tedatcapbells

By installing it on their phones myself in many instances.

Very stupid or slightly stoopid?

Yes. Once you've created an account, you can view your representative. If you've weighed in on any issues, you can see how often their votes match yours, and there's an option to contact them directly or to view their own website.

I leave party affiliation out of all my apps. I want ideas to win out over team loyalty. Even in our anonymous social network for the Hill called Cloakroom, there is no place to mark party affiliation. It's easier to cross party lines when you don't know where the party lines are to begin with.

As a former Legislative Correspondent (LC), I believe form letters are not only a waste of time, but a drain on legislative resources. Congressional offices are so awash in junk mail, that Congressmen don't have time to considerately respond to the real mail individuals personally took the time to write.

Form letters are really a way for an organization to help their members express a sentiment for or against a specific legislative issue. What we do in Capitol Bells is let anyone select a bill then explain why they are for or against it. When other users upvote that post to express agreement, they will also adopt OP's vote on the bill.

By helping each other vote, we can make it easy to automatically generate personal voting records for everyone that we can compare, apples to apples, to the Congressman's own official positions. Then, like you suggest, we can group everyone up at a district, state, or national level, and quantitatively display how well that politician is actually representing his constituents.