Samsung SF-3100 fax machine with inkjet printing on normal paper, 1999. (Wikimedia Commons)
Desperate to get the attention of their elected officials to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, Americans have turned to a technology many young voters haven’t used before: the fax machine.
Incoming faxes to senators and representatives have increased over the past week since a number of social media posts went viral, suggested faxing in addition to calling and emailing. Over the past month, Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip after Hamas captured over 200 hostages has inspired massive protests across the United States and pushed people to contact their representatives in hefty numbers.
On Monday, 13 Democratic senators sent a letter urging President Biden to protect Palestinian civilians and work toward peace in the region, and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) called for a cease-fire. Israel and Hamas formally agreed to four-to-five-day fighting pause and a hostage deal on Tuesday.
The volume of calls and emails has led some offices to answer less often and to fall behind emptying voice-mail inboxes, making it impossible to leave a message. A fax, suggested activists on social media, was another pathway for constituents to make their voices heard.
“What originally tickled me about the idea was that there was this physical piece of paper they couldn’t ignore,” said Kendra Appe, 37, a therapist in Seattle who has been asking for a cease-fire. “I like the idea of invading their space a little more. You can’t ignore me.”
If you were born before 1995, you can skip the next paragraph.
Fax (short for facsimile) machines let anyone send a copy of a document over phone lines by scanning the paper in on one end and calling the recipient’s fax machine, which then prints out a duplicate version. Faxes are typically black and white and include a cover page with the To and From names, fax number, a subject and short message. The technology has largely been replaced by email but lingers in industries such as health care, law and real estate.
In Congress, it’s unlikely the documents are still printed out. Many, if not most, of the offices have systems that turn faxes into emails, their pages arriving as attachments, said Daniel Schuman, governance director at Popvox Foundation, a nonprofit focused on modernizing government and tech. When the offices did have actual fax machines, too many letters could force them to run out of paper and create a bigger disruption.
That doesn’t mean faxing is without value. Almost all comments are still tallied manually by staffers, who look at or listen to everything that comes in and turn them into reports for their member, Schuman said.
Appe regularly attends protests, calls their representative daily and is using a free site called FaxZero to send them a letter, as well as a single page that says “Cease-fire Now!” in a large, bold font.
On a typical day, FaxZero processes about 4,000 faxes, said owner Kay Savetz, who runs its parent company, Savetz Publishing. That number nearly tripled last week — last Thursday, it sent 11,000 faxes, primarily to lawmakers.
“It’s old-school but it feels tangible, it feels more real than sending an email,” said Savetz, whose company has three employees. “Is there really a difference? I don’t know, but I think it’s important in our democracy that people reach out and be heard, whether you’re comfortable doing it with fax or email or picking up the phone and making a call.”
The 17-year-old site, which feels like a time capsule of the 2000s internet, lets anyone send a fax online without owning a machine. Individuals can send up to five free faxes a day, and since 2012, the site has listed the fax numbers for members of the House and Senate.
The faxes are encrypted, so FaxZero can’t see what issues or positions people are pushing for, but the company can see the metadata. In 2017, it added leader boards of the most faxed representatives in the past day, week or month. As of this writing, all were topped by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
Phone calls to politicians are also spiking, according to 5Calls, a liberal nonprofit website founded in 2016 that helps people with scripts and numbers for making calls. Over the past month, the site documented 321,000 calls, primarily asking for a cease-fire, said 5Calls co-founder and technical director Nick O’Neill. It’s the largest spike in interest the site has experienced in years, he said, since a campaign to save the Affordable Care Act.
About 50 percent of calls are going to voice mail, 25 percent are reaching a human, and 25 percent get no humans or voice-mail options, O’Neill said.
“We are getting some feedback from the people inside these offices to keep doing it, trying to give us hope,” Appe said. “They know if we stop talking, then it’s easier for these elected officials.”
Different forms of communication have varying levels of impact, experts say. Emails, faxes, phone calls and tagging members of Congress on social media are effective in aggregate, but there are some best practices. Instead of just voicing an opinion, mention a specific bill number if there is one, keep the message short, be polite and have a specific ask.
The even more impactful options are in person, Schuman said. You can go to your district office or attend a town hall or virtual town hall. If you’re in Washington, D.C., you can request a meeting with the congressperson or a member of their staff. Many members will be traveling back to their hometowns over the holidays. Sign up for mailing lists to find out about local events. Find an organization that is doing work on the issue and see what they recommend.
“There always a desire for one cool hack to save democracy,” Schuman said. “It’s get involved. That’s the hack, that’s what it’s always been.”
