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Lobbyist-in-a-Box?
Back in my college years, I spent a summer working for a temp agency. My typing speed was (still is) insanely fast, and that happened to be a valuable skill in the years between desktop computing and the emergence of the Internet. One time, the agency placed me at what I later learned to be a political lobbyist service provider–our job was to write letters to elected officials on behalf of constituents. The company mailed these pre-written letters to targeted groups of voters with self-addressed stamped envelopes; all you needed to do (as the voter) was just sign the letter and drop it in the mail.
That day’s project: writing letters on behalf of bar and restaurant owners to lobby OSHA against the removal of cigarettes from bars and restaurants. I quit on Day 1. I remember being deeply discouraged by the real-world demonstration of how politics works, and how difficult it must be for the average citizen to say or do anything that actually breaks through the noise.
(Incidentally: their efforts worked; you’ll note that there is no OSHA regulation prohibiting smoking in the workplace at a Federal level.)
Fast-forward 30 years, and now AI can write these sorts of letters for you! It’s early days for AI and politics / political activism, but there’s already much you can do.
What You Need to Write Letters to Your Electeds
ChatGPT and Google Gemini may be the best-known “chatbot” AI systems on the market right now, but unless you work in tech you probably don’t realize that there are already well over 100 AI large language models on the market1. Some of these are very specialized and have been fine-tuned for specific uses, such as evaluating software code or generating text and images for digital ads.
We’re going to keep things simple to start, though. All you need is:
Your LLM of choice (I’ve been using ChatGPT Pro for quite a while, but any general-purpose service will work).
Contact information for your elected official(s).
A prompt to enter into the LLM that will create the type of letter you want.
A reason to lobby your elected official.
I can’t decide on your behalf what you care about, though if you’re looking for some ideas here in Kansas I might suggest public education or property taxes to start.
If you’re a ChatGPT user, one shortcut is to use the Capitol Bee Advocacy Assistant, a preconfigured AI chatbot with prior training on advocacy outreach.
LLM tools can be shockingly good at what they do, as long as you understand their limitations. When you’re talking with another human, we intuitively make hundreds of assumptions about intent—not just from physical and visual cues but also contextual clues that may reach back through decades of experience and familiarity with the other people in the conversation. Current AI systems can generate quality content, but you have to explicitly provide them with context and specific instructions to achieve your goal.
Pedantic. Finicky. Anal-retentive chef. This is the energy you want to channel. But you also want to actually save time versus writing the letter yourself, so think in terms of what you want the outcome to look like and achieve.
Sample Prompt: Letter about Public Education
Below is a sample prompt I used to write a letter to a state representative about the public education budget:
Write a 3-4 paragraph letter addressed to [Name of State Representative], who represents a district in Kansas. The purpose of the letter is to persuade this elected official to vote in favor of fully funding special education in public schools and to refrain from using the public education budget to either subsidize private schools or enable property tax cuts. The tone of the letter should be respectful, yet firm and passionate. It should clearly describe why fully funding special education is a critical investment for Kansas’s future—touching on the moral responsibility to provide equal educational opportunities, the long-term social and economic benefits, and the essential role of strong public schools in building thriving communities. Additionally, incorporate evidence-based reasoning, such as the importance of meeting federally mandated requirements and the positive impact on student outcomes. Include at least one direct question for the representative to motivate them to read and respond to the letter. Ensure the closing paragraph summarizes the main points and politely encourages the representative to take meaningful action in the legislative session.Three important things to note:
We’re specifically saying the length, purpose, and tone of the letter. This is crucial to getting the output we’re looking for.
We’ve seeded (at a very high level) the talking points we care about: funding of special education, the role of schools in our community, and the desire to be evidence-based in our argument.
We explicitly ask for the letter to include a question, to encourage the representative to actually read and respond.
The full letter is available here in a Google Doc. Feel free to do what you wish with it. This sample is completely unedited…it’s exactly what was written by ChatGPT.
Sample Prompt: Letter About Property Taxes
Sometimes, an issue is complex or nuanced (or you don’t fully know yet what solution you want to advocate for). Perhaps you can identify a problem you or your community are experiencing, but you don’t know what best practices are or how other parts of the country have dealt with it. But we’re problem-solvers here!
Since we don’t quite know what we want the letter to say, we can first prompt the AI to research the topic and present some feedback. Then, based on our response to that feedback, it can write a letter that better represents our goals:
Help me write a letter to my state senator about property taxes. Before drafting the letter, do some preliminary research on recent property tax dynamics in Johnson County and across Kansas, including any proposed or enacted measures aimed at property tax relief. Present that knowledge and any key decisions you need from me to be able to write the letter. Then, using that feedback, write a three-paragraph letter to [Name of Elected Official], who represents a district in Johnson County, Kansas. In the letter, introduce yourself as a member of a married couple with three children—one attending college at the University of Kansas and two enrolled in local public schools—and explain that your family has experienced significant property tax increases over the past five years. Emphasize the financial challenges posed by these escalating taxes, noting that your household income has not kept pace. Ask the representative about their plans or proposals to relieve the burden on families like yours, and maintain a respectful, solution-oriented tone throughout.Our AI Editor responded with references to articles in the AP News (Kansas will see major tax cuts but the relief for home owners isn’t seen as enough) and other sources, and asked me to answer three questions:
Your State Senator's Name (for personalization).
Specific Financial Challenges.
Desired Actions (Specific measures or proposals).
The final letter (untouched) is available in a Google Doc as well. You are welcome to repurpose this in any way you like.
Advanced Tips and Tricks
Using AI tools is a new skill. For everyone. Like all skills, it takes practice and experimentation to become an expert; also, it’s not a requirement that 100% of people become an expert at 100% of the skills.
If you’re old enough to remember the emergence of the Internet, many aspects of your life fundamentally changed over the course of 10-20 years. In the beginning, most people thought the idea of online banking was irresponsible and risky; now, people choose their banks in party based on their mobile app.
So: if you’d like to be on the “early adopter” side of the adoption curve, here are some power user moves:
For larger projects, think iteratively
Writing has always been an iterative process. We outline, then draft, then edit, then rewrite, and so on until it’s good enough or we’re sick of it. You can replicate that workflow in AI:
First, provide an outline or ask the AI to write an outline based on your goals
Next, ask the AI to edit or modify individual sections or paragraphs to make it better match your mental vision–change the word length, change the reading level, add emotion, whatever you want
Last, ask the AI to review and edit the full document like a proofreader
The final product will be 5x better than where you started. I like to use this approach on writing projects with longer word lengths.
Ask AI to ask you questions
Do you just have a topic or theme but not really sure where you want to go with it? Invert the process: ask the AI to prompt you with the questions it would like to have answered to be able to accomplish its goal. For fun, try the following prompt and see where you end up:
Act like a biographer. Your project is to write an entertaining and engaging story about a human subject. Your writing style is humorous and thought-provoking, similar to the style of Neal Stephenson or Douglas Adams. You have just sat down with the subject of the story. Identify the 20 most important questions you want answered by the subject that would make the story compelling and award-winning. Ask each question one at a time, and then I will respond with the subject's answer. After finishing this process, write the full story.(If 20 questions sounds like too much, scale that down.)
This approach of letting the AI drive the process is one I’d only recently unlocked but it’s extremely powerful.
Buy the new tool. Seriously.
There are so many new AI tools every month that it’s difficult to even know what’s worth the money. My advice: unless you’re a developer, if you see a tool that sounds interesting, just buy the lowest-cost version of it. During the course of my state senate campaign, we experimented with perhaps a dozen different tools. Some didn’t end up being very useful, but others increased our abilities by 10x.
Some of our favorites:
AdCreative.ai: Reasonably priced generator for social media and display ads in a wide range of sizes and styles. Huge time saver.
ChatGPT (obviously)
Screen Studio: If you’ve ever wanted to record a tutorial or how-to video, this will make it so much better.
Coming Soon: LetterSwarm
Keep your eyes peeled for LetterSwarm, a new tool we’ll be rolling out soon. It’s designed to streamline the entire process of citizen advocacy—just pick an issue, get an AI-assisted draft, customize it to your voice, and with a click, we’ll print and mail it to your elected officials. No more hunting for addresses or stalling over that perfect closing line. We’ll even do the research work to find issues and actions needing urgent support.
1 A “large language model” (LLM) is the beating heart of the current artificial intelligence wave. LLMs are datasets that have been trained on billions of pieces of information, and basically predict the next word to write based on the words previously read.
