Punch Clocking for Dummies
Thoughts for People Seeking Congressional Openness
Want to Punch your Lawmaker’s (or Candidate’s) Clock? Here are some ideas for creating a powerful network of citizens in your community to persuade politicians to open up their schedule to the public.
Create a Network
Create a call sheet for yourself of people who might know people who would be interested in working with you. Put aside two hours and start calling. When you reach someone, ask them (a) if they’d be interested in being involved and (b) if they can come to an evening planning meeting (at your house, with pizza).
You can do this alone, or with one other person, but once you’ve found ten people who are interested, and five who will come to a meeting, you’ve got a very strong core. If five of you together persuade your candidate, that’s $200 a person for very valuable work!
Work out amongst yourselves the ground rules for sharing credit for getting a candidate or legislator to sign the pledge.
Get endorsements
Make a list of prominent people or groups in town that will be interested in supporting your effort. Make a call sheet, and call them, asking something along the lines of
“Hi, I’m Jodi, I live in x. I’m calling because I want your advice and help. Do you believe that it would be good if lawmakers put their daily schedule online? We have a grassroots effort to persuade [member of Congress X] to do that, and it would be great if when we called him, we could tell him that you’re supportive.”
Contact your Member of Congress/Candidate
Call your the local office of your member of Congress, and ask to speak to the Chief of Staff. If you are trying to reach a candidate, ask for the campaign manager. (If you know the names of the people you are trying to reach, it’s much easier to get through). Whether or not you reach her or someone else, proceed with confidence and enthusiasm. Tell her that you are a representative of a grassroots effort (supported by x and x if you have endorsements) to use technology to improve citizen-representative relationships, and you have a proposal you’d like lawmaker X/candidate X to support. She will want to keep the call short, so tell her that you’ve got some materials on the proposal that you’ll fax to her office, and then tell her you’ll call again to discuss them.
Remember, while this a novel idea that may meet with some resistance, it will actually help members of Congress better communicate with their constituents, and a forward-thinking representative or candidate should be supportive – don’t assume they will be antagonistic, and provide them with encouragement and support.
Reach the press
If your lawmaker/candidate agrees, call your local TV station and newspaper and let them know! (Also call Sunlight and we’ll help you get a good press release and story).
If your member of Congress or a congressional candidate directly refuses, prepare a press release and call members of the press to let them know what you were asking for and why the refusal is disappointing: it calls into question his understanding of his role as a representative of the people he works for.
If your member of Congress or a candidate does not return phone calls or otherwise evades the question, find the phone numbers of some local reporters and call them to ask for their help in determining where the lawmaker or candidate stands. Write letters to the editor, and prepare a press release on the politician’s non-responsiveness to a request for responsiveness. Be sure that you let the lawmaker’s office or the candidate’s campaign know that you are disappointed and genuinely hoping for their support, but don’t let them stonewall you.
You can also perform stunts, ask your lawmaker in public places about the Punch Clock Agreement, videotape a candidate’s nonresponsiveness, put up signs and flyers, and come up with your own creative ideas to reach a larger audience.
Become your own Media
If one of your group has a blog, or there is a local political blog that you can contribute to, tell the stories of your efforts on that blog (and send a link to Sunlight!).
You can also easily start your own blog, using the free software that is available.
Use the word “PunchClocker” to tag your blog posts on the topic, to make it easier for other interested people to find you.
Take pictures of your grassroots group (even if it’s only you!), take pictures of your trip to the office of the Member of Congress, take pictures of the telephone before you call – engage your readership in the drama of trying to push politics into the future.
Talk about the calls you make that DON’T work out as well as those that do – its important to share the difficulties as well as the successes.
Then you can take your blog, and send a link around to anyone who might be interested, and have creative ideas about how to help you out.
Show the benefits
America is a leader in democracy and technology, but lags far behind in the use of technology to strengthen democracy. A lawmaker or candidate who agrees to share her schedule shows that she is forward-thinking, responsive, open, transparent, and accountable. A lawmaker will have a much easier time communicating with constituents when her schedule is public, and will learn things she didn’t expect to learn – she will also gain the support of an active, engaged, innovative group of grassroots supporters!
Show the downside of not signing
Be very clear that this matters to your group, and you’re going to let people know – this is not a typical partisan issue, but a means of ensuring more openness in government. A refusal to sign something like this indicates that a lawmaker has something to hide, or is simply not interested in performing his core duty of openness with the people he works for.
Make a commitment to keep the issue alive even after the campaign season, and if someone refuses – in a polite but firm way – let his constituents know, let other local grassroots groups know, let local nonprofits know.
Conclusion
Have fun! Remember, these are only ideas, and you may come up with more creative ones of your own. The Sunlight Network is not telling you to engage in any of these activities, and is not responsible for anything you do. While you may get ideas from The Sunlight Network, you alone are responsible deciding whether or not to engage in certain activities. Under no circumstances are you authorized to act as (or represent yourself as) an agent of The Sunlight Network.
And if you have more ideas, include them in comments to this webpage!
Some Friendly Suggestions
Do:
- Comply with the law
- If you are the first person to get a particular legislator or candidate to sign, let us know so you can collect your bounty. (See the Punch Clock Agreement Rules and Conditions of Winning the Bounty.)</li>
- Speak on your own behalf — while we encourage you to participate in this project, we do not authorize you to speak on behalf of The Sunlight Network and you should not do so.
- If you as an individual decide to exercise your right to support or oppose the candidate of your choice, understand and be clear that you are acting on your own and not as a representative of The Sunlight Network.
- Be aware that if you spend any money making your own candidate endorsements or engaging in certain other types of election activity, you may have some reporting or other legal obligations under the federal election law. Other types of activity that could trigger legal obligations include, but are not limited to, discussing with a candidate or candidate’s representative the specifics of public communications you may decide to make about the candidate’s pledge.
Do NOT
- Suggest or state the The Sunlight Network has or will endorse candidates that sign the pledge. The Sunlight Network’s goal is to get congressional calendars published, not to elect or defeat particular candidates. Further, The Sunlight Network does not endorse candidates and you may not do anything that suggests otherwise.
- For your own protection, do not break any laws or engage in any illegal conduct while seeking a pledge, such as harassment, assault, invasion of privacy, bribery or any other law.
- For your own protection, do not agree to do anything for a candidate or legislator in exchange for their signing of the pledge.
