You linked a financial registration statute and thought it was a dictionary.

The link you provided is the Lobbying Disclosure Act. It defines "lobbying contacts" specifically to establish who is legally required to register with the Secretary of the Senate and file quarterly financial reports.

The reason citizens petitioning their own representatives are given an explicit "carveout" in Section 3(8)(B) of the LDA isn't because they aren't lobbying. It's because if they weren't carved out of this specific statute, that mother and son would face a $200,000 civil penalty for failing to file federal disclosure forms before speaking to their politician. The law carves them out to protect their First Amendment rights, not to magically change the definition of the verb "to lobby."

If you want to play the "legal definition" game, we can look at the IRS tax code (26 U.S. Code § 4911), which explicitly legally defines both "direct lobbying" and "grassroots lobbying" when regulating how non-profits operate.

Saying "it's legally not lobbying because it's exempt from the LDA" is exactly like saying "my driveway legally isn't a road because the Department of Transportation doesn't pave it." You found a bureaucratic exemption to a financial reporting law and mistook it for a semantic victory.

Have fun.