Episode 118

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Published on:

27th Oct 2025

87% of Races Decided Before Election Day: How Primaries Silence Your Voice

Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley expose how gerrymandering and low-turnout primaries rig 87% of House races, leaving just 7% of voters in control. Guest Rob Richie, president of Expand Democracy and co-founder of FairVote, traces his reform journey from family legacy to pushing ranked choice voting and proportional representation. Diving into the Voting Rights Act's triumphs—like soaring Black voter registration post-1965—and its erosion by Supreme Court rulings, they reveal how fair systems could shatter racial barriers and empower every voice in a polarized democracy.

Timestamps:

  • (00:00) Hidden Election Truths: Primaries Lock in Winners
  • (00:37) Hosts and Guest: Jerremy, Dave, and Rob Richie
  • (01:29) Rob's Reform Spark: From Family Legacy to Advocacy
  • (03:54) Voting Systems Evolution: Duopolies and Third-Party Struggles
  • (11:23) Voting Rights Act Impact: Breaking Racial Barriers

Connect: Rob Richie

Transcript
Jerremy:

Most of America's elections are decided long before election day in 2024.

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87% of house races were

decided before you even voted.

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They're locked months before in

primaries by just 7% of voters deciding

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who represents you and Congress.

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It's not corruption.

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It's designed, we draw lines that twist

democracy into a system, rewarding

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safe seats to big parties and extremes

while leaving most voices out.

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I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom with

my co-host Dave Conley, and this

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is Solving America's Problems.

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This is a good one and we are really

pumped that it's mostly audio today

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because Dave Dave is here in spirit.

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He's gotten beat up pretty bad with some

very unique virus, but he is still here.

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Today we're joined by Rob Richie,

president of Expand Democracy and

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co-founder of Fair Vote, whose reforms

ranked choice, voting proportional

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representation, and Alaska's top four

primary aim to make every vote matter.

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. Rob, welcome to the show.

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Rob: Thank you Jerremy.

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That was a lovely inter introduction

and there's, so much to talk about, both

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what has we've tried to do and done over

the last, uh, 35 years and all things.

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We still need to do it.

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Jerremy: reflecting on your journey

from Fair Votes founding in:

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expand democracy today, what personal

experiences first sparked your focus

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on the mechanics of electoral change?

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Rob: It was a combination of things.

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I had the good fortune of being the

great nephew of a guy named George

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Hallett, who had been the leader of the

proportional representation movement

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in the 20th century, which a lot of

people don't even realize existed.

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But a number of cities adopted proportion

representation in New York City being

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the biggest in the thirties and forties.

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And he edited a column in the

National Civic Review for many years.

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And my dad had absorbed

all of his insights.

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And so as I was a young person

getting involved in politics,

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he just shared about this idea.

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So I had this kind of idea planted that,

oh, we should be talking about this.

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And then I got very involved in a charter

reform effort in Washington state.

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And in my county and said, oh of course we

should look at proportion representation.

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And this is pre-internet and you

just send lots of letters out and

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learn more and more about things.

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And I think that what really drove my

interest in it is a belief that our

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politics was too narrow at the time.

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That was I think the insight of the

time that politics was like a duopoly

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and third parties were isolated and

independents couldn't really run.

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And what you saw emerging was Ross Pro ran

for president in:

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That was a strong independent voice

that created a conversation about

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ranked choice voting and the term

limits movement passed everywhere.

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That was one approach to like, how can

we respond to things, but I felt that

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proportion representation was this

positive change and it was really fun.

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We connected with people.

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We all convened in Cincinnati.

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And stepped in without really any

money, but a lot of energy and a

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lot of good connections around the

country and kind of year by year

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have found a lot of things to do.

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And I think what ultimately

was the change that moved the

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most was rank choice, voting.

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But over the years I was fortunate

enough to advance other good ideas,

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like the National Popular Vote Plan and

different voter registration changes

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and, you get a lot of changes, but

here we're with so much to do and so

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it's not it hasn't been worth doing.

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But it also is clear that we

have, we have a long way to go.

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Jerremy: Yep.

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Yeah.

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And when you think about the evolution

of your ideas from the:

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Review essay on winner take all voting

to the:

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model or New Zealand switch to more

like proportional voting system

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in nine three, what emotions arise

about the path to reform in America?

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'cause mentioning we have so much left to

do, what really gets sparks inside of you.

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Rob: What really drove my interest

in the nineties and a lot of the

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people coming into that generation, I

think there were two major strands of

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interest for proportion representation.

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One was this sense of the

hip lock nature of parties.

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And so the energy really mostly

came from outside the parties,

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like to the left or to the right.

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You sometimes would see again

this Ross Perot kind of energy,

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but more on the left and right.

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On that piece now we don't

see them as hip lock.

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We see the parties as deadlocked.

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We see like the polarization and the

doom loop of the parties being pushed

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in each cycle farther and farther apart,

and fearing and hating each other.

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And when a party gets a chance to run

things, running it on its own, it's

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very much against grain of how United

States Constitution is set up and how

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we govern best and also the whole time

we've had this conversation about how to

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be a successful multiracial democracy.

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And so when I first started, within the

first year, we had the first major Supreme

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Court rulings checking the approach to

implementing the Voting Rights Act to

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create access to representation for racial

minorities through drawing districts to

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create black majority Latino, majority

Asian American majority districts within

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a winner take all system, trying to

make it fair for those in the minority,

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which is almost a contradiction.

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And that approach became

controversial within that first year.

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And we were engaging with that

and trying to point out that, a

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proportional system would allow

a voter driven process to that.

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And now we're seeing that one heating

up in a whole different way too.

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But that, so back in

the nineties was really.

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Talking about it more through that lens.

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I will say I've always had this

vision of making aspirational changes.

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I wanna make big changes because

I feel that we need to do a lot,

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we need to address the electoral

college, we need to have a right to

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vote in the Constitution and so on.

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And changing winner take all elections,

but always wanting to be relevant,

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always finding a way to move forward

and really engaging where people are.

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And what we ultimately found in

the aughts and in the tens, is that

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rankers voting was where people

were more ready to make changes.

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And so I continue to believe

in proportional systems.

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I think actually the trends I just

talked about create an opening for that.

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But I also feel that rank trust

voting is just particularly relevant

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for a change right now that can

be won, not easily, but that's one

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that, so that has been important.

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It's always this dance between keeping

the big ideas in mind, but trying

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to find a vehicle to advance 'em.

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Jerremy: Right and.

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This example where you're talking

about, I think in general you have this

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institutional trust at historic lows.

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How do you see reforms like proportional,

rank choice voting, which is a great way

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to, allocate these seats based on vote

share using ranked ballots, addressing

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that through more or better legislative

empowerment for everyday voters.

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Rob: I think the most exciting change

that would happen is that all the

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parts of the country would open up.

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Toward relevant competitive

elections in November.

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So that's step one.

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That's also why I like the

national popular vote plan.

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The having a direct election of

president, effectively within

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the electoral college system.

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But it, every vote in every

state counts the same.

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And so the candidates will compete for a

vote in Mississippi and in Massachusetts

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and Michigan and the swing states.

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And in some ways the swing states,

nonw states and presidential

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elections underscores that in a

winner take all system in this

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heavily polarized environment.

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There's only some places that are close.

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So we can see that really clearly

in presidential races and the

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candidates evidence that they just

don't campaign in, 80% of the country.

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And then in house races because it's

fractured by having individual candidates.

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It's maybe not as obvious, but we're

getting more and more aware of just

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how similar it is in some ways,

even more so in the sense of just.

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Almost every congressional race

isn't competitive in November.

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So if you just go to

multi-member districts.

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So that's the step is like right

now we have a single member district

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system where the, that line drawing

is so incredibly important because

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you're shaping that one winner.

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Take all contest to multi-member districts

where you have more than one, you

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combine districts to make them bigger.

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And then if you use proportional

rank choice voting, which the

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ballot is just like rank choice,

voting, very simple, very intuitive.

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It's who's my first choice?

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Who's my second choice?

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Who's my third choice?

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Ah, I don't wanna rank anybody else.

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You.

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It's totally up to you.

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You can rank within a party.

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You don't have to rank within a party.

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You have a lot of power as a voter

to define what matters to you.

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But let's look about it from a

partisan lens, is that the math of

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how to win changes from needing more

than 50% of the vote to a proportion

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of the multi-member district.

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So if it's a three seats, the math means

a little over a quarter of the vote.

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Means that you can win, if it's

five seats, gets down to about

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little under 20%, so you know 17%

and it's still ranked as voting.

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So if you vote for a candidate who's

farther down, it's not gonna win.

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Your ballot can still

count for a second choice.

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So you put those together and essentially

every part of the country, the Fair

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Representation Act, which is a statutory

proposal in Congress, would mean that

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every state that has at least three

seats, very likely, every district would

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have more than one party winning seats.

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You wouldn't have this homogenous winner

take all red versus blue environment.

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You'd have shades of purple and

differences within the major parties.

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Much more fluid access for

those racial minorities.

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But that sense for voters, I'm in

a competitive elections, candidates

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are gonna reach out to me.

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I have some real choices.

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I don't even have to stick within the

major parties and, I can still have

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a second choice within a major party.

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Like I, I have a lot more power

and opportunity and politics

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suddenly becomes real everywhere.

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And when they win, you got

both parties representing every

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part of the country, right?

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So you don't have this, oh, I'm a

Republican, so I don't care about the

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big cities, or I'm a Democrat and I'm

not really looking at rural areas, right?

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You have people from everywhere

and you have minor parties and

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independents holding them accountable,

which we certainly need as well.

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Jerremy: Yeah.

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And I think that's a really

great point just to be a little

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bit more well representative

of what a revolution, right?

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We could actually all really be

making a choice a difference here.

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In 2023, Rob, or sorry, yeah.

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2023 you co-authored a piece

discussing voting rights.

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The Voting Rights Act constraints, right?

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Discussing the federal

protections against.

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Racial discrimination in voting.

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How do those continue to shape the

adaptation of proportional systems

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in the US for everyday communities?

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Rob: I would say this is that the

Voting Rights Act was one of these

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history making changes in the

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And, at that time we essentially

had a system of apartheid

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in a lot of the country.

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Or at least the south.

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But even, Virginia, right across the

river from me you had segregation

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about access to lunch counters

and things, and in voting it could

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get really bad, so in Mississippi.

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Of eligible African American adults

or adults who are over 18 who are

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African American only about 10%

were registered to vote in 65.

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And by 68, 69, that was up to I dunno, 85

or 90 or something, like a massive change

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because suddenly you were not able to deny

people based on race access to the ballot.

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And there were other protections built

into the Voting Rights Act o sort of

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over time, the most probably impactful

of which was that in certain areas

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of the country was measured histories

of racial discrimination practices.

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If they tried to make any change

at any level of government in that

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jurisdiction that affected voting, it

had to be reviewed by the Department

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of Justice and to say, oh, that's

not gonna have a negative impact.

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And so you had this, what we

call prophylactic change in that

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most jurisdictions knowing that.

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What was gonna be reviewed would

be thrown out if it wasn't fair,

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just didn't do bad practices.

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That particular provision, section five

of the Voting Rights Act was thrown out

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by the Supreme Court about a decade ago.

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And that has opened the door toward

jurisdictions pushing the boundaries.

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So you can only stop those

practices now within a, with a

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lawsuit that's expensive to do.

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And and that, that has had some really

ripple effects that are quite negative.

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We're still seeing, we're not seeing

anything like what we saw in the

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sixties as far as disparate effects

for voter registration and voter

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turnout that we saw at that level.

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But we're starting to see things

chip away and this new Voting Rights

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Act case that was just heard in the

Supreme Court recently, and there's

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a lot of conjecture about what it

might mean, but they might take away.

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The provision of the Voting

Rights Act that is more about

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representation than about access.

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And that representation piece is

that if there's certain standards,

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so there's a history, so you

have to prove these things.

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So it's not like you can do

this everywhere, but you have

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to show that there's measurable

discrimination or voters factor

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in race in the way they vote.

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A racial minority is in the minority, so

they're not in the majority, and you put

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those together, you have a challenging

situation for the racial minority to win.

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And there's a solution.

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There's a remedy.

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And the traditional remedy that

you can do is to be able to draw a

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single member district to turn the

racial minority into a majority.

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That part is becoming very much

under scrutiny of the majority of

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the Supreme Court because it is,

bringing race right into the process.

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And they are trying to, there's a majority

of the court that's trying to say, Hey,

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we're, let's move to colorblind worlds.

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And what as an opportunity remains

is that the remedy is a system

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that's just fair to more people.

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That lowers the barrier to

representation for everybody and voters.

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It's very voter driven.

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And you can say there's a history of

racial discrimination in how people vote.

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But we're not saying people

are gonna keep voting by race.

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We're just gonna make sure everyone,

including racial minorities

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have the power to elect someone.

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I think it's an attractive solution.

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It may end up having to go through

the political process and not the

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legal one, though there have been

some voting rights cases, one, to make

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that change and that is something that

remains as a potential legal strategy.

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Alex: Jerremy digs into Rob's early

sparks for electoral reform, exposing

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how winner-take-all locks out voices.

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But next, as Rob unpacks voting rights

barriers, the real stakes emerge—can

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fair access shatter racial divides,

or does the system keep twisting?

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About the Podcast

Solving America's Problems
Solving America’s Problems isn’t just a podcast—it’s a journey. Co-host Jerremy Newsome, a successful entrepreneur and educator, is pursuing his lifelong dream of running for president. Along the way, he and co-host Dave Conley bring together experts, advocates, and everyday Americans to explore the real, actionable solutions our country needs.

With dynamic formats—one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, and more—we cut through the noise of divisive rhetoric to uncover practical ideas that unite instead of divide. If you’re ready to think differently, act boldly, and join a movement for meaningful change, subscribe now.