What COVID Has Taught Congress About Constituent Communications

December 10, 2020

What COVID Has Taught Congress About Constituent Communications

AOC town hall
Image from The Fulcrum/ (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Congress remain captive to tech that requires them to stretch limited budgets to do even basic outreach.  Deliberative Town Halls, a free resource IDEA offers Members of Congress as part of our Connecting to Congress research initiative, are one workaround, but adopting the recommendations from the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress would make it possible for more Members to collaborate with institutions like IDEA, or even do their own deliberative constituent engagement. IDEA fellow (and former Congressional staffer) Anne Meeker's new op-ed in The Fulcrum highlights the challenges most offices currently face in communicating productively with constituents and how what we’ve learned from our Connecting to Congress town halls supports the recommendations of the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress.