One of the reasons I started this project was that I realized I couldn’t name half of my representatives. It’s not as easy as it sounds depending on where you live. Here’s how I located all of mine.
Do you even know all of your representatives?
Yeah, I know the Pres and VP. I know my Senator. He’s easy to remember. He ran into a burning building and saved a bunch of kids or a dog. I know my mayor. I see him walking with his wife and baby on the same route I do my walks! But after that, it starts to get a little fuzzy.
I actually know one of my city council members – the guy who specifically represents my Ward. Why do I remember him? Because he used an amazing tactic to get elected – in this case, in a special runoff. He sent around campaign workers to my neighborhood with post cards that talked about one issue and one issue only. The campaigners who gave out these cards were willing to talk about anything, but they specifically made sure to mention and focus on this one issue. The issue was the loss of parking. And let me tell you, that tactic was a winner. I can tell you, it made me and The Lady specially go and vote in that special runoff election – to make sure ‘the parking guy’ beat out the ‘other guy’.
Ask me to identify any of my other reps, and I’ll have at the very least trouble, and if I’m being honest, can’t off the top of my head name any others.
I asked myself, if I couldn’t even name who my representatives are, how could I reasonably expect them to properly represent me? So, I guess I have to figure out who all these people are.
As part of the list of duties I constructed, there are some that call for you to reach out to your representatives to at least give them feedback, if not volunteer to work on their campaigns or attend their rallies. So I’ll need to at least have their contact information when that time comes. And I’ll have to know what demographic area they cover and their role.
In addition to those basic pieces of info, and since the term lengths of representatives vary somewhat, I should probably get that info too. Yes, Presidents and Governors are four years, senators are six and congressional representatives are two. However, how long is the term of a city councilwoman or a sheriff?
I have how many representatives?
I figured I would just do a quick search and figure out all my representatives at all levels of government and their roles, contact information, term, and next election date. I got a bit of a shock.
I thought this task would take me 15 minutes. It took me several hours. Why? I have, across every level of government, 30 representatives! That’s right. Thirty representatives. When you count city and county representatives along with your state and federal, and include your school board, that number starts to get up there. In my case, I’ve got more than half a football team’s worth of representatives.
Here’s how you find your reps.
I’m sure there’s a great number of ways to put together your own roster of politicians specifically chargers with representing you in the various levels of government. This is what I did.
First: Go to MyReps. Myreps.datamade.us. This site is amazing. Simply enter your address, and it will spit out all of your representatives. Well, almost all. Mine did not include my school board members – but I’ll get back to that.
What this page will give you is your Federal, State, County and City representatives. For each listing, it includes the office they hold, their address, and as befits a politician in the social media age, links to pertinent social media addresses such as Facebook, Twitter and their websites, if they have them. It even gives their office phone numbers.
What it didn’t tell me was anything about their term of office or next election date. In some cases, it didn’t tell me the district either. Some people will say, how do you not know your district? Well, in some cases, these things change pretty often. I actually had a couple of changes, including districts and city council wards. To get these things, I went to a second site, that proved invaluable.
Second: go to Ballotpedia, and search for any individual representatives you need additional information on. This site also helped me tremendously.
They say they are a “digital encyclopedia of American politics, and the nation’s premier resource for unbiased information on elections, politics and policy.”
- If you need to know anything about the candidates you need to vote for, start here.
- If you’re not sure when or how to vote, go here.
- This site even has a “Who are my reps” section to list your reps based on your address, although it’s not quite as in depth as MyReps. For example, MyReps includes your county sheriff, Register and Clerk in addition to your county commissioner.
For each representative, Ballotpedia has a page that has a huge amount of relevant information regarding the election of that politician. The amount here varies by the individual politician. But you can generally expect the following types of information.
- Biography
- Career positions
- Committees serving on
- Key votes
- Elected date
- Date of next election
Three: Stay on Ballotpedia, but now search your city. You can find other representatives that might not have been listed. The likely culprits are city council members. Depending on your local government, there may be other city or county officials who may be listed here and not on MyReps.
At this point, you should be able to cobble a full list together of every politician responsible for you as their constituent. What you will do with this information can be discussed in more detail later. Simply knowing who represents your interest within the government is something everyone should know.
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
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