Make your town do what the federal government won't. See our model legislation for local governments.

Step-by-Step Organizer Toolkit for the People's Campaign for the Constitution

Step 1: Reach Out
Step 2: Build a Coalition
Step 3: Hold Representatives Accountable (see below)
PCC Resources

Step 3: Hold Representatives Accountable

Objective: Hold a public forum or attend a town hall meeting to demonstrate widespread community support for your representative to defend the Constitution. Monitor your representative’s votes and use public pressure to reinforce your coalition’s demands.

1. Learn common tricks politicians use to dodge questions

Politicians are well versed in strategies to respond to difficult questions. They can spin their voting records to make it sound like they’re on the right side of an issue, and they answer questions they want to be asked rather than questions they are actually asked. It’s important to repeat your questions when politicians don’t answer them, to point out inconsistencies between their voting records and the public images they’re trying to portray, and to stand firm when they try to change the subject. Use our Accountability Role Play to learn strategies to help you handle politicians' common tricks.

2. Choose a tactical approach for holding your representative or candidates accountable

Use our suggested tactics for the public campaign to help your coalition hold representatives and candidates publicly accountable. Which tactics you choose depends on your specific situation: your demands, the strength of your power base, whether an election is coming up, and whether there is a contested race in your district. We suggest:

What to do if your representative is non-responsive

If you have tried the suggested tactics and your representative or candidate still refuses to meet with your coalition or respond to your demands, your coalition should consider other strategies to communicate your demands and compel the representative to respond. Remember, we often have more rights than we realize.

Here are some strategies your coalition might use:

If your representative won’t attend your forum, invite an aide to attend in the representative’s place. If the aide sees a large audience in support of your demands and is forced to field pointed questions about constitutional issues from frustrated constituents, the representative will hear about it and will feel pressure from inside her or his office as well as from the public to respond personally in the future.
Use the media. Call your local newspapers and TV stations and tell them that your representative has been unresponsive to your growing local coalition. Ask them to write an article about your group or interview group members at your next meeting. Write letters to the editor and participate in radio call-in shows. The more negative media attention the representative gets, the more s/he will feel the need to respond to your group in order to protect his or her public image.
Hold a peaceful march or protest. Gather your group outside the representative’s district office or march through your local downtown area. Make signs communicating your group’s demands and protesting the representative’s lack of response. Hand out fliers to passersby and invite the local media.

3. Reiterate the demands and highlight whether your representative lives up to them

There are a number of strategies for holding your representative publicly accountable to following through on your coalition’s demands:

Meet with the representative regularly to reiterate your demands and the community support for those demands.
Use the media to highlight promises your representative made to your coalition.
Before votes on important constitutional issues, hold call-in days and in-district meetings, write letters to the editor, conduct TV and radio interviews, and join radio call-in programs.
Have supporters clip editorials, opinion editorials, and letters to the editor that reflect the coalition’s demands and mail them to the representative’s district office.
In every communication, reiterate the coalition’s demands and expectations to the legislator.
Give the representative positive reinforcement for good votes by publicly thanking and praising the representative through news articles, letters to the editor, TV and radio interviews, and phone calls.
Do periodic (annual or semi-annual) scorecards showing how your representative(s) voted on key civil liberties and constitutional issues.
Keep the coalition active through an email list and meetings. Continue to generate proposals for local action.