A representative democracy only works when you can actually contact your representatives. You can’t voice your opinions to your senator’s busy signal. Resistbot found a line that wasn’t busy—a fax line. Using Twilio, Resistbot engineers lowered the hurdle of sending a fax, and made it as easy as sending a text.

Fire off one text message to Resistbot’s number, and it’s immediately turned to a fax using Twilio’s Fax API, and sent to your senator. Jason Putorti is one of the engineers who helped mold fax into a powerful tool for political activism.

Within the first 100 days of launching, Resistbot logged over 55 million texts, 3.6 million pages faxed and 687,000 users.

“We knew citizens’ voices needed to be heard,” says Jason. “Writing a text messages and getting the instant gratification that your message went through, you feel powerful. You feel like you did something.”

The users’ sense of ownership and contribution helps propel Resistbot to this day. Jason and his fellow Resistbot founders see the service as a proxy to a more lofty goal—building a more representative democracy.

“I want conservatives, liberals, and everyone to be heard,” says Jason. “At the end of the day, senators are responsible to all citizens. By making our voices heard, we can have laws that truly reflect the people of the United States.”