is no way they can adequately respond to all of it. 

I do not plan to vote for Toomey in 2022, but he is still my Senator until then and he (and when I say he, I mean he or someone from his staff) should at least listen to what I have to say and have the courtesy to respond.