Barriers to Ballots: How 130 Million Voters Are Ghosted by Democracy

More than 130 million voters never cast a ballot. Why? Because gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and felon disenfranchisement turn democracy into a maze. Jerremy and Dave reveal how politicians redraw maps to lock in wins, why ID debates leave millions shut out, and how outdated rules and money in politics fuel distrust. The barriers aren’t glitches—they’re features of a system built to keep power in the right hands.

Timestamps:

(00:00) 130 Million Missing Voters: Who Got Ghosted?

(01:47) Voting Problem or Power Play?

(03:34) Gerrymandering’s Funhouse Maps

(11:13) ID Laws: Gym Cards vs Ballot Access

(19:35) Modernizing Democracy: Tech at the Polls

📢 Solving America’s Problems Podcast – Real Solutions For Real Issues

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Episode Transcript

Jerremy (00:00):
dc Dave Conley.
We're having discussions today.
What are we discussing?

Dave (00:05):
In this week's episode of Solving America's Problems, we examine the core
of our democracy voting, and its systemiccracks that raise a critical question.
What if over 130 millioneligible voices are left unheard?
From barriers facing felons, youngpeople, and immigrants to the distorted
districts of gerrymandering that skewrepresentation, we explore how low

(00:27):
participation and outdated influenceslike money and politics erode.
Trust.
Join us as we uncover reforms thatcould ensure every vote counts.
And that's this week on solvingAmerica's problems, barriers to ballots,
rethinking Who Votes in America.

. Jerremy (00:43):
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and family from around the
world, welcome to another Mind AlteringOpinion Shifting, world renowned Listen
Solving America's Problems podcast.
I am Jerremy Lexander, my co-host.

(01:03):
Amazing Dave Congress, and weare discussing him and I, and
we're gonna have some incredibleguests coming on this series.
We are sure it's gonna be reallyfun, but we're talking voting.
Now, what's fantastic about this one is itpopped up on our radar as like, all right,
a lot of people are talking about thisone, but then there are people that are

(01:25):
talking about it and there's people thataren't, and there's people that are, and
there's some changes that are being made.
There's not a lot of changes being made.
A lot of people don't know.
People don't know.
So Dave and I are gonna dive in andhopefully not only educate ourselves
even more on the topic, but also educateevery single one of our listeners.
You can share it with your friends, youcan share it with your family, and we can
all learn and grow and dive in together.

(01:47):
Dave, is there a problemaround voting at all,
or is this just us.

Dave (01:52):
I was gonna ask you the same question.
It's do we have a problem?
You know, I don't know.
So this episode is all about our kickoff.
What, like what are our biases?
What do we think about this goingforward as we start this series.
And that starts alwayswith a lot of research.
And then when I dug into it, becauseinitially when you said, Hey, let's

(02:14):
do voting, I was like, oh, snooze.
And then I was like, no, actuallyI do have a lot of opinions.
Oh yeah, I can get fired up about this.
It's oh yeah, we got a lot of problems.

Jerremy (02:22):
Snooze.

Dave (02:23):
and then I wonder what the problems are.
There are certainly issues that could makevoting better, and there are certainly.
Things I would love to, to seethat I get like fired up about.
And then some things that I'm, Iam fired up about, like, I think
we'll talk about it, voter idyou know, like what does that do?
What does that actually mean?

(02:44):
And then I'm like, okay, well actuallywe do get millions of people voting
all the time, every two years at least.
And we do get the results.
And then Dave wonderslike, what is broken?
Because you know, I, I don't knowa lot of people who look at our
representative democracy here andbe like, oh, that works perfect.

(03:08):
But those are sort of the end results.
And I think we're lookingat voting at fixing that.
I'm not sure if that's the okay, wehave terrible representatives that
don't seem to be listening to us,and then they don't seem to be doing
anything that makes a differencefor the vast majority of people.
Is that voting?
Yeah, I think some of it, maybe it'smoney in politics, maybe it's this,

(03:28):
maybe it's that, maybe it's influence.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Like I, this, that's thewhole point of this thing.

Jerremy (03:33):
Yeah, exactly.
There's huge discussions going onright now about gerrymandering,
right?
Between Texas and Californiaand Governor Newsom and
Trump,

Dave (03:41):
crazy.

Jerremy (03:43):
who just hate each other,

Dave (03:44):
Oh yeah.

Jerremy (03:45):
Big time.
Why does that make you crazy?

Dave (03:48):
Gerrymandering.
I think anybody who looks at it,other than a politician looks
at me like this is bonkers.
Like these crazy drawn maps that.
Ensure that one party stays inpower, doesn't represent a group
because, it goes for a thousandmiles in these weird ass shapes.

(04:10):
And I don't get it.
I mean, like, I honestly do not get wheresomebody looks at this and goes, perfect.
You know, I think actually disenfranchisesa lot of people because you get
lumped in with people who may not,you know, know or feel anywhere near
about what you, think about stuff.

(04:32):
I don't know what, you know, like,I'm not sure my issues being in an
urban environment would translate wellto somebody who's, literally with a
cattle ranch a hundred miles from here.
And yet those people need to beheard and I need to be heard too.

Jerremy (04:49):
It's very strange to me because to define it for listeners
gerrymandering is redrawing districtboundaries to favor a part of your group.
Now, you might go no one's doing that.
Just strictly yeah, they are
Like politicians are sitting down.
Literally saying, all right,cool, so here's all the votes.
And they just draw all these crazy lineswhere the boundaries are literally nothing

(05:17):
else that exists other than whoeverneeded the votes to come in for who the,
who needs to get the votes to come in.
For example, they're not county lines,

Dave (05:26):
no.

Jerremy (05:27):
they're not city lines, they're not township lines, they're
not river lines, they're notlandlines, they're not property lines.
They're literally who do we need to vote?
Who is on our side and in our favor?
Where do they live?
We know these people.
Let's group them into their individualidiosyncratic circles so that

(05:51):
they will vote for us so that wewill win this particular location.

Dave (05:55):
Okay let's flip the script on this, right?
So a hundred miles from here, thereis, somebody who's attending a
cattle ranch or, growing tomatoes.
And we do share a lot of things.
And, on the national level, won'tmost of our things sort of align.
And so what sounds crazy on thisside, particularly in rural areas

(06:18):
where you have these big stretchesof land and not a lot of people.
What does it matter?
Look, my personal feeling isgerrymandering his bonkers
and they should just use math.

Jerremy (06:28):
Yeah.

Dave (06:29):
But I don't know.
Is there a pro gerrymandering thing?

Jerremy (06:33):
I'm sure we'll track one down.

Dave (06:34):
Somebody will believe in it.

Jerremy (06:36):
Yeah, we'll have to find one.
It's gonna be someone who loves politics.
Because again, I'm over here thinkingto myself, isn't that already done?
Don't we already have county lines?

Dave (06:45):
Yeah.

Jerremy (06:46):
And if you're a voter or an individual in the United States of
America, I'm here to tell you that agerrymandering line and a county line
are two totally different things.
Like county line's, a preset, theyall, you know where they are if you're
driving wherever you're driving.
But mostly in the southeast, when you gofrom one county to the next, the roads
are different, the signs are different.

(07:07):
you Can physically tell, okay,I am now in a different county,
Gilchrist County or Laua County,Florida, I have changed county.
Alright?
That's not how these lines are drawn.
That's not who's voting, that's notwho they're trying to group together.
And again, it just seems tome like there should be some.
Pretty easy, pretty basic, likeunderstanding that we already

(07:29):
have voting territories down,like they're called counties.
You're done.
There's no more, there's no otherneed to not only spend time and waste
resources, but for just a random disappropriation of let's just ensure that
we are drawing this voting corridorsthe way we want to so that we can

(07:52):
get the vote that we need to get.
Is mind blowing to me?

Dave (07:57):
Okay.
I'm desperately trying to take theother side of this, but I, it's tough.
This is arguing forinvading another nation.
I live again in an urban environment.
And so the number of people thata representative represents,
I don't know, I think it wouldextend like 10 blocks that way.

(08:18):
10 blocks north, 10 blocks south,and Miami-Dade County is huge.
Whereas if you were in alemme try the word again.
Rural environment.

Jerremy (08:29):
roll
area.
Yeah.
You have less people to oversee.

Dave (08:31):
Yeah.
I also went to school out in Colorado andwe'd go up to the University of Wyoming
and, there's more sheep than people.
There might be just a smallhandful of representatives that
represent the entire state.
I don't know.
So I, I did plug this into our researchand they said, yeah, there are certain
districts that need to be kept together,like, native American Indian tribes.

(08:53):
I'm like, okay, I get that.
It's the partisanshipthat is bonkers, right?
I think in some ways, you, actually seeit when they draw school lines, you know?
I think that's more, analogous,maybe less partisan, but that can
be like class level, like classism,let's make sure these neighborhoods
are going to this school and theseneighborhoods are going to this school.

(09:15):
I think that does happen.
I've seen that when I grewup in Northern Virginia.
So I'm gonna try and take theother side of this, which is
like, okay, representativedemocracy doesn't fit neatly into
these big places, big counties.
What do you think?

Jerremy (09:30):
I think ultimately man, like that's the county like
that you're choosing to live in.
So if you have a huge county,like you can have, we can easily
create a very simple rule.
It's oh, one county has 400.
The population of another county,they should get more representatives.

Dave (09:47):
Yeah.
And they do right now,
But So how do you draw it inside of that?
So like, where's your, where, you know,do you gerrymander inside the big county?
Like what do you do then?

Jerremy (09:59):
I think you just simply, everyone votes, right?
If you don't even have to you just say,

Dave (10:04):
I see.
So if I live in Miami-Dade, they're justlike, okay, this is the 10 reps you get
and they just represent the entire county.
And if there's not enough peoplein one county, then it's okay, you.
You won, represent these two counties orthe three represent these five counties.
Yeah.
Okay.
I get it.
All right.

Jerremy (10:24):
I can just see it like, it makes sense to me.

Dave (10:26):
Does everywhere have counties?

Jerremy (10:28):
Every state in the US.

Dave (10:29):
Yeah.
Okay.

Jerremy (10:31):
Never state in the us and some of 'em are big, some of 'em are
small, but again, they're already there.
We already have everythingcreated for them.
There's no more need to do anything.
And yeah, sure, counties could changein some very rare circumstances,

Dave (10:43):
I think I have more in common with the people in my county, even
though it's like incredibly diverse.
Like I would get that because itis diverse and we handle it now,

Jerremy (10:52):
right.
Precisely.
And you already lived there.
You chose to
live there, so it waslike, that's your decision.

Dave (10:56):
If I just get any of the reps in here, let's say it's 10 for, this county
or whatever, five, it's like fantastic.
I get five more people to call.

Jerremy (11:04):
Yeah, that's right.
Dave loves

Dave (11:06):
I'm down with that.
So you

Jerremy (11:08):
Now here's one that we both agree on, without question.
I'm pretty sure we do.
We'll see.
We'll find out the save act.
Safeguard.
American Voter Eligibility Actwas requiring citizen proof
for federal registration.
This was house passed in 2024 withstall proponents cite integrity,

(11:28):
opponents warn of disenfranchisingcitizens without documents.

Dave (11:34):
so this is curious.
Yeah,

Jerremy (11:36):
fine.
No, it's fine.
I'm curious,

Dave (11:38):
I'm trying to take the other side on things,

Jerremy (11:40):
I try.
You're you're doing
me tell you a story about
this weekend.
So I'm in Laguna Beach thisweekend with a bunch of my buddies.
We're gonna go to this gymand we're all gonna work out
because, and so we're all there.
All of us are together,and it's lifetime fitness.
And these are the high end, yeah.
Bougie gyms.
So we're going in there and I fillout I spend 13 minutes filling

(12:04):
out all this paperwork, all thisregistration, all these forms.
And then they say, okay, cool.
We need your ID now.
I'm like, yeah, cool.
I got on my phone.
They're like no, we need your physical id.

Dave (12:14):
Wow.

Jerremy (12:15):
I'm like, you need for my why?
They're like, we need to scan it.
I'm like, scan this digitalID that I have on my phone.
Like it's the same thing.
It's a picture of my id.
You can scan the barcode.
It will register.
Everything works fine.
Yeah.
But we need our, your physical one.
And this was like a 15 minute fight.

Dave (12:32):
Really?

Jerremy (12:32):
never got into this gym,

Dave (12:34):
You're kidding.

Jerremy (12:35):
No, I'm not kidding.

Dave (12:36):
They're like,

Jerremy (12:36):
story.
13 of my bros are all around me.
They all have their
physical IDs.

Dave (12:40):
this is Jerremy.
No, I'm

Jerremy (12:41):
I'm the moron.
I didn't bring in physical id 'cause Idon't bring physical IDs almost anywhere.
But

Dave (12:48):
you get on a plane?

Jerremy (12:49):
No.

Dave (12:50):
Okay, so you weren't on a plane.
Alright.

Jerremy (12:52):
Yeah I had my physical ID in my possession in my hotel.
I didn't have it
in my physical
In this gym.
Now here's the thing though, thepoint of the story is this gym
said you don't have physical id.

Dave (13:04):
out.

Jerremy (13:05):
You're out.

Dave (13:06):
Yeah.

Jerremy (13:07):
Oh, okay.
If I'm going to a, if I am voting, itseems like that also should be relatively
the same level of criticism or scrutinyor structure in place where listen, if
you do not have the appropriate physicalid, if a gym's gonna uphold this thing,

Dave (13:33):
Yeah.

Jerremy (13:34):
we should for voting.

Dave (13:35):
Okay.
I'll start this by saying I'm with you.

Jerremy (13:39):
Yep.

Dave (13:40):
I did my research, right?

Jerremy (13:41):
Yeah.
We

Dave (13:42):
I researched this, and so the other side of this is disenfranchises
people, and I'm like, oh, come on.
We need ID for so many things.
We need it for bank accounts welfareand Medicaid, social security,
renting housing, buying booze.
Go to the gym and we do live in adifferent world because we're not poor.

(14:09):
Like we're not unhoused, we're nothomeless and we're older and it
estimates are that 11% now blew my mind.
11% have no id, and they cite the expenseof it because it can cost a couple of
hundred dollars to get a driver's license,which I'm like what state is that?

(14:30):
It can you might not have the documents.
And I'm down with that.
Like, when I moved, I couldn'tfind my birth certificate.
I couldn't find anything.
I couldn't get my passport.
Like I had to like contacteverybody and have it sent to me,
but it wasn't that big a deal.
If you're young, it's18, 18, 19 year olds.
40% of 'em don't have a driver's license.

(14:50):
If you're black and Hispanic, it's 6.2%
and all of this represents 20 to 21million people that don't have an id.
And I'm like, that's crazy talk.
I feel like we're solving for one thingand that's broken on the other side.
Like, everybody should be ableto get a, an ID for nothing.

(15:13):
And if it's like an at, like youshould be able to attest to it and
be like, this is who I am, this is mysignature, this is my utility bill.
You get your, I feel like if therewas a push to just get people IDs,
then it wouldn't matter, you know?
So the other side of this is thatlike, there's plenty of people
who don't, and I'm like, well,that's a little bit on them.

Jerremy (15:33):
You can't argue for them.
Dave, you already argued for them.
you're you're like, listen, I don'twanna disenfranchise you, but.

Dave (15:40):
Lower income, 10 to 15% represents 10 million people.
So if you aren't making money, youdon't have an id I don't get it.
It doesn't make sense tome yet they are there.
So if we are a representative,democracy, should it be tied to that?
It turns out that not a lotof countries actually require

(16:03):
id, I was shocked at that.
It's really?
It's yeah.
Countries that have higher voterparticipation, they don't have it.
They

Jerremy (16:10):
of

Dave (16:10):
have, they, they have like voter ID

Jerremy (16:13):
can vote.

Dave (16:14):
Huh?

Jerremy (16:14):
You can drive over there, fly over there, and just go vote in their
elections because they don't need any IDs.

Dave (16:19):
You, there are other ways to do it.
Like when I lived in California,you did have to sign a form.
You did have to say,Hey, this is who I am.
You did register to an address.
And when they go back and audit thatthe fraud in there is minuscule.
Like it's a fraction of a fractionof a percent and none of it

(16:40):
changes an outcome of an election.
I'm like, okay, I get it.
So there's a, there's one part ofme is like, okay, if the ID doesn't
actually solve anything, and it is ahuge barrier to people going and voting
but I have a tough time with this.
Yeah, you should just have an id.

Jerremy (16:58):
Here's the one thing I didn't research.
What IDs are valid?
For voting,

Dave (17:07):
Okay.

Jerremy (17:08):
Okay, so you have a driver's license?

Dave (17:10):
A Costco membership.

Jerremy (17:12):
A, a driver's license passport.
But you can get an ID cardwithout a driver's license.
You can go, here's who I am.
And it doesn't have tobe a driver's license.

Dave (17:20):
Yeah.

Jerremy (17:21):
I don't know how much those costs never had to get one.
I am assuming dollars, tens of dollars.
Maybe like very small amount of money.
Like this is who I am.
Card.
That's not a passport.
Passports, they do costa hundred and like $20.

(17:42):
And I do know people thatdon't have their passport.
I can, you know what, that's fine.
Okay.
So you don't need a passport.
Got it.
Driver's license.
I don't drive.
I live in New York City andI don't have a lot of money.
Got it.
I take the subway everywhere I go.
Okay.
Your subway.
In order to ride a subway, youhad to have some type of right,
and then you paid for that thingand that card is now yours.

(18:05):
I don't know what the,like I go get an id.
That's, that seems like you should be,
because the thing is the reason thatthe fear is there, I think from one of
whatever, here all, we have so many,we already had a discussion, right?
We have so many legal immigrants in thiscountry that they're all gonna come and
flood the gates with bad voter shit.
I don't think that's gonna happen at all.
That's really not even what I'm saying.
I have, I don't even havethat fear whatsoever.

(18:28):
I just truly think forvalidation purposes, you
should have some measure of ID
now.

Dave (18:34):
I feel like we can solve this with solving the ID part, which is okay, like
we have blood mobiles, like, why don'twe have ID mobiles that go to low income
areas and be like, okay, here's yourfree, id just bring a birth certificate.
And it's oh, I don'thave a birth certificate.
Fine, then we will take care ofyou getting a birth certificate.
Where were you born?
It was like I was born overseas.
It's oh fine, we will, work with theembassy and we'll get what you need.

(18:56):
I'm like, ah, like I feel likelet's just solve the ID part and
be like, of course you need an id.
You need an ID for other stuff.
So let's make sure you have an id.

Jerremy (19:04):
It, boom.
Precisely.
That's easy enough.
Now, from that standpoint biometricsis becoming extremely effective.
And apparently the C-I-A-F-B-I theyall have biometric scanners and these
cameras all over the world, they're
scanning people's faces.
You've seen Jason Bourne

Dave (19:24):
Hate it.

Jerremy (19:24):
so I'm assuming that's already happening.
But every, like 95% of people use face ID
on their Apple or their Google device.
The reason I'm bringingthat up is because.
I actually do think that weshould make voting easier,
faster, and simpler.

Alex (19:41):
"We've cracked open voting's foundations—from gerrymandered maps
that twist like abstract art to IDrules tougher than gym memberships.
But could tech seal thosecracks, or shatter everything?
Next, biometric scans meet hackerhorrors, and why data breaches
make us question it all."