What I envision is an easy to use program (from the end users perspective) that can be incorporated into multiple types of sites including (but not limited to) news organizations, blogs, non-profit organizations, activist sites, social networking sites and anyone’s personal site. Its purpose is to facilitate, in a non-partisan way, interaction and action for both social and political issues.
At the bottom of relevant stories, blogs, etc., would be link to the letter writing app, encouraging the reader to voice their views. The link would activate a pop-up (debatable, but I like that idea), that would first ask for the users relevant information (name, address, email address, etc.). This information would allow the system to determine a series of choices about who the letter could go to (political, governmental, business, media personnel) based on the users location. The program could then prefill all the relevant contact information for those agencies/people. At this point, the user would be able to browse through all the letters that have been written by other users on this topic, hopefully encompassing many different views on the issues at hand. The user could choose one of the letters already written or write another.
If the user chose to write a letter, it would give the user a place to start by prefilling in the start of the letter in a text box. I rather like Nate’s description, so I will use it. “This letter is in regard to issue/event X as discussed in article Y in publication Z.”
Finally, when the user is ready, they could choose to print the letter to mail (or fax) or the user could choose to email the letter.
As advanced possibilities (not necessary for immediate implementation) users could vote for what they believe are the best letters.