How many times did you vote during the past year? Once? Only once?

You could have voted much oftener. Indeed, you should have!

You could have voted on every bill considered in Congress and by the White House. You could have voted on every issue debated in your state legislature or city council. You could have voted for or against any television program which you viewed, any radio program you heard. You could have voted on any newspaper or magazine article that you read.

Like voting in political elections, this type of voting is more than a privilege. It is an obligation. Especially for Christians.

And it is easy to vote in these elections. You don’t even leave your home. Your writing table becomes your polling booth. The ballots are your letters—compliments and complaints—that you aim at public officials, editors and advertisers.

Evangelicals complain generously to each other about political developments, about unfair treatment in the news, about morally objectionable radio and television shows.

But are these complaints effective? Do they help to improve the objectionable situations? Of course not -they are made to the wrong people. To be effective, the complaints must reach those responsible for the disappointing political developments, slanted news stories, smutty television and radio programs.

How can these people be reached? By letter, of course. And every letter that you write—every letter of praise or protest—is a vote that will weigh in future decisions made by the person who receives it

Do letters really count? Are they really read?

Public officials do read them and do heed their con tents, according to two men who speak for organizations in Washington, D.G. Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, secretary of public affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, says: “I presume that as a preacher 1 wrote as few letters to government officials as anybody. Yet I am now thoroughly sold on the usefulness of this method and we have used it on occasion with excellent results.”

This opinion is shared by C. Stanley Lowell, associate director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Mr. Lowell cites this example of the power of letters: “Just a few years ago an American President appointed an ambassador to the Vatican. The greatest volume of mail that ever developed on a single issue in the history of the United States descended on Washington. It literally compelled the cancellation of this nefarious enterprise.”

How about editors? Are they, like public officials, impressed by letters? Let another authority on letter writing answer that question. The Reverend Bernard Bassett, S.J., director of the Sodalities of Our Lady in England, told a group of sodalists in Cleveland of this experience. “Each sodality,” he said, “has at least one institute a year on how to write a letter to the editor of newspapers and magazines. The possibility of bringing Catholic influence on editors of the press is too important to pass up.”

The Reverend Bassett then recounted the success which English Catholics had in writing to editors and store managers to ask that nativity crib scenes be put into windows and public places at Christmas. The campaign was so successful that the government even included a crib in its Christmas decorations on Trafalgar Square. “Letter writing,” says Father Bassett, “good letter writing, did the trick.”

Are American editors Similarly influenced by letters from readers? A Christian newspaperman tells a story which answers that question. A large city paper began to publish Billy Graham’s daily column. The Christian writer naturally was pleased to see Mr. Graham’s witness in the paper and hoped that Christian readers would express their appreciation for the column. He discussed it with a friend on the newspaper who told him that not one reader had written to express interest in the column. The paper no longer carries it. There was no evidence that it was appreciated -so it was dropped. (And dozens of Christians doubtless complained to themselves and to each other because newspapers “won’t publish anything about evangelical Christianity.”)

The other side of the coin is revealed by a little article clipped from the comic page of another paper published in the same city. The article reads in part: “Your favorite comic strip will be back…Several hundred readers have called and written to ask if the Toodles’ absence is permanent. It definitely is not…”

And so in this large city a comic strip flourishes in one paper while a column expounding Christianity dies in another. Why? Because editors gauged render interest by reader response. After all, how else could they tell what the readers want?

What about radio and television? Could your letters help to clean up the programs about which you so often complain? Paul Molloy, highly-regarded television editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. answers that question, Hear him: “A highly placed advertising man once told me that a dozen -repeat: a dozen -letters from viewers on the sponsor’s desk were sufficient to cause commotion all the way down the line, through the company’s advertising representative to the office of the network exchequer.”

Just imagine what you and eleven other action-minded Christians could accomplish!

Letters are effective, according to these authorities in three different fields. Why is this true? It’s simple, The politician wants your vote at the next election. The editor wants you to buy his newspaper or magazine. The advertiser on television or radio wants you to buy his product.

Complimentary letters to them lets them know that you are a satisfied customer and encourages them to continue as they have been doing, Your complaint to one of them tells him that you are dissatisfied with his service. It is a warning that you are likely to quit patronizing him.

Agreed that it pays to write letters.

This question then: Why do so few Christians witness in this manner? Why didn’t at least one Christian among the dozens who doubtless enjoyed the Billy Graham column write these six simple words: ‘“Thanks for the Billy Graham articles”?

That question is answered by the same Christian newspaperman who related the incident. “Protestants,” he says, “particularly evangelical Protestants, tend to have an inferiority complex when it comes to writing letters to newspapers. Or maybe it’s just laziness.”

Inferiority complex…laziness…both reasons probably figure large in the lack of Christian witness by mail. If you haven’t voted regularly by mail, quite likely “inferiority complex” is the main reason. You just didn’t know how influential your letters can be. You didn’t know that your votes really count in these continuing elections.

Of course, you can’t plead that excuse after reading this article. You now know that your letters do count. That leaves you just one excuse!

–Church News Service of N.A.E.