I am a constituent, a voting member of the United States of America.
There are some who call me Mr. Beat.
About three months ago, I called every U.S. Senator in the country, and many of you watched.
In fact, I asked many of you to share with me questions you’d like me to ask
YOUR U.S. Senator on your behalf. And yes, I did it live.
We'll do it live. :beep: it! We'll do it live! I livestreamed it on YouTube,
Twitch, and even Metaface, and this, you could say, uh, added to the drama a bit.
Now, when I say I called every U.S. Senator, I actually just called someone who is on their
staff. Sadly, I didn’t actually get to talk to any U.S. Senator directly. While I was secretly
thinking it’d be really cool if an actual Senator picked up the phone, I wasn’t expecting it.
It’s no surprise that Senators depend heavily on their staffers. Each Senator has dozens of staff
members, many of them interns, who help Senators analyze bills and policies, manage their offices,
meet with the press, research, archive stuff, and, most importantly, communicate with constituents.
Ya know, constituents like you and me.
In my opinion, these staffers are underpaid heroes. There are nearly 6,000 Senate staffers,
and they all work their butts off. I later found out that most of the people I ended
up talking to on the phone were in fact interns. So anyway, my goal was to call all their offices
within 6 hours. 100 Senators in 6 hours. Oh, and the office of the president of the Senate,
the Vice President, Kamala Harris. So 101 calls in 6 hours. No problem.
Yeah it took like, wayy longer than that.
In fact, it took me so long that I had to break it into two parts. The whole thing took around 11
hours. To be fair, much of it was responding to your deep concerns about our federal government.
You wanted your voice heard. You wanted your Senators to hear all about the bills,
laws, policies, and issues that were important to you. And while I brought
up all kinds of important stuff to the Senate staffers, my default issue was election reform,
which is really important to me. In particular, I brought up voting rights
bills that I thought would help protect our representative form of democracy.
Well, many Senate offices didn’t even answer the phone.
Of the 101 offices I called, 53 didn’t pick up, so I left 53 voicemails. In
every single voicemail I left, I briefly mentioned the bill, issue,
or policy I wanted the Senator to know about, as well as my contact information. Oh yeah,
I also tried to remember to thank them for their service. Sucking up never hurts, after all.
48 staffers DID answer. At first, I told staffers
that they’re call was being recorded and they didn’t like that too much. So I stopped telling
them after that. By the way, the District of Columbia has a “one-party consent” law,
which means it’s not a crime to record a phone call as long as one party knows. Oh I knew about
it alright. The vast majority of staffers I spoke to were both very nice and knowledgeable.
Ok, some of them weren’t so nice but ya know. Some of them even knew who I was
and knew that I was livestreaming so that was especially crazy. For some of them,
it really felt like they weren’t going to pass along my information. Many especially
seemed to disengage from me once they realized I wasn’t from the state the Senator represented.
So it’s now been three months. How many responses did I get back from the actual Senators?
Well, sadly, not many at all.
I did get added to some mailing lists. I now get newsletters from Kentucky Senator Rand Paul
all…the…time. A shout out to his communications team. They are busy. I also get emails
occasionally from Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty and Minnesota Senator Tina Smith. I also somehow
got on Representative Lauren Boebert’s mailing list, and I’m pretty sure the Hagerty staffer
was responsible for this. And hey speaking of Senator Smith, she also emailed me a personal
letter supporting my support for election reform, specifically referencing her disagreement with the
Supreme Court in the case Shelby County v. Holder and mentioning her cosponsorship of the John
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. That said, it mostly felt like copypasta, like she or one of her
staffers literally copied and pasted just about all of it from something else previously written.
I got three other letters back that also had a copypasta feel to them.
The offices of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich,
and New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen all emailed me copypasta letters. Senator Shaheen
also supported my support for election reform, specifically referencing her disagreement with
the Supreme Court in the case Shelby County v. Holder and mentioning her cosponsorship of the
John Lewis Voting RIghts Advancement Act. Wait, in fact her email was A LOT like Senator Smith’s.
Hmmm. Senator Heinrich’s email supported my support for Puerto Rico becoming a state,
bringing up his introduction of the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act of 2021. Senator Brown’s
email was uh…interesting. I had called him about ranked choice voting being a great alternative to
plurality voting, and his email was mostly just an explainer about what ranked choice voting is.
Thanks Senator Brown, but I actually already made a video explaining it!
Anyway, he didn’t specifically support ranked choice voting in the letter,
but instead said he vaguely supported it being easier to vote. That said,
at least he ended the letter with “should legislation on rank choice voting come to
the Senate floor for consideration, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.”
Thanks dude! (thumbs up) The next response I got was pretty impressive because it
felt less like copypasta and more like an actual, personal letter.
It was from Oregon Senator Jeffrey Merkley, and this was his response
to my voicemail regarding response to climate change. He began the letter with…
Greetings Mr. Beat, Thank you for your call, your interest in my work
to fight climate chaos, and for encouraging your fellow citizens to engage with their government.
and ended it with… Thank you again for contacting me,
and for helping educate your audience on YouTube about civics and about
government engagement! All my best,
Jeffrey A. Merkley United States Senator
Well that was nice, man. Thanks Senator! But uh, you’re about to be outdone. There was only
one U.S. Senator who sent a response like this.
(Cory Booker clip) That was New Jersey Senator Cory Booker,
and that was…freaking amazing. This particularly impressed me since I know just how busy
Senators are. So the fact that he took out the time to film that was neat.
And Senator Booker’s enthusiasm must be contagious because his staffer who I spoke
with on the phone was also enthusiastic and receptive to my calls for election reform.
As cool as that was, in the three months since I made the 101 calls to Senate offices,
I only got six responses back. Total. Just six.
One of those who didn’t get back to me was New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Lujan, and I totally
understand why he didn’t. The man had a stroke while I was literally doing the livestreams,
and I wish him the very best as he still is slowly recovering. But for the rest of you Senators,
I am disappointed in you. Let me be frank.
This experience has been a total letdown and has made me question our representative democracy.
Look, I get why Senators can’t make much time for constituents.
They have so many. Take California. There are almost 40 million people that live in California!
And I imagine the two California Senators get A LOT of calls and emails each day to their offices.
Still, I KNOW they make time for their campaign donors, and I KNOW
they make time for lobbyists who bribe them. So…why can’t they make time for us?
To the six U.S. Senators who responded, thank you. To the rest of you, you have some work to do. Oh
and watch out, because I’m calling every member of the House of Representatives, next. Stay tuned.
I’ve got 99 problems, and traditional banks are one. They charge $35 overdraft fees.
Their apps are slow and hard to use. They make you wait on hold for hours to talk to a human.
Well, there’s a better way to use your money. This video is sponsored in part by
Albert. Albert is completely different from any bank account you’ve ever used. First of all, it’s
absolutely free to sign up for. It’s easy to use. Albert helps you save automatically. It looks at
your income and expenses and sees what money you can save, and then they automatically move money
into your savings account, sometimes as small as a few dollars at a time. Albert gives you cash back.
In the Albert app, just tap your favorite merchant and you can get between 5 and 20% cash back on
purchases from places like Starbucks and Walmart. Albert also has a team of financial experts they
call Geniuses that will look at your situation and help you make a plan and answer any questions if
you get stuck. Click the link in the description box or go to Albert dot com slash MRBEAT to
download the Albert app today. That’s Albert dot com slash MRBEAT. For a limited time when you
open a checking account and connect a qualifying direct deposit, you’ll get $150.
Thanks to all the Congressional staffers who reached out to me after the livestreams. It
was truly valuable to hear your perspective. It was also…uh…a little depressing, to be honest.
Keep fighting the good fight. I’ll keep you posted when I call each member of the House
of Representatives. No, it won’t all be in one day. Thanks for watching, constituents!