Redial Congress

Calling members of the US Congress is the best way for a constituent's voice to be heard. But it's often a nuisance of overloaded switchboards and endless busy signals. This application aims to reduce that hassle by automatically redialing until the call is connected.

Getting started

You'll need a Twilio account and inbound number, and a server to respond to HTTP requests from Twilio.

The application needs access to a Redis instance and depends on the Python packages listed in requirements.txt (pip install -r requirements.txt).

Copy config.example.py to config.py and set all necessary values.

Generate the ZIP code data cache by running python geo_data.py > zip_codes.json.

To run the application for development:

$ python redialer.py
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)

or:

$ export FLASK_APP=redialer.py
$ flask run
 * Serving Flask app "redialer"
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)

When developing locally behind NAT, ngrok makes things a lot easier.

Use something like Gunicorn for production deployment.

When setting up your inbound Twilio number or TwiML app, use the following settings:

• Request URL: http://example.com/ (e.g. the / route of the application)
• Status Callback URL: http://example.com/inbound/ping (the /inbound/ping route of the application)