Does Your Vote Actually Matter? Gerrymandering Exposed (Full)
Your congressional race is probably already decided—90% of districts are rigged safe before a single ballot drops. Everyday voter Reid Bauman joins Jerremy and Dave to rip the band-aid off gerrymandering, why moderates are erased from the map, and how polarization became the only game in town. From personal voting horror stories to AI’s creepy role in politics, this one hits hard if you’re tired of feeling politically homeless.
Timestamps:
- (00:00) The Ballot Box – Reid Bauman joins
- (00:52) Intro – Solving America’s Problems
- (01:19) Reed’s Voting Story – real voter frustrations
- (02:47) Personal Voting Nightmares – we’ve all got ‘em
- (05:19) Why Voting Feels Broken – the big frustrations
- (15:24) Gerrymandering Deep Dive – how maps kill competition
- (19:52) Can This Even Be Fixed? – reform talk
- (32:44) Tech & Voting – apps, blockchain, the future
- (36:55) Why Schools Suck at Civics – the education fail
- (38:19) Voting Education Matters – huge missed opportunity
- (39:39) Mock Elections in Class – actually work
- (47:54) AI Taking Over Politics – scary and real
- (01:04:03) Gerrymandering Fuels Polarization – the vicious cycle
- (01:07:50) Final Thoughts – are we totally screwed?
📢 Solving America’s Problems Podcast – Real Solutions For Real Issues
Transcript
Welcome to Solving America’s Problems — where Jerremy and Dave just learned
Speaker:that in most congressional districts, the November election is already
Speaker:decided before a single vote gets cast.
Speaker:Reed Bauman laid it out plain: once a partisan locks the
Speaker:primary in a gerrymandered seat, the general is a formality.
Speaker:No one’s competing for the moderate in the middle — because that voter’s
Speaker:been surgically carved out of the map.
Speaker:Jerremy admitted his own first ballot was basically random clicks on seventy-five
Speaker:races he’d never heard of, while Dave stared at bond measures designed to
Speaker:make refusal feel like hating puppies.
Speaker:And Reed dropped the hardest fact of the night — districts are now drawn
Speaker:with census precision so exact that extremists win by default, leaving the
Speaker:rest of America with representatives who never have to compromise…
Speaker:Dave D. C Conley.
Speaker:There's thousands and thousands of people all over the United States
Speaker:that are eager to learn what we're talking about in this episode.
Speaker:In this week's episode of Solving America's Problems, we take on the forces
Speaker:shaping not just who wins elections, but how our choices are boxed in before
Speaker:ballots are even cast gerrymander.
Speaker:Districts lock in extremes over competition, leaving us on the sidelines
Speaker:and wondering if voices even matter.
Speaker:Our guest, Reed Bauman joins us with the perspective of an everyday voter
Speaker:whose first ballot in a Georgia firehouse back in 2008 for John
Speaker:McCain against Barack Obama was both a rite of passage and a glimpse of the
Speaker:frustrations baked into the system.
Speaker:From rickety booths, long lines and vague ballot measures to the larger machinery
Speaker:that decides outcomes before election day.
Speaker:Reid helps us trace how individual votes connect to a systemic failure and where
Speaker:reform could restore real representation.
Speaker:And that's this week on solving America's problems.
Speaker:Unpacking gerrymandering, how polarization steel solutions with Reid Bauman.
Speaker:I've got an interesting stat for everyone.
Speaker:65%, only 65% of Americans, which is 154 million people voted last
Speaker:year, which believe it or not, is the third highest turnout in decades.
Speaker:But those same Americans, if they trusted the system to count their
Speaker:votes, only 59% of those people say yes.
Speaker:We've built the largest voting system of any democracy on the
Speaker:planet while simultaneously making it the most confusing.
Speaker:Every state and territory has different rules.
Speaker:21 states expanded access, 10 Titan security, and somehow we're more
Speaker:anxious about democracy than ever.
Speaker:My name is Jerremy Alexander Newsom.
Speaker:My co-host is Dave Conley, and this is Solving America's problems.
Speaker:Today we're hearing from Reed B. On what it's really like to step into the booth.
Speaker:Reid,
Speaker:thanks for being here, man.
Speaker:anytime?
Speaker:It's gonna be exciting conversation just to go back and forth and
Speaker:just share what we're doing.
Speaker:But this is a fun first question, Reid.
Speaker:Paint us a picture, man.
Speaker:What's the very first memory you have of voting?
Speaker:And then I want to hear from my boy, Dave, and I'll share mine.
Speaker:I grew up pretty electorally involved.
Speaker:But my first election was 2008, John McCain versus Barack Obama.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:it was in my hometown, like fire station voting booth, and I
Speaker:walked in and cast my ballot for
Speaker:John McCain.
Speaker:That was my first memory.
Speaker:Voting.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:In a fire in a firehouse
Speaker:station.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:What about you, Dave?
Speaker:Georgia.
Speaker:Oh let's see.
Speaker:It was
Speaker:1917
Speaker:and,
Speaker:not quite the it was it was Bill Clinton against George Bush.
Speaker:And my first memory, and this is this was the same for years
Speaker:because it was exactly the same.
Speaker:I grew up in Northern Virginia and I went to everybody goes to this high school
Speaker:that's nearby, and it's the only high school that covers that, that part of the
Speaker:county and the lines were out the door.
Speaker:Now I think what was great about it was, and again, I, it's probably
Speaker:the exact same as it is today.
Speaker:You're in this line, it's a little bit cold outside because it's
Speaker:the fall in Northern Virginia.
Speaker:And you wait and you wait and you get inside a gymnasium that has like those
Speaker:crazy bright lights and this very old lady comes up and hands you a ballot
Speaker:and you then you have to wait in line again and you go to these funny booths
Speaker:that, they clearly just set up, right?
Speaker:They just unfolded it, it's like this rickety table.
Speaker:And it has these dividers on the left and the right.
Speaker:I think they were paper or plastic.
Speaker:And you get there and you you fill out these bubbles and then inevitably somebody
Speaker:around you goes, ah, I messed up my thing.
Speaker:And so then they have to go and they have to shred the ballot.
Speaker:Little old lady comes back up to you, hands you the ballot,
Speaker:and then you go and do it again.
Speaker:You fill out the bubbles.
Speaker:then you hand in the bubble, it goes into this machine, it
Speaker:looks like a giant shredder.
Speaker:It goes ZZ and that's it.
Speaker:They hand and then they stamp you, like they, they give you the I voted sticker so
Speaker:you can show everybody at work that, hey, I voted, and then it was out the door.
Speaker:They, the only thing that really sticks with me not necessarily like
Speaker:voting for the president or any of that is all the things that I
Speaker:didn't know was gonna be on there.
Speaker:Particularly like all the crap that the county puts on there because
Speaker:they refuse to do their job.
Speaker:Like they, they will, they, they don't want to actually balance
Speaker:the budget of this giant county, Fairfax County, it's monster, right?
Speaker:They want to make you vote for extra money.
Speaker:So they'll put these bond initiatives on there and they'll always
Speaker:make it like the craziest thing.
Speaker:They'll be like.
Speaker:Do you wanna feed orphans and protect puppies and have
Speaker:your schools open next year?
Speaker:Vote for this a hundred million dollar budget, right?
Speaker:This bond.
Speaker:And I'm like, of course everybody wants to vote for that, but that's not the point.
Speaker:They refuse to do the rest of the budgeting.
Speaker:And so like they, they'll put the like craziest thing that you say,
Speaker:of course I wanna vote for this.
Speaker:And that's what always sticks with me is that my county didn't
Speaker:want to really do its job.
Speaker:So they'll take care of everything that, that is actually controversial
Speaker:and put like the least controversial thing that everybody has to vote
Speaker:for on the bond initiatives.
Speaker:That's, that was my first memory of voting.
Speaker:What about you?
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:Maya's weird man, because probably a little bit of a blend
Speaker:maybe between both of yours.
Speaker:But so as growing up a Jo's Witness, one of their doctrines
Speaker:is that you don't vote, right?
Speaker:Because they don't want you to be any part of this world or this system as
Speaker:I say in air quotes for our listeners.
Speaker:And so I was in that religion mentally and physically until I
Speaker:was 24, which is only 13 years ago.
Speaker:So my very first vote cast was Obama versus MIT Romney.
Speaker:And I voted for Mitt Romney, although I knew Obama was gonna win.
Speaker:And when I walked in, it was a middle school, so I had to
Speaker:Google where the heck do I vote?
Speaker:I remember doing that, like, where do I vote?
Speaker:And like it was like, put in your zip code, it will tell you where to go.
Speaker:And I put on my zip code and I was like, there's no way I
Speaker:go to a middle school library.
Speaker:And sure enough, and they're like, make sure you bring your id.
Speaker:And this was in Tennessee at the time Nashville.
Speaker:And I'm trying to think of what the school was Reed, but it was somewhere
Speaker:out in Bellevue, some random middle school in Bellevue, in a library.
Speaker:And I went into this library and to your point, Dave, I went in there and
Speaker:I thought I would go to something and just put in my vote for president.
Speaker:that was it.
Speaker:Here's the president.
Speaker:Boom.
Speaker:You pick.
Speaker:Nope, there's 75 things I voted for and I had no clue what any of them were.
Speaker:I was like I felt like so stupid.
Speaker:I just started clicking buttons 'cause they were all mandatory, and
Speaker:I just was clicking people's names.
Speaker:I was like, I'll pick some s and I'll pick some Ds.
Speaker:I like, I'll let me give like half and half.
Speaker:Dunno who this person is.
Speaker:Dunno what this is.
Speaker:Should have looked that up.
Speaker:Should have researched that.
Speaker:Didn't know any of it.
Speaker:Filled out this horrible voting forum.
Speaker:I'm positive I voted for something terrible.
Speaker:Some.
Speaker:So someone that's actually been a fear of mine, someone's gonna pull up that voting
Speaker:history and go, Jerremy iss a neo-Nazi.
Speaker:Like he voted, you won't believe what he voted for in 2012.
Speaker:And yeah man I just filled out this random thing and, or sorry.
Speaker:Yeah it was just ultimately one of those situations where I
Speaker:got my sticker and that was it.
Speaker:But afterwards, man, I researched so much about who and what and all the
Speaker:things and just started becoming a little bit more inclined into the political
Speaker:sphere as I started stepping out of that particular religious belief into the
Speaker:fact that I am okay to be a part of this world and all that kinda good stuff.
Speaker:And so I will say, going up to that voting booth, I did not feel empowered.
Speaker:I felt uninformed.
Speaker:I wouldn't say frustrated for sure, but I would certainly say that I didn't
Speaker:really think what I was doing mattered.
Speaker:Ultimately, I was just excited to do it, 'cause I'd never done it before.
Speaker:Reid, lemme throw this question to you.
Speaker:If 59% of Americans say they actually trust the count, what's your gut reaction
Speaker:to that number and what's your opinion on, does your vote actually matter?
Speaker:Reid?
Speaker:As to whether your vote matters it's an aggregate, it's
Speaker:like a hive mind type thing.
Speaker:So individually, are you gonna swing an election?
Speaker:Almost guaranteed that you won't but your vote.
Speaker:That doesn't mean your vote doesn't count, as far as 59% of people I would
Speaker:be interested in historically, what number of people have trusted the system?
Speaker:I
Speaker:would make a pretty confident assumption that number is higher than it used
Speaker:to be.
Speaker:People have distrust in the system has gone up as a result of
Speaker:certain political forces basically benefiting them to sow distrust
Speaker:amongst the populist of the system.
Speaker:So I think
Speaker:that's probably a result of a lot of political action and rhetoric.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, I feel like 59% is pretty high for
Speaker:sure.
Speaker:So you, you mentioned in your vote, did you have to show ID at all when
Speaker:you went to your firehouse station?
Speaker:I don't remember, to be honest with you.
Speaker:I have no recollection of that.
Speaker:I don't
Speaker:think Georgia had a voter ID law at the time, so probably not.
Speaker:What's your general take on that?
Speaker:Should we like have some type of verification, registration
Speaker:for voting.
Speaker:I think it's a prickly issue.
Speaker:You can't come right out and say that you're against voter ID because that
Speaker:is a political, it's a toxic statement because if you're against voter id,
Speaker:then you must be for voter fraud.
Speaker:But I think as I read through the research that you guys have done, and you need
Speaker:to lay the groundwork to basically, dig into the studies and everything, but
Speaker:there's a lot of evidence that doesn't really have an impact on elections.
Speaker:So I think what it amounts to is probably more of a waste of state
Speaker:funds than anything to pass to have voter ID laws and stuff like that.
Speaker:And it's a show of election security more than it is actual
Speaker:election security because, who's committing fraud in the elections?
Speaker:Illegal immigrants or people like that who are coming, are they coming
Speaker:here to commit social engineering fraud and go steal elections?
Speaker:The amount of kind of collaboration and expertise that would require.
Speaker:Just is not really there for, and plus the potential punishment if they're caught,
Speaker:which it's not hard to be caught because elections are secured by census data.
Speaker:And backing up with people's addresses so that there is one vote
Speaker:per person even without voter ID
Speaker:laws.
Speaker:That answer the
Speaker:Yeah, it totally does.
Speaker:It made me make a note because I was thinking about all of the people
Speaker:who've been actually convicted of voter fraud, and it's almost
Speaker:exclusively politicians, political operators, working for politicians.
Speaker:So I think I'm on the side that all politicians
Speaker:need to
Speaker:show their ID before they vote.
Speaker:Those are the people who would have a motive to commit fraud.
Speaker:If I'm one person and my vote is gonna be one of millions, what incentive is
Speaker:there for me to try to commit fraud just so I can cast my one vote that
Speaker:probably
Speaker:wouldn't want swing an election, to go to prison.
Speaker:So, what you're saying and what I hear you saying is
Speaker:the voter challenge is much higher up the chain than an individual I a
Speaker:person having or not having an id.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:I
Speaker:like
Speaker:it.
Speaker:about right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I was gonna say earlier, how funny would it be if they
Speaker:were like
Speaker:This initiative passed by one vote and it was Jerremy Newsom.
Speaker:Yeah, In 2012, this dude.
Speaker:You're like, what did I vote for?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's a good point.
Speaker:But David and I in the last episode, which you haven't heard
Speaker:yet 'cause we just recorded it.
Speaker:But to your point, one of my thoughts and theories was.
Speaker:It would probably be pretty easy to require a voter id if every
Speaker:state was like, Hey, listen, you gotta bring a license.
Speaker:Pretty straightforward.
Speaker:Some verification form.
Speaker:It wouldn't be very hard, I don't think, to implement it.
Speaker:Mostly because I just went, I told Dave the story.
Speaker:I went to a gym and I couldn't get into the gym without a physical license,
Speaker:like a, like it was a lifetime fitness.
Speaker:They're like, you can't work out here.
Speaker:You obviously, even though I had a picture of my id, it didn't have the physical id.
Speaker:So nah, sorry man, you can't do this.
Speaker:And it was just a comical situation.
Speaker:I'm like, all right if they can do it, I'm sure there's probably a few other
Speaker:places that could just implement a relatively easy policy to make sure, but
Speaker:to your point, even if you had every.
Speaker:and I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but we did
Speaker:just have a very long discussion on immigration and illegal immigration.
Speaker:But every single individual that did, if they colluded somehow to together,
Speaker:they'd have to all go to probably the same state and all vote illegally
Speaker:simultaneously for there to be any type of swing or massive decision.
Speaker:And then to your also point, if they did that and they and everyone pulled that
Speaker:off what actual change would they make?
Speaker:So if the challenge is a lot higher, Dave or Reed, where do we think it lays?
Speaker:Is it in the electoral college?
Speaker:Is it somewhere different?
Speaker:Is there something else that we should be looking at?
Speaker:I have a thought on that, but as to what you just said, with the
Speaker:illegal I immigrants all moving to one state and voting one way, that,
Speaker:that would be very obvious, that
Speaker:was occurring
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:data, like looking at the data and stuff like
Speaker:that.
Speaker:So it wouldn't, you can catch that
Speaker:stuff by just going through the data and making sure it matches reality, which
Speaker:is something that political scientists do, and that's part of the reason why
Speaker:it's over the head of a lot of the general public and that it's, they
Speaker:don't trust political scientists or they don't understand, the things like that.
Speaker:But the issue that I think is most important when it comes to
Speaker:voting is gerrymandering 100%.
Speaker:Because districts are gerrymandered so that they're not competitive and.
Speaker:You have essentially like in a very heavily gerrymandered, let's
Speaker:say red district, a congressional candidate needs to win the primary.
Speaker:If they win the primary, they will win the general election.
Speaker:It's basically a slam dunk, already known outcome.
Speaker:And therefore we're competing for the primary and therefore there's
Speaker:no incentive to nominate a person who can win over moderate voters.
Speaker:You're only looking for someone who can win over the hard ideological
Speaker:voters on one side or the other which contributes to more polarized politics.
Speaker:If we have districts across the board where people have to compete for
Speaker:moderate voters, we wouldn't have as polarized of a political system.
Speaker:We would have politicians who can work across the aisle with the other side
Speaker:because most Americans are actually not hard ideologues on one side or the other.
Speaker:Most people fall in the middle, and that's the re part of the reason why those
Speaker:people feel like they're not represented because most of them live in a district
Speaker:that's gerrymandered, so that someone who is ideological on one side or the
Speaker:other will always win their district.
Speaker:And
Speaker:therefore you have no one that you really like to vote for.
Speaker:No one's really competing for your vote.
Speaker:So could you, So Jerremy and I have been trying to do this.
Speaker:Can you steal, man, the other side of this?
Speaker:What's good about gerrymandering?
Speaker:If anything?
Speaker:Can you think of anything like, ah,
Speaker:I mean for the higher up political people who wanna win, it's great.
Speaker:yeah, that's it.
Speaker:Gerrymandering, gerrymandering helps us win.
Speaker:We barter with the other side.
Speaker:We'll rig these
Speaker:districts so that we can win and you can rig the other districts.
Speaker:But it's not, that's not really the way that it is.
Speaker:For, I don't know if they're having those conversations like in higher up
Speaker:rooms that we don't get to know about.
Speaker:I doubt it because I think it's a zero sum game.
Speaker:We're trying to win as many seats as we can
Speaker:and basically disenfranchise the other side because that's what it is.
Speaker:It's anti-democratic.
Speaker:Fascinating.
Speaker:Love that term.
Speaker:So here's a fun one
Speaker:for you, Dave, right?
Speaker:Gerrymandering.
Speaker:It was a coin coined term from Massachusetts governor in 1812.
Speaker:Your third birthday.
Speaker:I'm just kidding.
Speaker:bunch of old jokes today.
Speaker:Just a joke.
Speaker:Governor.
Speaker:Elbridge, Jerry noted that one of the districts looked
Speaker:like a mythical salamander.
Speaker:And so I think that's probably when it, but 18, 12, a little
Speaker:bit ago, like a couple days ago, but that's when he noticed it.
Speaker:That's when the phrase gets coined.
Speaker:So you can only, that's just a couple of years before the nation gets founded.
Speaker:17 seven.
Speaker:It's not that,
Speaker:by a guy named Jerry?
Speaker:so they just coined it Exactly that.
Speaker:That's just when it gets coined.
Speaker:So it's been around
Speaker:It was coined by some political cartoonists because it was, they called
Speaker:it a gerrymander,
Speaker:the district, because it looked like a,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Oh, because it looked like a salad, ma. Okay.
Speaker:Yeah I'm following it.
Speaker:A
Speaker:mythical salamander.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's really interesting.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I think you use a very interesting term that does come up a lot,
Speaker:Reed, which is disenfranchise.
Speaker:And I would like to hear a little bit more about that because if a group of
Speaker:individuals feels disenfranchised, do you think they have the, or do they currently
Speaker:have the ability to determine where this mythical salamander boundary begins?
Speaker:Should they even vote if they see themselves in this really weirdly
Speaker:shaped, dis voting district where they're like, listen my voice
Speaker:literally will not matter at all.
Speaker:I shouldn't even show up and turn out.
Speaker:I think they should because it's a protest vote, at that point.
Speaker:But you still need to cast your vote because that's the only
Speaker:lever that you have to pull.
Speaker:But I can understand why people wouldn't at the same time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:absolutely.
Speaker:So if it's been around essentially since the entire formation of our country,
Speaker:more or less, how do we get rid of it?
Speaker:Is it something that we should get rid of?
Speaker:Is it even get
Speaker:Ridable?
Speaker:that is a really good question.
Speaker:I think it would require it would require an interest in both sides
Speaker:to have some kind of fair District Amendment or bill that they would pass.
Speaker:Because if both, if one side or the other sees an advantage that they can
Speaker:have in the current system, they're not gonna want to pass an amendment.
Speaker:It makes perfect logical sense to us why Congress people should not
Speaker:be allowed to trade stocks, right?
Speaker:But they're not passing an amendment banning themselves
Speaker:from trading stocks anytime soon.
Speaker:And I think Gerrymandering's kind of the same, the same thing.
Speaker:So I, I don't know if I don't know how realistically it would get fixed
Speaker:maybe the Supreme Court but you would, the Supreme Court only decides on
Speaker:cases, so they don't really, they wouldn't really have a a role to play
Speaker:in that.
Speaker:If the system right now, this is in the public discourse because we have
Speaker:Texas and California and Illinois all threatening to gerrymander their states.
Speaker:Basically because of Texas being the number one actor.
Speaker:If every state gerrymanders themselves to maximize congressional
Speaker:districts, the Republicans will win.
Speaker:They'll win more states and basically have an unassailable majority in the house.
Speaker:And then I don't see them turning around and passing a fair
Speaker:district act after they've won
Speaker:the baton,
Speaker:So what do you think?
Speaker:I, no, it's right.
Speaker:It's been a it's been happening for a very long time.
Speaker:My random thought that I was having a discussion with Dave about was, at what
Speaker:point does someone to some level of power say, don't we already have lines
Speaker:drawn that are called counties like.
Speaker:We, that should be the congressional I'm so confused on how we get the
Speaker:squiggles of where some random interest gets created by whoever's draw.
Speaker:I wanna know who's drawing the lines.
Speaker:Who's that person specifically the political scientist that connects
Speaker:with the person that has the data, that has all the information that
Speaker:goes, Hey, this is where Dave lives.
Speaker:You want Dave's vote?
Speaker:We gotta circle building 13 A in this random redrawing of this district line.
Speaker:But to your point and to, and my thought process is like, we
Speaker:already have these lines drawn.
Speaker:We already have very discernible lines of where counties begin, where cities begin,
Speaker:where townships begin and we continue.
Speaker:And it happens all the time.
Speaker:Like the that's the thing about the redrawing, like you said earlier, like
Speaker:Illinois and other states are like, Hey, Texas is doing it right now.
Speaker:This could, this happens frequently as new people move.
Speaker:As interest changes, income changes, as the economy changes and people move
Speaker:different states and different places, these lines continue to get redrawn.
Speaker:This is not something that happens every 15 years, something happens almost
Speaker:every 15 months, which is really wild.
Speaker:So we do need, I believe, someone of a higher interest of a higher power,
Speaker:of a bigger importance to really just come down with some type of law.
Speaker:And yeah, to your point, maybe present a federal case with the Supreme Court
Speaker:to say, listen, we need to change these gerrymandering tactics and these
Speaker:laws, because this is just almost
Speaker:unfair.
Speaker:It's like whoever has the
Speaker:There would need to be a lawsuit.
Speaker:And
Speaker:the problem is that it's legal, so
Speaker:there's not gonna be a lawsuit because you have to allege a violation of
Speaker:some law.
Speaker:So it's, I, and the stated reason for it is to accurately
Speaker:reflect the voter base, right?
Speaker:The stated reason for redrawing the districts.
Speaker:The real reason is to, I guess in some cases that is the real reason,
Speaker:but it has the effect of drawing districts that are gerrymandered.
Speaker:But they become, they're more scientific the more detailed
Speaker:the census gets and everything.
Speaker:Like back in the day with Edward Jerry the governor, it was a rough human
Speaker:process of drawing districts, you knew roughly how people voted in different
Speaker:places, but how accurate was their census compared to what we have now?
Speaker:When we can break down to finite details, how many households and
Speaker:how many immigrants and ethnic makeups of all these different areas,
Speaker:that's what helps them be able to gerrymander to such a scientific level.
Speaker:And that makes
Speaker:it more insidious today than it was in the past.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, totally.
Speaker:So if you're designing or redesigning one part of voting from registration
Speaker:to ballots to, changing gerrymandering, what would you change first.
Speaker:I would change
Speaker:gerrymandering first.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:That's the biggest thing for you.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So if that goes away, do you feel everything becomes a lot more fair?
Speaker:Everything becomes a lot more.
Speaker:Predictable might not be the word, but let's just say democratic, that goes away.
Speaker:Things are a lot more reasonable.
Speaker:I think that's the end.
Speaker:That's the goal.
Speaker:I think if politicians have to compete for centrist in their districts because
Speaker:the districts are more competitive, then we're gonna end up with more
Speaker:pragmatic people who are able to actually negotiate with the other side.
Speaker:And aren't just hotheaded partisans.
Speaker:And then that will
Speaker:give us, that would give us a more functioning government
Speaker:than what we have now.
Speaker:Dave, what about you man?
Speaker:If you had to if there's a perfect system that exists,
Speaker:what do you think it would look like?
Speaker:It's definitely taken the politicians out of this, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Gerrymandering's like really high on that list, and I don't
Speaker:hear anybody ever talk about it.
Speaker:I was just looking at.
Speaker:My district and I was actually pretty impressed.
Speaker:I live in a red state and it's pretty firmly red and in Florida, and I'm
Speaker:actually surprised my, my voting district is just round, it's just, it's like
Speaker:somebody drew a circle and I'm like, okay.
Speaker:I don't know what the rest of it looks like, but I'm like, I'm, that,
Speaker:that seems it, it on the surface
Speaker:take a circle.
Speaker:yeah, it looks it looks okay.
Speaker:Yeah, gerrymandering's like high on that list I'd like more people to vote
Speaker:and certainly that it's easier to vote.
Speaker:I loved your idea in our first episode on this, which is yeah we live in counties
Speaker:and so just if you have, if you live in a populous county, then yeah, you, your five
Speaker:representatives represent that county.
Speaker:If you live in a sparse county, a rural county, then.
Speaker:One representative might represent like three or four counties.
Speaker:I'm like, okay, that makes, that makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker:That's yeah, I think that's spot on.
Speaker:And then, making it easier to vote.
Speaker:I'm fine with the IDs and stuff.
Speaker:I'm actually okay with mail-in balloting ballots too, because, we
Speaker:have armed forces overseas that, that do that all the time, so Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:More people, more engaged.
Speaker:I, the one that I'm clearly probably standalone on this is that, we only have
Speaker:438 representatives for Congress and then another a hundred in the Senate,
Speaker:and that was capped a long time ago.
Speaker:I think we should have a lot more representatives, and I think
Speaker:that would also drive some more diverse voices, rather than.
Speaker:4 38, then maybe we have 600.
Speaker:And that means that each representative represents fewer people because our
Speaker:population has grown and it's gonna keep
Speaker:I, it's always like the will of the people is, is the wi is the will of the people.
Speaker:Are the will.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is the will of the people being representative right now represented
Speaker:Right now, it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker:So yeah.
Speaker:More diversity for lack of a better term.
Speaker:And more people like focused on the issues that we all do care about.
Speaker:Like what, when was the last time we talked about healthcare?
Speaker:That's like the number one thing for people, or the economy,
Speaker:like the number two thing.
Speaker:It's all kitchen table issues.
Speaker:instead we're talking about tariffs.
Speaker:Oh my God, if I hear that one more time, I'm gonna lose my mind.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Reid, tell me a little bit more about your general take on some countries will
Speaker:actually fine people for not voting.
Speaker:Do you think mandatory voting could actually work in the
Speaker:US?
Speaker:It's like you're talking about, earlier you mentioned the people
Speaker:voter participation and stuff like that and voter ID laws.
Speaker:One of the bars to that is, is it, I didn't actually know that voting
Speaker:is not a right in the Constitution.
Speaker:But one of the things that ties into is do you consider voting a right.
Speaker:Do you consider something like requiring an ID to be an unnecessary bar?
Speaker:'Cause it could be like a socioeconomic even if it is a small barrier, it
Speaker:could be a barrier to people to voting.
Speaker:But is I think that the right to vote or the right to abstain
Speaker:from voting is basically as important as the right to not vote.
Speaker:So I don't really think mandatory
Speaker:voting would hold up in this country.
Speaker:You have the freedom, right?
Speaker:We're all
Speaker:about freedom.
Speaker:So you should have the freedom to not vote if you don't want to, and how
Speaker:would you implement mandatory voting?
Speaker:Just everybody vote from their phones
Speaker:on
Speaker:Snapchat or
Speaker:Yep, it's, that's right.
Speaker:And Snapchat overnight rallies 3%.
Speaker:It's, a, I don't think, to your point, making almost anything mandatory in
Speaker:this country would ever actually work.
Speaker:If you have to do something tell a bunch of Americans, they gotta do something,
Speaker:they're like that's not gonna work.
Speaker:What if it was like you at least gotta show up or you gotta, pull
Speaker:up your phone, like our utopia.
Speaker:Pull up and pull up your phone and cast your vote.
Speaker:Even if it, the vote is, I'm not voting right.
Speaker:Like at least you voted.
Speaker:You voted for none of the above.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Good take.
Speaker:that Dave.
Speaker:I like that Dave.
Speaker:'Cause that, yeah, that's my utopia.
Speaker:Like in a random way is again, there, there has to be some technological
Speaker:capacity where we make that pretty ingrained using Biologistics u using
Speaker:some type of fingerprint scan, using some type of face scan, using something
Speaker:where you at least have that capacity.
Speaker:Again, maybe it doesn't start with everybody, but maybe it starts
Speaker:with people that want to do it.
Speaker:I think more people have phones than they have IDs in the country,
Speaker:so that'd be, fascinating.
Speaker:But to, to your point, Dave.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:If they said, Hey, listen, everyone has to vote.
Speaker:Your vote can be, I don't care that, and that's a button.
Speaker:You click the button, all is good.
Speaker:You can leave.
Speaker:Don't have to tell us what you actually think.
Speaker:I think the participation.
Speaker:One I fully believe, and I think it'd be fun to see like the
Speaker:percentages of voting and how it has shifted and transformed over time.
Speaker:When I did my intro right, 65% of people that voted and that was the
Speaker:third largest ever seems radically low,
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Like you would, I would think like in the 18 hundreds, 1865, like a
Speaker:hundred percent of people are voting like, what else are they doing,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:A lot fewer people could
Speaker:vote.
Speaker:Like it
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Is
Speaker:White people,
Speaker:or is that,
Speaker:White, guys.
Speaker:It was about it, right?
Speaker:YY well, exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So that's the only people that can vote.
Speaker:So all the people that can vote, it's I guess from a population
Speaker:standpoint.
Speaker:actually one of the huge reforms of Andrew Jackson.
Speaker:And he was a, he was the original Democrat.
Speaker:He I don't know if he passed it, but during his time was landholding males.
Speaker:You could, now you just had to be a white male.
Speaker:They dropped the requirement to own land.
Speaker:So that was
Speaker:really Open the floodgates for voters voter turnout,
Speaker:Open the flood gaze.
Speaker:Come on down.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and you gotta think of his support.
Speaker:I would imagine he probably benefited a lot from allowing non
Speaker:landholding white males to vote.
Speaker:Otherwise, he prob probably wouldn't have
Speaker:been, the Jacksonian Democrat that he was.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Hey so let's say we added tech to this, right?
Speaker:Let's say you could vote from your phone you buy stuff on your phone.
Speaker:You do a lot of you trade on your phone like you move money.
Speaker:Like some of the most important things in your life, you, you do on your
Speaker:phone or in front of your computer.
Speaker:Do you think, could we do that safely?
Speaker:Reid, you're an eng, you're an engineer.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:What do you think Reid?
Speaker:Oh, I'm not an engineer.
Speaker:No, I, but if you bank on your phone, you can probably vote on your phone.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because sure it has, there's holes in it.
Speaker:But people, like you said, people trust their whole life
Speaker:savings with doing it electronically, not?
Speaker:But I also get like a notification it seems like once a month of
Speaker:being like, Hey, your stuff's been compromised on Pinterest or whatever.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean there, there's tech that can do it.
Speaker:Or at some point, in my opinion, it, it could, it can or could definitely be done.
Speaker:We could figure it out.
Speaker:We could figure out how to become more tech savvy with voting.
Speaker:I think that would increase the capacity to vote.
Speaker:I do think we should find ways to make voting relatively
Speaker:easier, safer, more trackable.
Speaker:When I, say more trackable.
Speaker:I just mean like, to, to Reid's point, like the census of just, hey.
Speaker:It's really, really easy to do this.
Speaker:It's not that hard family fill out this, sign up for this, do this thing.
Speaker:I, I still find mail-in voting very archaic.
Speaker:And I think that if one were to do that again, it should just be something
Speaker:where it's maybe you have to go through a couple more verification steps.
Speaker:That's all.
Speaker:Instead of one, which is just like you show an ID and you take a vote, like just
Speaker:a couple of, just two or three more steps.
Speaker:Ultimately, because there are still tons and tons of people who are not voting.
Speaker:That's really the thought process.
Speaker:So in your general circle, Reid, the people that you just talked
Speaker:to or hear about from your day to day, why do you feel or hear or see
Speaker:people that do not vote presently?
Speaker:Like what's their big hangup
Speaker:for it?
Speaker:I think most people in my circle do vote.
Speaker:It's probably a higher turnout than the general public.
Speaker:But I think the hangout.
Speaker:Four people is just civic literacy, really just knowing when an election
Speaker:is, a lot of people like the midterms are coming up next year and everybody
Speaker:knows the midterms are a very, it's a low turnout election cycle because
Speaker:people don't know there's an election.
Speaker:The people know when there's presidential election because how could you not?
Speaker:But people don't really know when, if there's not a president up for
Speaker:election, they're not really aware
Speaker:that there is
Speaker:an election at all.
Speaker:So it's just basic education
Speaker:Really.
Speaker:What What about you Jerremy?
Speaker:And like you said the
Speaker:highest turn election in history was in 2020, and that was during COVID.
Speaker:So it was the center of the news cycle and it, the election itself,
Speaker:COVID was the primary issue.
Speaker:So that was the one election where everybody.
Speaker:At least knew that there was an election.
Speaker:Everybody had an opinion on it.
Speaker:So it was the most involved election, I think, I believe that
Speaker:2008 was the previous record holder.
Speaker:because Barack Obama, another big historical election,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:you
Speaker:just
Speaker:had the, the financial crisis and Bush was getting out of office, so
Speaker:you had multiple people running.
Speaker:Yeah I think Dave, for me, just thinking through man, I. The
Speaker:way I see it, people not voting.
Speaker:Our boy Reid nailed it.
Speaker:He said, my favorite word it is education.
Speaker:And again, back to just basic school, I looked over my son Gabriel's 15,
Speaker:15-year-old high school homework last night when I got home at 10
Speaker:o'clock from traveling all day.
Speaker:Just glazed over it.
Speaker:Just garbage.
Speaker:Garbage.
Speaker:Just garbage.
Speaker:The things like the, he's, they, so world history is a map of Europe.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:That's cool I guess.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Thumbs up to map of Europe and then math parallelograms just random geometry
Speaker:shapes and like how to graph them.
Speaker:Things of that nature.
Speaker:And just a bunch of other, just so I'm looking at this, thinking to myself,
Speaker:knowing that we have this discussion coming up, I wonder if any class
Speaker:in his school is teaching the high schoolers about the midterm elections.
Speaker:I wonder if there's any class where it's like, Hey, this is
Speaker:what a midterm election is.
Speaker:Here is like I, I get it that certain schools have American government.
Speaker:I realize that, but that's a very, not only few and far in between,
Speaker:but it's also something that's gonna be taught very uniquely, very
Speaker:interestingly, probably very polarizing.
Speaker:And also just it's uninformed on the general public of the general
Speaker:public is lost on what's happening.
Speaker:Remember, I am at the time, 26, 27, 28, going into a middle school.
Speaker:Library casting votes for things I have no clue about.
Speaker:And I'm pretty well informed on just the general world at
Speaker:the time, for the most part.
Speaker:And I don't know very much about anything about who, what, who I'm voting for,
Speaker:what I'm voting for, the purposes behind.
Speaker:I'm voting.
Speaker:There's just not a lot of information.
Speaker:And so I think what would also be relevant to Reed's Point is just some,
Speaker:obviously Google has incredible access, but I just don't feel like the general
Speaker:public would agree that there's a really beautiful system of open information and
Speaker:education about what voting, who voting, where, voting, why all the information.
Speaker:A lot of the topics, a lot of the people.
Speaker:Huh.
Speaker:just feel like that's the main point.
Speaker:Obviously most of my people vote as well, but the people that don't
Speaker:vote in general, I think it's just 'cause of lack of education.
Speaker:They just don't know.
Speaker:So did you all have like civics classes and social study
Speaker:classes and history classes?
Speaker:Like I'm your son's 15, right?
Speaker:Like I, I had all those things I remember real clearly that my
Speaker:teacher brought in sample ballots and we'd actually go through it.
Speaker:It'd be like, okay, how does this work?
Speaker:And so did you have those classes?
Speaker:never once.
Speaker:Not me personally.
Speaker:Reed.
Speaker:I don't really remember if we had anything specifically like that.
Speaker:I think the high school level history and civics is severely lacking.
Speaker:And I took AP classes in high school, and then I minored in history in college, so
Speaker:I don't really have a. Normal experience.
Speaker:Like I think I, I received more history education than most people do.
Speaker:But I just had a thought while you were talking Jerremy about what would be a
Speaker:great idea for a government high school class or a government civics class.
Speaker:You could divide the class up, even have them hold a mock election and
Speaker:choose was like, let's say five or six.
Speaker:Let's say there's 25 people in the class.
Speaker:Choose five or six people that are gonna be the government and the other
Speaker:people are gonna be the people, right?
Speaker:And the government, they have to war game.
Speaker:Things are gonna do, like we gotta fund a war against so
Speaker:and so we need to raise money.
Speaker:We're gonna sell bonds.
Speaker:We gotta have this much interest rate.
Speaker:Our people are producing this much money with the economy.
Speaker:We're gonna have to recruit five of you to be soldiers.
Speaker:So we're gonna send you off to war.
Speaker:Let's say two of you die, and we, all right, we're running outta money.
Speaker:We gotta sell more bonds, oh we gotta pay off our debts.
Speaker:We're gonna print more money.
Speaker:And you could create like a real world scenario that would give kids a much, a
Speaker:better understanding of the way that the government works and the way the policy
Speaker:and the economy interact with each other.
Speaker:Much better than what you get with the education system the way it is right now.
Speaker:Because I don't think I knew what a bond was until I was probably 30.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:that word all the time, but
Speaker:you don't know what it, you don't really know what it is.
Speaker:No clue.
Speaker:No clue.
Speaker:And
Speaker:I
Speaker:think in you
Speaker:mentioned it really well, man you said the word high school a few
Speaker:times, so did I, but I think that's probably the time for it, right?
Speaker:Like I don't think you need to be berating.
Speaker:You can talk very basic election principles and some history stuff
Speaker:in middle school, but I think high school is the time for it because
Speaker:when you turn 18 in this country, you have the ability to vote, not the
Speaker:right, as we mentioned a couple times.
Speaker:It's weird, but alright, that's fine.
Speaker:But yeah, you turn 18 man, boom.
Speaker:Now you can vote.
Speaker:And to your point, man, you don't remember that?
Speaker:'cause I don't think it happened homie.
Speaker:We don't remember 'cause it didn't really occur.
Speaker:Wait.
Speaker:didn't really have tons and tons of information.
Speaker:Again, just the real world thing.
Speaker:The applications that impact this country.
Speaker:Taxes.
Speaker:We didn't learn how to fill out taxes.
Speaker:We didn't learn what taxes.
Speaker:We don't know anything about taxes.
Speaker:When you exit high school, for the majority of all people that go through
Speaker:high school, you do not learn properly.
Speaker:What are taxes?
Speaker:Why do you pay them?
Speaker:How much are you paying?
Speaker:And how can you legally pay less?
Speaker:You're not taught these things.
Speaker:Every single person on earth is a subject to learning a better education.
Speaker:And here in the US I think that just some of these basic life
Speaker:principles just get way overlooked.
Speaker:And we don't spend any, again if my son Gabriel wants to become, which
Speaker:I know he doesn't an architect, some type of engineer, a chemist.
Speaker:He can start learning some of the things he's learning right now in high school.
Speaker:Otherwise they should be burning into his brain.
Speaker:How elections work, how money works, how income works, how
Speaker:budgeting works, how taxes work.
Speaker:Again, yes, parents should and can teach that and my kids are gonna
Speaker:be fine, but for every other kid in the world, I think it's just really
Speaker:crucial that they learn this stuff and it's really just openly not taught.
Speaker:And so I think that'd be fantastic, man, that, that game,
Speaker:the gamification of it, right?
Speaker:Frequently doing that often where people know and they just pour into themselves
Speaker:and just get really in, ingrained into it.
Speaker:I, I you guys are blowing my mind.
Speaker:I'm not that much older than you all, but I did I did learn all of that.
Speaker:Like we had Model un, we had government debates.
Speaker:We I, we didn't learn about taxes, but definitely about
Speaker:banking and how money works.
Speaker:I learned that in grade school, so I, I'm like, what?
Speaker:What took up all that time?
Speaker:What did they get rid of?
Speaker:What did they
Speaker:add in order
Speaker:to get rid of all
Speaker:that?
Speaker:We had, I remember learning about the gold standard, 1898, the guy that
Speaker:campaigned against against fiat currency.
Speaker:'cause he was a big gold guy.
Speaker:But we, it wasn't really they didn't really explain I don't feel like
Speaker:I really learned how a fiat system worked coming out of high school.
Speaker:Like you, you knew a little bit of details.
Speaker:Like we got off the gold standard, we started the Federal Reserve in 1913,
Speaker:and I, we didn't really get off the gold standard until Nixon, I think.
Speaker:But you don't really know what that means.
Speaker:You don't really know the basis for how the economy works.
Speaker:You just, you have these kind of vague details in your head,
Speaker:like what's the gold standard?
Speaker:What are we on now as opposed to the gold standard?
Speaker:Yeah, it is it is quite fascinating, the things that we learn, the
Speaker:things that we study, the things they put a lot of importance on.
Speaker:I met Dave with most of my most of Gabe's teachers.
Speaker:And I remember the English teacher, just asking her like,
Speaker:Hey books you guys are reading.
Speaker:And she's I got these three books.
Speaker:I just gotta get we gotta get through 'em.
Speaker:I'm like who's dictating these books?
Speaker:She's I'm, from the higher ups I gotta, we gotta get through this, these books.
Speaker:And like it is just like this information that gets taught.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:It is, man.
Speaker:It's wild.
Speaker:But I think that there's just such a fun and unique and cool topic
Speaker:because I do think, and again, my, I think my general consensus leads
Speaker:towards voting should be easier.
Speaker:It should be safer, and should be more informed.
Speaker:And I think if those, when I say safer, just safer in the sense that it's
Speaker:available, it's easy, it's accessible.
Speaker:People know it, people are aware of it, and it's not something that's
Speaker:extremely easily manipulated, like what's happening right now.
Speaker:And I think that's pretty, pretty straightforward, right?
Speaker:Don't manipulate elections.
Speaker:Let's have a, let's actually hear what the general population believe and
Speaker:think on average what is the consensus
Speaker:Oh
Speaker:and find,
Speaker:I got another one to throw in there for you.
Speaker:Oh, hit me, dude.
Speaker:What What we got.
Speaker:You can't run for anything until 90 days before the election.
Speaker:There's already people like lining up to run for president three years from now.
Speaker:I'm like, oh, enough of this.
Speaker:No, I don't want to hear anything until 90 days before or else you're disqualified.
Speaker:No ads,
Speaker:no nothing.
Speaker:I think compressing it into a tight window like that.
Speaker:Wouldn't really serve the purpose of having a more educated voter pool.
Speaker:I get what you're saying about, it's ridiculous how it basically never
Speaker:ends, but that's, you need these ideas to marinate in order to have any
Speaker:kind of filtering down to the general
Speaker:population.
Speaker:And even then, I don't, there's not a whole lot of filtering down happening.
Speaker:Fair.
Speaker:I also think it's more noise than signal,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:When do you
Speaker:guys think about the people who
Speaker:are very supportive of voter ID laws?
Speaker:How would they
Speaker:feel about mandatory voting?
Speaker:they I think the majority of 'em will be very pro mandatory voting.
Speaker:'cause then it was like, listen, you have to vote.
Speaker:And when you have to vote, you have to show an id.
Speaker:Simple as that.
Speaker:I think that would be their I, don't know.
Speaker:I think that'd probably be their stance.
Speaker:I wouldn't, I don't think I'd ever sign off on mandatory
Speaker:voting, at least in this country.
Speaker:But again, man, I think it could be a relatively simplistic approach
Speaker:where it's not that extreme.
Speaker:Like you don't have to have a passport, you don't have to have a driver's license.
Speaker:Like you can get a id.
Speaker:Essentially for free.
Speaker:I believe just like I am a human being that lives in this
Speaker:country and I'm a citizen.
Speaker:I think that Id doesn't cost very much.
Speaker:Especially if you live in cities that have incredible transportation, right?
Speaker:Like big cities, New York City, you don't need a driver's license, right?
Speaker:And if you don't have a passport, that's fine, but library
Speaker:card, like, what can you get?
Speaker:Like
Speaker:costco card.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What can you actually get?
Speaker:That's pretty easy.
Speaker:That's pretty simple.
Speaker:And I think that there could be tons of places if they said, Hey, listen,
Speaker:you have to have a voter, ID got it.
Speaker:Every CVS, every Walgreens, every Walmart, every Kroger, every place
Speaker:that you walk into every library, they have a free, go ahead and take
Speaker:this picture and we'll give you an id.
Speaker:That wouldn't
Speaker:be that
Speaker:difficult.
Speaker:What do you think about, do you
Speaker:think that AI is going to revolutionize the democratic process or
Speaker:our government
Speaker:Ooh.
Speaker:How dramatically do you think that's gonna change
Speaker:Oh, that's fun.
Speaker:That's a great question.
Speaker:I love it, Reid.
Speaker:Thank you, man.
Speaker:Man, it's what's wild?
Speaker:And in addition to that, I will answer that question so we
Speaker:can just pontificate over it.
Speaker:But when does a robot get into like Congress, right?
Speaker:When does you start taking away certain humans and you
Speaker:start putting in actual robots?
Speaker:Ai?
Speaker:I think for a real integration, a real integration into like American
Speaker:politics, this will be a crazy take, but I think it's 50 years away.
Speaker:And the reason I say that, the reason I say that is because
Speaker:government is very slow.
Speaker:They're very slow to make changes.
Speaker:They're very slow to take a adaptations that take away their
Speaker:control, their speed, right?
Speaker:'cause they want things to go slow.
Speaker:That's why they, that's why there are no term limits in certain organizations
Speaker:where they get to sit back and just coast in Vermont for 20 plus years and
Speaker:just do the same thing over and over.
Speaker:AI is gonna be a massive game changer for, I think, earlier in the political stage.
Speaker:And I think that'll be, again, discerning information on voting,
Speaker:asking the AI certain questions.
Speaker:Like right now, you can type in chat pt, Chachi, pt, almost any amendment
Speaker:form topic question that's on a ballot.
Speaker:And you'll get an answer.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:The answer is gonna pull from Reddit mostly Pinterest boards, Google.
Speaker:Facebook, a few other places, is the learning language model.
Speaker:The LLM is gonna, right now, cha t Rock, a few others.
Speaker:It's just gonna pull from what's currently available, right?
Speaker:The current pull of information the back and forth conversations that are
Speaker:happening with people and individuals.
Speaker:But saying all that to say it should, if anything, make a lot
Speaker:of these applications and a lot of the certain processes a lot easier.
Speaker:And I think AI done correctly, robotics done correctly.
Speaker:The speed and the speed of the internet and the applications done a adequately
Speaker:creates a post abundance world.
Speaker:A world where we start stepping away from scarcity.
Speaker:And people have so much more time to create.
Speaker:They have so much more time to think.
Speaker:They have so much more time to deliberate because we have machines,
Speaker:we have robots, we have AI that's doing a lot of our manual labor for us.
Speaker:And we have the ability as humans to go and reconnect to.
Speaker:To actually build and to scale and to deliberate.
Speaker:And I think that absolutely does exist in the political realm.
Speaker:Me and Dave's perfect world is individuals start caring a lot about
Speaker:going to Washington, DC They care a lot about becoming incredible politicians.
Speaker:So it's instead of becoming a movie star or a YouTuber, or you wanna go to the
Speaker:NFL or a professional soccer player, you want to become a congressman or woman.
Speaker:You want to go to the Senate, you wanna become a representative.
Speaker:You want to be president, placing the nation's brightest.
Speaker:Most excited, most enthused and positive individuals that are well-spoken and
Speaker:charismatic and caring and kind and empathetic, placing them in government
Speaker:because now they have time and they have income and they have ideas.
Speaker:They can be assimilated very quickly and easily and efficiently because of ai.
Speaker:I think that would be a fun, fun future.
Speaker:But again, that's my world.
Speaker:There's a lot of other more negative biases and approaches of ai, but
Speaker:that's my rosy colored glasses view.
Speaker:What do you think,
Speaker:Reed?
Speaker:You're talking about 50 years away.
Speaker:But we I think all you really need to do is tweak the
Speaker:algorithm to influence outcomes.
Speaker:Facebook already, what was that?
Speaker:Cambridge Analytica stuff.
Speaker:Didn, they influence
Speaker:the outcome of an election
Speaker:by
Speaker:tweaking their algorithm.
Speaker:I don't know, but I would
Speaker:have to.
Speaker:I'm not really sure if I'm spot on that, but, and what if you
Speaker:have a super intelligent AI just manipulating what everybody sees?
Speaker:That, that's all you really need to.
Speaker:And then the AI can determine what outcome it wants or
Speaker:what outcome it.
Speaker:The
Speaker:people who own it wants to happen, and that will happen
Speaker:But if it's an but
Speaker:enough.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:But if it's intelligent, would it be able to, would it be able to give us the
Speaker:best candidate, right?
Speaker:Would could it pull cream from the crops, could it give us an
Speaker:algorithmic view of who is the best?
Speaker:Right now, again, I don't think that AI is actually intelligent.
Speaker:That's my, again, current belief, right?
Speaker:It's not artificial intelligence presently.
Speaker:It is there, there are some applications that are becoming
Speaker:smarter and I think obviously the curve will happen very fast, right?
Speaker:Five, six years.
Speaker:It'll become more and more intelligent.
Speaker:Right now it's just more uniquely regurgitating what's already on Google.
Speaker:But to your point, yeah, man, in the future, AI actually does sit back and
Speaker:goes, how can I give Dave and Reid and Jerremy this very specific bias in a
Speaker:way that they're going to assimilate it the way that I want them to so
Speaker:that I can be their overlord possible?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:You start talking then Matrix and Terminator.
Speaker:But again, I think that if that happens, that's pretty far away and
Speaker:there is a tipping point where that could occur and and hopefully we have
Speaker:minds in the right place that are smart enough so that doesn't happen.
Speaker:So this is
Speaker:What do you think,
Speaker:yeah, this is a great question.
Speaker:I
Speaker:is, man.
Speaker:It's a good one.
Speaker:I think it's going to, the tipping point's going to be whether or not people
Speaker:think that the technology is working.
Speaker:For you or to you,
Speaker:Because I think a lot of the AI and how it's, coming up is very manipulative.
Speaker:It's trying to basically separate you from your money at light speed.
Speaker:And so as this sort of gets into the social space my niece is in HR for like
Speaker:law firms and she's, she was telling, we were talking last week and she noticed
Speaker:something really interesting because she's on the second half of her twenties and
Speaker:she's talking about who's coming in, like their first classes, the recent hires.
Speaker:And she said, they're so online, they like stare at your they can't
Speaker:hold a conversation like, like they're staring at their feet and
Speaker:you almost have to text them while you're standing in front of them.
Speaker:But Then she's saying that the generation before them, maybe the teens, maybe
Speaker:not your teen Jerremy, but maybe teen and earlier, they're far less online.
Speaker:They're very selective about what technology are because they've seen
Speaker:what it does to, later generations.
Speaker:I'm wondering, the, again, back to the noise versus signal, if people
Speaker:are perceiving that technology is happening to them, that we might
Speaker:create more Luddites that aren't as connected, that aren't in the swamp.
Speaker:I've been offline for the last two, three weeks from social
Speaker:media and my mood's improved.
Speaker:So I am, I'm curious if there's gonna be like a rebellion of the humans
Speaker:against the AI and how that's gonna go.
Speaker:I, I. I think it's gonna it's definitely gonna change our culture
Speaker:and it's gonna change our politics.
Speaker:It's gonna change everything that we do, and I'm really curious how humans are
Speaker:going to react to it more than anything
Speaker:else.
Speaker:As you gaze thoughtfully out the window.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For as long as I can.
Speaker:I was, to that
Speaker:point I was looking earlier about when you were talking about high school
Speaker:education and stuff, there was some.
Speaker:I've read some studies or some surveys about Gen Z and asking Gen Z,
Speaker:polling Gen Z about different things.
Speaker:And it seems like Gen Z has an alarmingly level of lack of education
Speaker:on a lot of things, like a high percentage of Gen Z doubts that we
Speaker:landed on the moon, for example.
Speaker:And other things like that.
Speaker:So I don't know what direction it's gonna go, is people being too online just
Speaker:exposes them to too many TikTok videos.
Speaker:We didn't land on the moon because the camera angles and the,
Speaker:there's no stars in the background
Speaker:or, and they're not
Speaker:presented with the refutation to those arguments.
Speaker:That's really the
Speaker:Like you can take a telescope and just look at it
Speaker:and
Speaker:see.
Speaker:you can get a really good telescope and literally, visually look at
Speaker:what
Speaker:everyone's talking about.
Speaker:That's on the moon right
Speaker:now.
Speaker:You can see the flags,
Speaker:you can see them.
Speaker:we'll just wait till we go back to the moon and the rovers are there.
Speaker:But of course then it'll be they flew up there, there was
Speaker:a secret mission back in 2023
Speaker:and
Speaker:they planted the rovers.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Moon in 1969.
Speaker:Dave, That's it, man.
Speaker:Solving America's Problems.
Speaker:Conspiracy Theory edition.
Speaker:I in.
Speaker:be very fun.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm in.
Speaker:But yeah, to, to your point, Reid man, like that is, it's the, we're always
Speaker:gonna go circle back on education.
Speaker:That's kinda like my main number one platform focus in general is I really
Speaker:do think and feel and know that this country needs a huge shift in education.
Speaker:What we're taught, how we're taught, where we're taught, why we
Speaker:are taught, because there's, Dave mentioned the population is increased,
Speaker:so we need more representatives.
Speaker:That's one of the most obvious changes, but obviously technology, like the
Speaker:speed at which things have moved and shifted, and the way that most
Speaker:teachers and most schools right now are handling the technology shift.
Speaker:It's just giving a kid a, a Chromebook and saying, Hey, now do everything that
Speaker:you're doing, but just on this computer.
Speaker:And they're not, we're not teaching our children how to interact with technology,
Speaker:how to interact with other humans, how to interact and really the internal shifts
Speaker:and the biometric updates that need to happen in order for our species to
Speaker:evolve adequately is just not occurring because the technology is just increasing
Speaker:at such a rapid pace and rapid speed.
Speaker:So we'd need big changes there.
Speaker:And for you to ask that question about ai, man, there's gonna be so
Speaker:many really fascinating, extremely unique topics on it, because.
Speaker:The one that I think we glossed over or you glossed over, I glossed over is the
Speaker:Cambridge Analytica aspect to all of it.
Speaker:And when I say Cambridge Analytica, what I mean is the ability for
Speaker:Facebook, apple, and Google, right?
Speaker:The CEOs, the decision makers to go, I don't believe that people should
Speaker:see the information about this.
Speaker:I'm just gonna make sure they don't
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:it.
Speaker:It really isn't that hard for them to pull that off, and it's gonna be very difficult
Speaker:for individuals to figure it out and to understand what it is and how it is.
Speaker:Like it's pretty simple for them to flip a switch and just no one see that person
Speaker:anymore.
Speaker:That
Speaker:is
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not all that hard is
Speaker:actually an understatement.
Speaker:I think
Speaker:It's mindboggling, mindbogglingly easy, and I think there's an incentive for them.
Speaker:Facebook actively censors political data.
Speaker:Facebook does not.
Speaker:If you post a political post, which I do often less people will see that than if
Speaker:you post a picture of your car and you say, I got, I just went to the car wash.
Speaker:More people will see that than they will if you post something about
Speaker:politics, because Facebook knows that politics is polarizing, and so
Speaker:they make sure that less people see those posts, which I actually do not
Speaker:think is good because I think people should be engaging in political.
Speaker:Discussion and political arguments.
Speaker:I think it's good for people.
Speaker:I think it's good for society, and I happen to really enjoy political
Speaker:arguments and discussions, but I know that most people don't,
Speaker:most people see it as just people
Speaker:see it as
Speaker:advers adversarial,
Speaker:And just intrinsically adversarial.
Speaker:And so therefore
Speaker:it is one thing you're not supposed to talk about,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Like societally, sex, religion, money, politics, don't have
Speaker:conversations about those things.
Speaker:And I'm over here what else
Speaker:spins the world around?
Speaker:Like
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:Those are
Speaker:the things I want to talk about let's talk about religion.
Speaker:Let's talk about politics.
Speaker:yep.
Speaker:Agreed.
Speaker:Agreed, because those are just fun topics and to your point, we can, and
Speaker:have we can give visible audio audible examples of how individuals, and we're
Speaker:doing it right now can just have an open conversation about something where three
Speaker:people can either agree or disagree and they can just have a conversation and
Speaker:they can have discussions and they can learn from each other as we have today.
Speaker:One other thing I would like to learn from you, re before we start wrapping
Speaker:up is earlier at the very beginning you mentioned that you grew up with
Speaker:a little bit more, I think you used the word electoral information.
Speaker:Just give us a quick, like two minute background.
Speaker:Why or what shaped you to have more of an interest in politics.
Speaker:When I was eight years old, my dad ran for state senate in Georgia and so we
Speaker:were, that summer when I was eight years old, 1998, we were on the road going
Speaker:to every state fair in our district.
Speaker:And dad was campaigning.
Speaker:So I had this idea that he was campaigning.
Speaker:I knew what was going on, but you didn't really understand like at the granular
Speaker:level, it's oh yeah, my dad's running for state senate and he's gonna win.
Speaker:But so we were going to campaign events and I got to meet, people
Speaker:like I met Roy Barnes at this one.
Speaker:Fair.
Speaker:'cause I think he was campaigning, he was the governor of Georgia in the nineties.
Speaker:He was campaigning as well even though he was on the other side.
Speaker:So I just had this, like passion for politics from an early age.
Speaker:'cause I really, it was really fun, when I was eight years old and we were
Speaker:going, and I was listening to my dad talk to all these people and try to
Speaker:convince them to vote for him instead of the other candidate who was a Democrat.
Speaker:And he ran as a Republican in a rural Georgia district.
Speaker:And it's been really interesting to see that evolve over the years
Speaker:because he lost that election and it was a really close election.
Speaker:And it was, rural kind of Appalachian areas were historic Democrat strongholds
Speaker:going back to, the Dixiecrats and Strom Thurmond and stuff like that.
Speaker:They were, it was like that type of voter.
Speaker:So even though, Nixon really changed the map in the seventies, it didn't
Speaker:really fully materialize until.
Speaker:The two thousands, and now it's a lot different than it was then because
Speaker:those, that district would absolutely never be won by a Democrat, even
Speaker:though it was won by a democrat
Speaker:25 years ago.
Speaker:So that's been really interesting to watch.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:I just have been passionate about it basically ever
Speaker:since I was eight years old.
Speaker:Just the political process,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:That's awesome, man.
Speaker:That's really cool.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it's, so what I heard you say then, is it just starts from as most good education
Speaker:does, it's gonna start in the homes.
Speaker:It's gonna start with parents caring, it's gonna start with individuals, just
Speaker:our moms and dads pouring into us, right?
Speaker:For every single person who's listening, you might not think that
Speaker:your 8-year-old cares about politics, and obviously they're not gonna
Speaker:be denate voters at eight, but.
Speaker:Our children will care about anything that we tell them they should care
Speaker:about, and they will begin to understand the importance and relevance of
Speaker:anything that we as parents also feel is relevant and important.
Speaker:To wrap up Reid.
Speaker:If you had 60 seconds on a nationally ranked podcast and you wanted to
Speaker:give your one line to fix voting in this country, what would you say?
Speaker:I'm gonna go back to my hobby horse, which is gerrymandering.
Speaker:I would tell people that if we elect people who are strong partisans, they're
Speaker:not gonna be able to work with people on the other side because they're strong.
Speaker:Partisan tilt prevents them from being incentivized to work across the aisle.
Speaker:If we like people who are problem solvers.
Speaker:who are more moderate and can work across the aisle, then we're gonna
Speaker:have a functioning government.
Speaker:And the only way to have a functioning government is to have competitive
Speaker:districts up and down the board.
Speaker:And like you said, having more representatives is potentially
Speaker:one way to achieve that.
Speaker:But having competitive districts is also another way to achieve that.
Speaker:These strong partisans that just contribute to more bipolar
Speaker:polarization in the political process are not solving problems.
Speaker:Look at how hard it is for Congress to do anything now.
Speaker:They're not it's not the way it was even 20 years ago.
Speaker:Congress was much more functioning than it is now.
Speaker:And I think that problem really goes back to
Speaker:the polarization A but the polarization, which is enabled by the gerrymandering.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:Beautiful.
Speaker:Take Reid.
Speaker:Thank you for sharing your time with us today.
Speaker:Thanks for pouring into all of our listeners with your unique skill sets,
Speaker:topics, questions, conversations.
Speaker:Dave, thank you so much as well for being here and for all of
Speaker:our
Speaker:listeners.
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:re do you have something else to say.
Speaker:Oh I got a question for you are, so you're planning
Speaker:on running for president in 2032.
Speaker:Yes, sir.
Speaker:Are you how do you feel about a potentially another Newsome
Speaker:being president right before you?
Speaker:I would give the chance of that happening to be very small and
Speaker:I would love to run against
Speaker:Governor
Speaker:Newsom.
Speaker:It'd be an honor
Speaker:to
Speaker:you're right.
Speaker:I think you're right.
Speaker:I think his chances are very small, but it's ironic
Speaker:that
Speaker:he
Speaker:It is ironic.
Speaker:Yeah, it
Speaker:is ironic.
Speaker:he
Speaker:doesn't have the
Speaker:and if he were to get elected in 2028.
Speaker:that
Speaker:could, that could present an issue.
Speaker:'cause there'll be all these theories that you're like his cousin or something,
Speaker:it's a very valid point.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And we have to be technically related somehow, although he doesn't
Speaker:share the e on my last name, I'm sure that's a quick little family
Speaker:fix at some stage in the backlogs.
Speaker:But yeah, man, ultimately it'd be an honor for me to share the
Speaker:stage with anyone that really cares about creating a better America.
Speaker:And I think having certain topics and situations addressed for me is really
Speaker:focusing primarily on education.
Speaker:I think fixing that, I believe, fixing that.
Speaker:I know fixing that will give this country actually what it needs.
Speaker:versus always just creating this, you mentioned it a
Speaker:million times, polarization.
Speaker:This bifurcation, this diversification that's happening right now where
Speaker:we're splitting sides versus saying The biggest problem is this country
Speaker:is less smart than we used to be.
Speaker:We are more unhealthy than ever and the way to fix a lot of these
Speaker:components almost every single time when we really drill down into a big
Speaker:topic that is a thorn in the side of America, we are deciding and coming
Speaker:up with more and more relevancy to.
Speaker:We need to change education.
Speaker:We need to educate the populace better and in almost every way imaginable, but for
Speaker:sure, regarding what this country is, what it stands for, and why it stands for it.
Speaker:So to our listeners, thank you for tuning in.
Speaker:Thank you for being here.
Speaker:Thank you for sharing.
Speaker:Thank you for tagging us on X and also Instagram, and we look forward
Speaker:to continually serving you in future episodes of solving America's problems.
Speaker:Okay, so what did you learn?
Speaker:What did you learn on this one?
Speaker:What did I learn on this one?
Speaker:A lot of fun topics, man.
Speaker:Very circular in this conversation, which was nice.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Discussing everything from ai.
Speaker:To the degeneration of education again in this country showing up once more in
Speaker:another topic, in another conversation.
Speaker:I did learn and I think probably relearned my disdain for gerrymandering.
Speaker:I think a few other people share it which is fun.
Speaker:That's the big one for me, man, to also it's just so strange and odd that
Speaker:eventually and ultimately someone with enough power and insight and wisdom
Speaker:and also a motive can just go, Yeah.
Speaker:I want my election to be this way.
Speaker:And they just boop, take a sharpie out and make sure that happens is
Speaker:pretty bonkers to me to use your word.
Speaker:I think that one is, again, it's not illegal.
Speaker:It's not really a topic.
Speaker:It's not really something that people are discussing or having conversations about.
Speaker:Really.
Speaker:Ultimately, I think you even said it there's not tons of people talking
Speaker:about gerrymandering needs to go away.
Speaker:We are now, we are discussing that presently in this podcast,
Speaker:not only in this episode, but future episodes about voting.
Speaker:I did love hearing and learning that Reed, a, a gentleman like
Speaker:myself let's label us a millennial.
Speaker:Cares, has cared for a while has enjoyed it.
Speaker:And I did also hear certain, conversation topics about his background in school and
Speaker:how, and the higher education, getting his minor in history and things of
Speaker:that nature is really where he started sprouting the wings of the additional and
Speaker:continued education that he currently has and feels that other people need to have
Speaker:especially as it relates to this topic.
Speaker:What about you big man?
Speaker:What you got for me?
Speaker:What'd you walk away with?
Speaker:I gerrymandering is so funny, right?
Speaker:Because it's totally obvious that I am gonna dig deep.
Speaker:I'm gonna see if I can find anybody who's yeah, I'm pro gerrymandering.
Speaker:Other than a politician.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Somebody besides yeah, more gerrymandering.
Speaker:Bring it on.
Speaker:It's the best.
Speaker:here's the thing, I, it's not a part of the conversation because
Speaker:I think everybody looks at it and be like, okay, that's not fair.
Speaker:And that, that totally goes against the grain of everyone, and we're not talking
Speaker:about it because we are pretty simple when it comes to what is important to us.
Speaker:It's it is the kitchen table issues, it's safety, it's wealth,
Speaker:it's education, it's health.
Speaker:It's not international trade, it's not foreign policy.
Speaker:It's the what's in it for me at least what is going to help me provide for
Speaker:my family, have a family, or at least leave the world a slightly better place.
Speaker:And gerrymandering's not on that list, but it affects every single one of those.
Speaker:So I think if we can tie, if we can tie gerrymandering to, hey, this is what's
Speaker:affecting you, underneath it, right?
Speaker:This is the meta issue.
Speaker:The reason we're not talking about your safety, your wealth, your education,
Speaker:the health of you and your family, or leaving the world slightly better
Speaker:is because you're not represented.
Speaker:It's,
Speaker:It is like your representation won't listen to you because they don't have to.
Speaker:That's.
Speaker:Besides that, AI and that social media, how AI is trained and search engines
Speaker:are bias, will affect probably the election of your local dog catcher.
Speaker:That's terrifying.
Speaker:So I think that's what I learned.
Speaker:A little spooky, right?
Speaker:Crazy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:definitely Crazy.
Speaker:Love it.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Dave.
Speaker:Man, we're gonna continue to dive into the topic.
Speaker:It's gonna be so much fun For all of our listeners, make sure you
Speaker:throw us that five star review.
Speaker:We are the best of the best, what we're doing and how we're doing it.
Speaker:We are unique, we are different, and we really are diving down
Speaker:into a lot of these problems.
Speaker:We are collecting so much great data and we over time are gonna
Speaker:continue to solve America's problems.
