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

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Solving America’s Problems— where Jerremy and Dave just learned
that in most congressional districts,the November election is already
decided before a single vote gets cast.

Reed Bauman laid it out plain: once a partisan locks the (00:11):
undefined
primary in a gerrymandered seat,the general is a formality.
No one’s competing for the moderatein the middle — because that voter’s
been surgically carved out of the map.
Jerremy admitted his own first ballot wasbasically random clicks on seventy-five
races he’d never heard of, while Davestared at bond measures designed to

(00:34):
make refusal feel like hating puppies.
And Reed dropped the hardest fact ofthe night — districts are now drawn
with census precision so exact thatextremists win by default, leaving the
rest of America with representativeswho never have to compromise…
Dave D. C Conley.
There's thousands and thousands ofpeople all over the United States

(00:58):
that are eager to learn what we'retalking about in this episode.
In this week's episode of SolvingAmerica's Problems, we take on the forces
shaping not just who wins elections,but how our choices are boxed in before
ballots are even cast gerrymander.
Districts lock in extremes overcompetition, leaving us on the sidelines
and wondering if voices even matter.

(01:19):
Our guest, Reed Bauman joins us withthe perspective of an everyday voter
whose first ballot in a Georgiafirehouse back in 2008 for John
McCain against Barack Obama was botha rite of passage and a glimpse of the
frustrations baked into the system.
From rickety booths, long lines and vagueballot measures to the larger machinery
that decides outcomes before election day.

(01:39):
Reid helps us trace how individual votesconnect to a systemic failure and where
reform could restore real representation.
And that's this week onsolving America's problems.
Unpacking gerrymandering, how polarizationsteel solutions with Reid Bauman.
I've got an interesting stat for everyone.
65%, only 65% of Americans, whichis 154 million people voted last

(02:05):
year, which believe it or not, isthe third highest turnout in decades.
But those same Americans, if theytrusted the system to count their
votes, only 59% of those people say yes.
We've built the largest votingsystem of any democracy on the
planet while simultaneouslymaking it the most confusing.

(02:30):
Every state and territoryhas different rules.
21 states expanded access, 10 Titansecurity, and somehow we're more
anxious about democracy than ever.
My name is Jerremy Alexander Newsom.
My co-host is Dave Conley, andthis is Solving America's problems.
Today we're hearing from Reed B. On whatit's really like to step into the booth.

(02:54):
Reid,
thanks for being here, man.
anytime?
It's gonna be exciting conversationjust to go back and forth and
just share what we're doing.
But this is a fun first question, Reid.
Paint us a picture, man.
What's the very firstmemory you have of voting?
And then I want to hear from myboy, Dave, and I'll share mine.

(03:14):
I grew up pretty electorally involved.
But my first election was 2008,John McCain versus Barack Obama.
And,
it was in my hometown, likefire station voting booth, and I
walked in and cast my ballot for
John McCain.

(03:34):
That was my first memory.
Voting.
Nice.
Nice.
In a fire in a firehouse
station.
I love it.
What about you, Dave?
Georgia.
Oh let's see.
It was
1917
and,
not quite the it was it was BillClinton against George Bush.

(03:56):
And my first memory, and thisis this was the same for years
because it was exactly the same.
I grew up in Northern Virginia and I wentto everybody goes to this high school
that's nearby, and it's the only highschool that covers that, that part of the
county and the lines were out the door.
Now I think what was great aboutit was, and again, I, it's probably

(04:18):
the exact same as it is today.
You're in this line, it's a littlebit cold outside because it's
the fall in Northern Virginia.
And you wait and you wait and you getinside a gymnasium that has like those
crazy bright lights and this very oldlady comes up and hands you a ballot
and you then you have to wait in lineagain and you go to these funny booths

(04:39):
that, they clearly just set up, right?
They just unfolded it, it'slike this rickety table.
And it has these dividerson the left and the right.
I think they were paper or plastic.
And you get there and you you fill outthese bubbles and then inevitably somebody
around you goes, ah, I messed up my thing.
And so then they have to go andthey have to shred the ballot.
Little old lady comes back upto you, hands you the ballot,

(05:02):
and then you go and do it again.
You fill out the bubbles.
then you hand in the bubble,it goes into this machine, it
looks like a giant shredder.
It goes ZZ and that's it.
They hand and then they stamp you, likethey, they give you the I voted sticker so
you can show everybody at work that, hey,I voted, and then it was out the door.
They, the only thing that reallysticks with me not necessarily like

(05:22):
voting for the president or anyof that is all the things that I
didn't know was gonna be on there.
Particularly like all the crap thatthe county puts on there because
they refuse to do their job.
Like they, they will, they, theydon't want to actually balance
the budget of this giant county,Fairfax County, it's monster, right?
They want to make youvote for extra money.

(05:46):
So they'll put these bond initiativeson there and they'll always
make it like the craziest thing.
They'll be like.
Do you wanna feed orphansand protect puppies and have
your schools open next year?
Vote for this a hundredmillion dollar budget, right?
This bond.
And I'm like, of course everybody wants tovote for that, but that's not the point.

(06:06):
They refuse to do therest of the budgeting.
And so like they, they'll put thelike craziest thing that you say,
of course I wanna vote for this.
And that's what always stickswith me is that my county didn't
want to really do its job.
So they'll take care of everythingthat, that is actually controversial
and put like the least controversialthing that everybody has to vote
for on the bond initiatives.
That's, that was myfirst memory of voting.

(06:29):
What about you?
I like it.
Maya's weird man, becauseprobably a little bit of a blend
maybe between both of yours.
But so as growing up a Jo'sWitness, one of their doctrines
is that you don't vote, right?
Because they don't want you to be anypart of this world or this system as
I say in air quotes for our listeners.
And so I was in that religionmentally and physically until I

(06:52):
was 24, which is only 13 years ago.
So my very first vote castwas Obama versus MIT Romney.
And I voted for Mitt Romney,although I knew Obama was gonna win.
And when I walked in, it wasa middle school, so I had to

(07:14):
Google where the heck do I vote?
I remember doing that,like, where do I vote?
And like it was like, put in your zipcode, it will tell you where to go.
And I put on my zip code andI was like, there's no way I
go to a middle school library.
And sure enough, and they'relike, make sure you bring your id.
And this was in Tennesseeat the time Nashville.
And I'm trying to think of what theschool was Reed, but it was somewhere

(07:36):
out in Bellevue, some random middleschool in Bellevue, in a library.
And I went into this library and toyour point, Dave, I went in there and
I thought I would go to something andjust put in my vote for president.
that was it.
Here's the president.
Boom.
You pick.
Nope, there's 75 things I voted for andI had no clue what any of them were.
I was like I felt like so stupid.

(07:58):
I just started clicking buttons'cause they were all mandatory, and
I just was clicking people's names.
I was like, I'll pick somes and I'll pick some Ds.
I like, I'll let megive like half and half.
Dunno who this person is.
Dunno what this is.
Should have looked that up.
Should have researched that.
Didn't know any of it.
Filled out this horrible voting forum.
I'm positive I votedfor something terrible.
Some.

(08:18):
So someone that's actually been a fear ofmine, someone's gonna pull up that voting
history and go, Jerremy iss a neo-Nazi.
Like he voted, you won't believewhat he voted for in 2012.
And yeah man I just filled outthis random thing and, or sorry.
Yeah it was just ultimatelyone of those situations where I
got my sticker and that was it.
But afterwards, man, I researched somuch about who and what and all the

(08:42):
things and just started becoming a littlebit more inclined into the political
sphere as I started stepping out of thatparticular religious belief into the
fact that I am okay to be a part of thisworld and all that kinda good stuff.
And so I will say, going up to thatvoting booth, I did not feel empowered.
I felt uninformed.

(09:02):
I wouldn't say frustrated for sure,but I would certainly say that I didn't
really think what I was doing mattered.
Ultimately, I was just excited to doit, 'cause I'd never done it before.
Reid, lemme throw this question to you.
If 59% of Americans say they actuallytrust the count, what's your gut reaction

(09:24):
to that number and what's your opinionon, does your vote actually matter?
Reid?
As to whether your votematters it's an aggregate, it's
like a hive mind type thing.
So individually, are yougonna swing an election?
Almost guaranteed thatyou won't but your vote.
That doesn't mean your vote doesn'tcount, as far as 59% of people I would

(09:45):
be interested in historically, whatnumber of people have trusted the system?
I
would make a pretty confident assumptionthat number is higher than it used
to be.
People have distrust in thesystem has gone up as a result of
certain political forces basicallybenefiting them to sow distrust

(10:07):
amongst the populist of the system.
So I think
that's probably a result of a lotof political action and rhetoric.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like 59% is pretty high for
sure.
So you, you mentioned in your vote,did you have to show ID at all when
you went to your firehouse station?

(10:29):
I don't remember, to be honest with you.
I have no recollection of that.
I don't
think Georgia had a voter ID lawat the time, so probably not.
What's your general take on that?
Should we like have some typeof verification, registration
for voting.
I think it's a prickly issue.
You can't come right out and say thatyou're against voter ID because that

(10:50):
is a political, it's a toxic statementbecause if you're against voter id,
then you must be for voter fraud.
But I think as I read through the researchthat you guys have done, and you need
to lay the groundwork to basically, diginto the studies and everything, but
there's a lot of evidence that doesn'treally have an impact on elections.

(11:13):
So I think what it amounts to isprobably more of a waste of state
funds than anything to pass to havevoter ID laws and stuff like that.
And it's a show of electionsecurity more than it is actual
election security because, who'scommitting fraud in the elections?

(11:33):
Illegal immigrants or people likethat who are coming, are they coming
here to commit social engineeringfraud and go steal elections?
The amount of kind of collaborationand expertise that would require.
Just is not really there for, and plus thepotential punishment if they're caught,

(11:55):
which it's not hard to be caught becauseelections are secured by census data.
And backing up with people'saddresses so that there is one vote
per person even without voter ID
laws.
That answer the
Yeah, it totally does.
It made me make a note because Iwas thinking about all of the people
who've been actually convictedof voter fraud, and it's almost

(12:18):
exclusively politicians, politicaloperators, working for politicians.
So I think I'm on theside that all politicians
need to
show their ID before they vote.
Those are the people who wouldhave a motive to commit fraud.
If I'm one person and my vote is gonnabe one of millions, what incentive is
there for me to try to commit fraudjust so I can cast my one vote that

(12:41):
probably
wouldn't want swing anelection, to go to prison.
So, what you're saying andwhat I hear you saying is
the voter challenge is much higherup the chain than an individual I a
person having or not having an id.
Yeah,
I like it.
I
like
it.
about right.
Yeah.
Okay.

(13:02):
I was gonna say earlier, howfunny would it be if they
were like
This initiative passed by onevote and it was Jerremy Newsom.
Yeah, In 2012, this dude.
You're like, what did I vote for?
Yeah.
That's a good point.
But David and I in the lastepisode, which you haven't heard
yet 'cause we just recorded it.
But to your point, one of mythoughts and theories was.

(13:24):
It would probably be pretty easyto require a voter id if every
state was like, Hey, listen,you gotta bring a license.
Pretty straightforward.
Some verification form.
It wouldn't be very hard, Idon't think, to implement it.
Mostly because I just went,I told Dave the story.
I went to a gym and I couldn't get intothe gym without a physical license,

(13:46):
like a, like it was a lifetime fitness.
They're like, you can't work out here.
You obviously, even though I had a pictureof my id, it didn't have the physical id.
So nah, sorry man, you can't do this.
And it was just a comical situation.
I'm like, all right if they can do it,I'm sure there's probably a few other
places that could just implement arelatively easy policy to make sure, but

(14:07):
to your point, even if you had every.
and I don't know the exact numberoff the top of my head, but we did
just have a very long discussion onimmigration and illegal immigration.
But every single individual that did,if they colluded somehow to together,
they'd have to all go to probablythe same state and all vote illegally

(14:28):
simultaneously for there to be anytype of swing or massive decision.
And then to your also point, if they didthat and they and everyone pulled that
off what actual change would they make?
So if the challenge is a lot higher,Dave or Reed, where do we think it lays?
Is it in the electoral college?

(14:48):
Is it somewhere different?
Is there something else thatwe should be looking at?
I have a thought on that, but asto what you just said, with the
illegal I immigrants all moving toone state and voting one way, that,
that would be very obvious, that
was occurring
Of course.
data, like looking atthe data and stuff like
that.
So it wouldn't, you can catch that
stuff by just going through the data andmaking sure it matches reality, which

(15:12):
is something that political scientistsdo, and that's part of the reason why
it's over the head of a lot of thegeneral public and that it's, they
don't trust political scientists or theydon't understand, the things like that.
But the issue that I think ismost important when it comes to
voting is gerrymandering 100%.
Because districts are gerrymanderedso that they're not competitive and.

(15:37):
You have essentially like in avery heavily gerrymandered, let's
say red district, a congressionalcandidate needs to win the primary.
If they win the primary, theywill win the general election.
It's basically a slam dunk,already known outcome.
And therefore we're competing forthe primary and therefore there's

(15:57):
no incentive to nominate a personwho can win over moderate voters.
You're only looking for someone whocan win over the hard ideological
voters on one side or the other whichcontributes to more polarized politics.
If we have districts across the boardwhere people have to compete for

(16:20):
moderate voters, we wouldn't haveas polarized of a political system.
We would have politicians who can workacross the aisle with the other side
because most Americans are actually nothard ideologues on one side or the other.
Most people fall in the middle, andthat's the re part of the reason why those
people feel like they're not representedbecause most of them live in a district

(16:44):
that's gerrymandered, so that someonewho is ideological on one side or the
other will always win their district.
And
therefore you have no one thatyou really like to vote for.
No one's really competing for your vote.
So could you, So Jerremy andI have been trying to do this.
Can you steal, man,the other side of this?

(17:06):
What's good about gerrymandering?
If anything?
Can you think of anything like, ah,
I mean for the higher up politicalpeople who wanna win, it's great.
yeah, that's it.
Gerrymandering,gerrymandering helps us win.
We barter with the other side.
We'll rig these
districts so that we can win andyou can rig the other districts.

(17:26):
But it's not, that's notreally the way that it is.
For, I don't know if they're havingthose conversations like in higher up
rooms that we don't get to know about.
I doubt it because I thinkit's a zero sum game.
We're trying to win asmany seats as we can
and basically disenfranchise theother side because that's what it is.
It's anti-democratic.

(17:48):
Fascinating.
Love that term.
So here's a fun one
for you, Dave, right?
Gerrymandering.
It was a coin coined term fromMassachusetts governor in 1812.
Your third birthday.
I'm just kidding.
bunch of old jokes today.
Just a joke.
Governor.
Elbridge, Jerry noted thatone of the districts looked

(18:11):
like a mythical salamander.
And so I think that's probablywhen it, but 18, 12, a little
bit ago, like a couple days ago,but that's when he noticed it.
That's when the phrase gets coined.
So you can only, that's just a coupleof years before the nation gets founded.

(18:32):
17 seven.
It's not that,
by a guy named Jerry?
so they just coined it Exactly that.
That's just when it gets coined.
So it's been around
It was coined by some politicalcartoonists because it was, they called
it a gerrymander,
the district, because it looked like a,
yeah.
Oh, because it lookedlike a salad, ma. Okay.

(18:54):
Yeah I'm following it.
A
mythical salamander.
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
Yeah.
But I think you use a very interestingterm that does come up a lot,
Reed, which is disenfranchise.
And I would like to hear a little bitmore about that because if a group of
individuals feels disenfranchised, do youthink they have the, or do they currently

(19:15):
have the ability to determine where thismythical salamander boundary begins?
Should they even vote if they seethemselves in this really weirdly
shaped, dis voting district wherethey're like, listen my voice
literally will not matter at all.
I shouldn't even show up and turn out.

(19:37):
I think they should because it'sa protest vote, at that point.
But you still need to cast yourvote because that's the only
lever that you have to pull.
But I can understand why peoplewouldn't at the same time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
absolutely.
So if it's been around essentially sincethe entire formation of our country,
more or less, how do we get rid of it?

(19:58):
Is it something that we should get rid of?
Is it even get
Ridable?
that is a really good question.
I think it would require it wouldrequire an interest in both sides
to have some kind of fair DistrictAmendment or bill that they would pass.
Because if both, if one side or theother sees an advantage that they can

(20:21):
have in the current system, they'renot gonna want to pass an amendment.
It makes perfect logical sense tous why Congress people should not
be allowed to trade stocks, right?
But they're not passing anamendment banning themselves
from trading stocks anytime soon.
And I think Gerrymandering'skind of the same, the same thing.

(20:41):
So I, I don't know if I don't knowhow realistically it would get fixed
maybe the Supreme Court but you would,the Supreme Court only decides on
cases, so they don't really, theywouldn't really have a a role to play
in that.
If the system right now, this is inthe public discourse because we have

(21:03):
Texas and California and Illinois allthreatening to gerrymander their states.
Basically because of Texasbeing the number one actor.
If every state gerrymandersthemselves to maximize congressional
districts, the Republicans will win.
They'll win more states and basically havean unassailable majority in the house.

(21:25):
And then I don't see themturning around and passing a fair
district act after they've won
the baton,
So what do you think?
I, no, it's right.
It's been a it's beenhappening for a very long time.
My random thought that I was having adiscussion with Dave about was, at what

(21:47):
point does someone to some level ofpower say, don't we already have lines
drawn that are called counties like.
We, that should be the congressionalI'm so confused on how we get the
squiggles of where some random interestgets created by whoever's draw.

(22:09):
I wanna know who's drawing the lines.
Who's that person specifically thepolitical scientist that connects
with the person that has the data,that has all the information that
goes, Hey, this is where Dave lives.
You want Dave's vote?
We gotta circle building 13 A in thisrandom redrawing of this district line.
But to your point and to, andmy thought process is like, we

(22:31):
already have these lines drawn.
We already have very discernible lines ofwhere counties begin, where cities begin,
where townships begin and we continue.
And it happens all the time.
Like the that's the thing about theredrawing, like you said earlier, like
Illinois and other states are like,Hey, Texas is doing it right now.
This could, this happensfrequently as new people move.

(22:54):
As interest changes, income changes,as the economy changes and people move
different states and different places,these lines continue to get redrawn.
This is not something that happensevery 15 years, something happens almost
every 15 months, which is really wild.
So we do need, I believe, someone ofa higher interest of a higher power,

(23:17):
of a bigger importance to reallyjust come down with some type of law.
And yeah, to your point, maybe presenta federal case with the Supreme Court
to say, listen, we need to changethese gerrymandering tactics and these
laws, because this is just almost
unfair.
It's like whoever has the
There would need to be a lawsuit.
And

(23:37):
the problem is that it's legal, so
there's not gonna be a lawsuit becauseyou have to allege a violation of
some law.
So it's, I, and the statedreason for it is to accurately
reflect the voter base, right?
The stated reason forredrawing the districts.
The real reason is to, I guess insome cases that is the real reason,

(24:02):
but it has the effect of drawingdistricts that are gerrymandered.
But they become, they're morescientific the more detailed
the census gets and everything.
Like back in the day with Edward Jerrythe governor, it was a rough human
process of drawing districts, you knewroughly how people voted in different

(24:23):
places, but how accurate was theircensus compared to what we have now?
When we can break down to finitedetails, how many households and
how many immigrants and ethnicmakeups of all these different areas,
that's what helps them be able togerrymander to such a scientific level.
And that makes
it more insidious todaythan it was in the past.

(24:44):
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
So if you're designing or redesigningone part of voting from registration
to ballots to, changing gerrymandering,what would you change first.
I would change
gerrymandering first.
That's it.

(25:04):
That's the biggest thing for you.
Okay.
So if that goes away, do you feeleverything becomes a lot more fair?
Everything becomes a lot more.
Predictable might not be the word, butlet's just say democratic, that goes away.
Things are a lot more reasonable.
I think that's the end.
That's the goal.
I think if politicians have to competefor centrist in their districts because

(25:29):
the districts are more competitive,then we're gonna end up with more
pragmatic people who are able toactually negotiate with the other side.
And aren't just hotheaded partisans.
And then that will
give us, that would give usa more functioning government
than what we have now.

(25:50):
Dave, what about you man?
If you had to if there's aperfect system that exists,
what do you think it would look like?
It's definitely taken thepoliticians out of this, right?
Yeah.
Gerrymandering's like reallyhigh on that list, and I don't
hear anybody ever talk about it.
I was just looking at.
My district and I wasactually pretty impressed.
I live in a red state and it's prettyfirmly red and in Florida, and I'm

(26:16):
actually surprised my, my voting districtis just round, it's just, it's like
somebody drew a circle and I'm like, okay.
I don't know what the rest of itlooks like, but I'm like, I'm, that,
that seems it, it on the surface
take a circle.
yeah, it looks it looks okay.
Yeah, gerrymandering's like high onthat list I'd like more people to vote
and certainly that it's easier to vote.

(26:38):
I loved your idea in our first episode onthis, which is yeah we live in counties
and so just if you have, if you live in apopulous county, then yeah, you, your five
representatives represent that county.
If you live in a sparsecounty, a rural county, then.
One representative might representlike three or four counties.
I'm like, okay, that makes,that makes a lot of sense to me.

(26:59):
That's yeah, I think that's spot on.
And then, making it easier to vote.
I'm fine with the IDs and stuff.
I'm actually okay with mail-inballoting ballots too, because, we
have armed forces overseas that,that do that all the time, so Yeah.
Yeah.
More people, more engaged.
I, the one that I'm clearly probablystandalone on this is that, we only have

(27:23):
438 representatives for Congress andthen another a hundred in the Senate,
and that was capped a long time ago.
I think we should have a lotmore representatives, and I think
that would also drive some morediverse voices, rather than.
4 38, then maybe we have 600.
And that means that each representativerepresents fewer people because our

(27:47):
population has grown and it's gonna keep
I, it's always like the will of the peopleis, is the wi is the will of the people.
Are the will.
Yeah.
Is the will of the people beingrepresentative right now represented
Right now, it doesn't feel that way.
So yeah.
More diversity for lack of a better term.
And more people like focused on theissues that we all do care about.

(28:10):
Like what, when was the lasttime we talked about healthcare?
That's like the number one thingfor people, or the economy,
like the number two thing.
It's all kitchen table issues.
instead we're talking about tariffs.
Oh my God, if I hear that onemore time, I'm gonna lose my mind.
yeah.
Reid, tell me a little bit more aboutyour general take on some countries will

(28:31):
actually fine people for not voting.
Do you think mandatory votingcould actually work in the
US?
It's like you're talking about,earlier you mentioned the people
voter participation and stufflike that and voter ID laws.
One of the bars to that is, is it,I didn't actually know that voting

(28:54):
is not a right in the Constitution.
But one of the things that ties intois do you consider voting a right.
Do you consider something like requiringan ID to be an unnecessary bar?
'Cause it could be like a socioeconomiceven if it is a small barrier, it
could be a barrier to people to voting.

(29:16):
But is I think that the rightto vote or the right to abstain
from voting is basically asimportant as the right to not vote.
So I don't really think mandatory
voting would hold up in this country.
You have the freedom, right?
We're all
about freedom.
So you should have the freedom to notvote if you don't want to, and how

(29:37):
would you implement mandatory voting?
Just everybody vote from their phones
on
Snapchat or
Yep, it's, that's right.
And Snapchat overnight rallies 3%.
It's, a, I don't think, to your point,making almost anything mandatory in
this country would ever actually work.
If you have to do something tell a bunchof Americans, they gotta do something,

(30:00):
they're like that's not gonna work.
What if it was like you at leastgotta show up or you gotta, pull
up your phone, like our utopia.
Pull up and pull up yourphone and cast your vote.
Even if it, the vote is,I'm not voting right.
Like at least you voted.
You voted for none of the above.
No.
Good take.
that Dave.
I like that Dave.
'Cause that, yeah, that's my utopia.

(30:21):
Like in a random way is again, there,there has to be some technological
capacity where we make that prettyingrained using Biologistics u using
some type of fingerprint scan, usingsome type of face scan, using something
where you at least have that capacity.

(30:42):
Again, maybe it doesn't start witheverybody, but maybe it starts
with people that want to do it.
I think more people have phonesthan they have IDs in the country,
so that'd be, fascinating.
But to, to your point, Dave.
Yeah.
If they said, Hey, listen,everyone has to vote.
Your vote can be, I don't carethat, and that's a button.
You click the button, all is good.

(31:02):
You can leave.
Don't have to tell uswhat you actually think.
I think the participation.
One I fully believe, and I thinkit'd be fun to see like the
percentages of voting and how it hasshifted and transformed over time.
When I did my intro right, 65% ofpeople that voted and that was the

(31:27):
third largest ever seems radically low,
Yeah,
right?
Like you would, I would think likein the 18 hundreds, 1865, like a
hundred percent of people are votinglike, what else are they doing,
right?
A lot fewer people could
vote.
Like it
yeah.
Is
White people,
or is that,
White, guys.

(31:47):
It was about it, right?
YY well, exactly.
Yeah.
So that's the only people that can vote.
So all the people that can vote,it's I guess from a population
standpoint.
actually one of the hugereforms of Andrew Jackson.
And he was a, he wasthe original Democrat.
He I don't know if he passed it, butduring his time was landholding males.

(32:10):
You could, now you justhad to be a white male.
They dropped the requirement to own land.
So that was
really Open the floodgatesfor voters voter turnout,
Open the flood gaze.
Come on down.
Yeah.
and you gotta think of his support.
I would imagine he probablybenefited a lot from allowing non

(32:32):
landholding white males to vote.
Otherwise, he prob probably wouldn't have
been, the Jacksonian Democrat that he was.
Yeah.
Hey so let's say we addedtech to this, right?
Let's say you could vote from yourphone you buy stuff on your phone.
You do a lot of you trade onyour phone like you move money.

(32:54):
Like some of the most important thingsin your life, you, you do on your
phone or in front of your computer.
Do you think, could we do that safely?
Reid, you're an eng, you're an engineer.
yeah.
What do you think Reid?
Oh, I'm not an engineer.
No, I, but if you bank on your phone,you can probably vote on your phone.
Yeah.
Because sure it has, there's holes in it.

(33:18):
But people, like you said,people trust their whole life
savings with doing it electronically, not?
But I also get like a notificationit seems like once a month of
being like, Hey, your stuff's beencompromised on Pinterest or whatever.
Yeah, I mean there, there'stech that can do it.
Or at some point, in my opinion, it, itcould, it can or could definitely be done.

(33:40):
We could figure it out.
We could figure out how to becomemore tech savvy with voting.
I think that would increasethe capacity to vote.
I do think we should findways to make voting relatively
easier, safer, more trackable.
When I, say more trackable.
I just mean like, to, to Reid'spoint, like the census of just, hey.
It's really, really easy to do this.
It's not that hard family fill outthis, sign up for this, do this thing.

(34:04):
I, I still find mail-invoting very archaic.
And I think that if one were to dothat again, it should just be something
where it's maybe you have to go througha couple more verification steps.
That's all.
Instead of one, which is just like youshow an ID and you take a vote, like just
a couple of, just two or three more steps.

(34:27):
Ultimately, because there are still tonsand tons of people who are not voting.
That's really the thought process.
So in your general circle, Reid,the people that you just talked
to or hear about from your day today, why do you feel or hear or see
people that do not vote presently?
Like what's their big hangup
for it?

(34:48):
I think most people in my circle do vote.
It's probably a higher turnoutthan the general public.
But I think the hangout.
Four people is just civic literacy,really just knowing when an election
is, a lot of people like the midtermsare coming up next year and everybody
knows the midterms are a very, it'sa low turnout election cycle because

(35:13):
people don't know there's an election.
The people know when there's presidentialelection because how could you not?
But people don't really know when,if there's not a president up for
election, they're not really aware
that there is
an election at all.
So it's just basic education
Really.

(35:33):
What What about you Jerremy?
And like you said the
highest turn election in history wasin 2020, and that was during COVID.
So it was the center of the newscycle and it, the election itself,
COVID was the primary issue.
So that was the oneelection where everybody.
At least knew that there was an election.
Everybody had an opinion on it.

(35:54):
So it was the most involvedelection, I think, I believe that
2008 was the previous record holder.
because Barack Obama, anotherbig historical election,
Yeah.
you
just
had the, the financial crisis andBush was getting out of office, so
you had multiple people running.
Yeah I think Dave, for me, justthinking through man, I. The

(36:21):
way I see it, people not voting.
Our boy Reid nailed it.
He said, my favorite word it is education.
And again, back to just basic school,I looked over my son Gabriel's 15,
15-year-old high school homeworklast night when I got home at 10
o'clock from traveling all day.

(36:41):
Just glazed over it.
Just garbage.
Garbage.
Just garbage.
The things like the, he's, they, soworld history is a map of Europe.
Cool.
That's cool I guess.
Sure.
All right.
Thumbs up to map of Europe and thenmath parallelograms just random geometry

(37:05):
shapes and like how to graph them.
Things of that nature.
And just a bunch of other, just so I'mlooking at this, thinking to myself,
knowing that we have this discussioncoming up, I wonder if any class
in his school is teaching the highschoolers about the midterm elections.
I wonder if there's any classwhere it's like, Hey, this is

(37:28):
what a midterm election is.
Here is like I, I get it that certainschools have American government.
I realize that, but that's a very,not only few and far in between,
but it's also something that'sgonna be taught very uniquely, very
interestingly, probably very polarizing.
And also just it's uninformed onthe general public of the general

(37:49):
public is lost on what's happening.
Remember, I am at the time, 26,27, 28, going into a middle school.
Library casting votes forthings I have no clue about.
And I'm pretty well informedon just the general world at
the time, for the most part.
And I don't know very much about anythingabout who, what, who I'm voting for,

(38:13):
what I'm voting for, the purposes behind.
I'm voting.
There's just not a lot of information.
And so I think what would also berelevant to Reed's Point is just some,
obviously Google has incredible access,but I just don't feel like the general
public would agree that there's a reallybeautiful system of open information and

(38:34):
education about what voting, who voting,where, voting, why all the information.
A lot of the topics, a lot of the people.
Huh.
just feel like that's the main point.
Obviously most of my people voteas well, but the people that don't
vote in general, I think it'sjust 'cause of lack of education.
They just don't know.
So did you all have likecivics classes and social study
classes and history classes?

(38:55):
Like I'm your son's 15, right?
Like I, I had all those thingsI remember real clearly that my
teacher brought in sample ballotsand we'd actually go through it.
It'd be like, okay, how does this work?
And so did you have those classes?
never once.
Not me personally.
Reed.
I don't really remember if we hadanything specifically like that.

(39:18):
I think the high school level historyand civics is severely lacking.
And I took AP classes in high school, andthen I minored in history in college, so
I don't really have a. Normal experience.
Like I think I, I received morehistory education than most people do.

(39:39):
But I just had a thought while you weretalking Jerremy about what would be a
great idea for a government high schoolclass or a government civics class.
You could divide the class up, evenhave them hold a mock election and
choose was like, let's say five or six.
Let's say there's 25 people in the class.
Choose five or six people that aregonna be the government and the other

(39:59):
people are gonna be the people, right?
And the government, they have to war game.
Things are gonna do, like wegotta fund a war against so
and so we need to raise money.
We're gonna sell bonds.
We gotta have this much interest rate.
Our people are producing thismuch money with the economy.
We're gonna have to recruitfive of you to be soldiers.
So we're gonna send you off to war.

(40:20):
Let's say two of you die, and we,all right, we're running outta money.
We gotta sell more bonds, ohwe gotta pay off our debts.
We're gonna print more money.
And you could create like a real worldscenario that would give kids a much, a
better understanding of the way that thegovernment works and the way the policy
and the economy interact with each other.

(40:40):
Much better than what you get with theeducation system the way it is right now.
Because I don't think I knew whata bond was until I was probably 30.
Yeah.
Yeah.
that word all the time, but
you don't know what it, youdon't really know what it is.
No clue.
No clue.
And
I
think in you
mentioned it really well, man yousaid the word high school a few

(41:01):
times, so did I, but I think that'sprobably the time for it, right?
Like I don't think youneed to be berating.
You can talk very basic electionprinciples and some history stuff
in middle school, but I think highschool is the time for it because
when you turn 18 in this country,you have the ability to vote, not the
right, as we mentioned a couple times.
It's weird, but alright, that's fine.
But yeah, you turn 18 man, boom.

(41:23):
Now you can vote.
And to your point, man,you don't remember that?
'cause I don't think it happened homie.
We don't remember 'causeit didn't really occur.
Wait.
didn't really have tonsand tons of information.
Again, just the real world thing.
The applications that impact this country.
Taxes.

(41:44):
We didn't learn how to fill out taxes.
We didn't learn what taxes.
We don't know anything about taxes.
When you exit high school, for themajority of all people that go through
high school, you do not learn properly.
What are taxes?
Why do you pay them?
How much are you paying?
And how can you legally pay less?

(42:04):
You're not taught these things.
Every single person on earth is asubject to learning a better education.
And here in the US I think thatjust some of these basic life
principles just get way overlooked.
And we don't spend any, again if myson Gabriel wants to become, which
I know he doesn't an architect,some type of engineer, a chemist.

(42:26):
He can start learning some of the thingshe's learning right now in high school.
Otherwise they should beburning into his brain.
How elections work, how moneyworks, how income works, how
budgeting works, how taxes work.
Again, yes, parents should and canteach that and my kids are gonna
be fine, but for every other kid inthe world, I think it's just really
crucial that they learn this stuff andit's really just openly not taught.

(42:49):
And so I think that'd befantastic, man, that, that game,
the gamification of it, right?
Frequently doing that often where peopleknow and they just pour into themselves
and just get really in, ingrained into it.
I, I you guys are blowing my mind.
I'm not that much older than you all,but I did I did learn all of that.
Like we had Model un, wehad government debates.

(43:13):
We I, we didn't learn abouttaxes, but definitely about
banking and how money works.
I learned that in gradeschool, so I, I'm like, what?
What took up all that time?
What did they get rid of?
What did they
add in order
to get rid of all
that?
We had, I remember learning aboutthe gold standard, 1898, the guy that

(43:34):
campaigned against against fiat currency.
'cause he was a big gold guy.
But we, it wasn't really they didn'treally explain I don't feel like
I really learned how a fiat systemworked coming out of high school.
Like you, you knew alittle bit of details.
Like we got off the gold standard, westarted the Federal Reserve in 1913,

(43:57):
and I, we didn't really get off thegold standard until Nixon, I think.
But you don't really know what that means.
You don't really know the basisfor how the economy works.
You just, you have these kindof vague details in your head,
like what's the gold standard?
What are we on now asopposed to the gold standard?

(44:18):
Yeah, it is it is quite fascinating,the things that we learn, the
things that we study, the thingsthey put a lot of importance on.
I met Dave with most of mymost of Gabe's teachers.
And I remember the Englishteacher, just asking her like,
Hey books you guys are reading.
And she's I got these three books.
I just gotta get we gotta get through 'em.
I'm like who's dictating these books?

(44:38):
She's I'm, from the higher ups I gotta,we gotta get through this, these books.
And like it is just like thisinformation that gets taught.
Yeah, exactly.
It is, man.
It's wild.
But I think that there's just sucha fun and unique and cool topic
because I do think, and again, my,I think my general consensus leads
towards voting should be easier.

(45:00):
It should be safer, andshould be more informed.
And I think if those, when I say safer,just safer in the sense that it's
available, it's easy, it's accessible.
People know it, people are aware ofit, and it's not something that's
extremely easily manipulated,like what's happening right now.

(45:20):
And I think that's pretty,pretty straightforward, right?
Don't manipulate elections.
Let's have a, let's actually hear whatthe general population believe and
think on average what is the consensus
Oh
and find,
I got another one tothrow in there for you.
Oh, hit me, dude.
What What we got.

(45:40):
You can't run for anything until90 days before the election.
There's already people like lining up torun for president three years from now.
I'm like, oh, enough of this.
No, I don't want to hear anything until 90days before or else you're disqualified.
No ads,
no nothing.
I think compressing it intoa tight window like that.

(46:02):
Wouldn't really serve the purpose ofhaving a more educated voter pool.
I get what you're saying about, it'sridiculous how it basically never
ends, but that's, you need theseideas to marinate in order to have any
kind of filtering down to the general
population.
And even then, I don't, there's not awhole lot of filtering down happening.

(46:27):
Fair.
I also think it's more noise than signal,
yeah.
When do you
guys think about the people who
are very supportive of voter ID laws?
How would they
feel about mandatory voting?
they I think the majority of 'emwill be very pro mandatory voting.
'cause then it was like,listen, you have to vote.
And when you have to vote,you have to show an id.
Simple as that.

(46:48):
I think that would be their I, don't know.
I think that'd probably be their stance.
I wouldn't, I don't think I'dever sign off on mandatory
voting, at least in this country.
But again, man, I think it couldbe a relatively simplistic approach
where it's not that extreme.
Like you don't have to have a passport,you don't have to have a driver's license.
Like you can get a id.
Essentially for free.

(47:09):
I believe just like I am ahuman being that lives in this
country and I'm a citizen.
I think that Id doesn't cost very much.
Especially if you live in cities thathave incredible transportation, right?
Like big cities, New York City, youdon't need a driver's license, right?
And if you don't have a passport,that's fine, but library
card, like, what can you get?
Like
costco card.
Yeah.

(47:29):
Yeah.
What can you actually get?
That's pretty easy.
That's pretty simple.
And I think that there could be tonsof places if they said, Hey, listen,
you have to have a voter, ID got it.
Every CVS, every Walgreens, everyWalmart, every Kroger, every place
that you walk into every library,they have a free, go ahead and take
this picture and we'll give you an id.

(47:50):
That wouldn't
be that
difficult.
What do you think about, do you
think that AI is going torevolutionize the democratic process or
our government
Ooh.
How dramatically do youthink that's gonna change
Oh, that's fun.
That's a great question.
I love it, Reid.
Thank you, man.
Man, it's what's wild?

(48:11):
And in addition to that, Iwill answer that question so we
can just pontificate over it.
But when does a robot getinto like Congress, right?
When does you start takingaway certain humans and you
start putting in actual robots?
Ai?
I think for a real integration, areal integration into like American

(48:32):
politics, this will be a crazy take,but I think it's 50 years away.
And the reason I say that, thereason I say that is because
government is very slow.
They're very slow to make changes.
They're very slow to take aadaptations that take away their
control, their speed, right?
'cause they want things to go slow.
That's why they, that's why there areno term limits in certain organizations

(48:55):
where they get to sit back and justcoast in Vermont for 20 plus years and
just do the same thing over and over.
AI is gonna be a massive game changer for,I think, earlier in the political stage.
And I think that'll be, again,discerning information on voting,
asking the AI certain questions.

(49:15):
Like right now, you can type in chatpt, Chachi, pt, almost any amendment
form topic question that's on a ballot.
And you'll get an answer.
Now.
The answer is gonna pull from Redditmostly Pinterest boards, Google.
Facebook, a few other places,is the learning language model.

(49:36):
The LLM is gonna, right now,cha t Rock, a few others.
It's just gonna pull from what'scurrently available, right?
The current pull of information theback and forth conversations that are
happening with people and individuals.
But saying all that to say itshould, if anything, make a lot
of these applications and a lot ofthe certain processes a lot easier.
And I think AI done correctly,robotics done correctly.

(50:00):
The speed and the speed of the internetand the applications done a adequately
creates a post abundance world.
A world where we startstepping away from scarcity.
And people have so muchmore time to create.
They have so much more time to think.
They have so much more time todeliberate because we have machines,
we have robots, we have AI that'sdoing a lot of our manual labor for us.

(50:24):
And we have the ability ashumans to go and reconnect to.
To actually build and toscale and to deliberate.
And I think that absolutely doesexist in the political realm.
Me and Dave's perfect world isindividuals start caring a lot about
going to Washington, DC They care a lotabout becoming incredible politicians.

(50:44):
So it's instead of becoming a movie staror a YouTuber, or you wanna go to the
NFL or a professional soccer player, youwant to become a congressman or woman.
You want to go to the Senate, youwanna become a representative.
You want to be president,placing the nation's brightest.
Most excited, most enthused and positiveindividuals that are well-spoken and

(51:07):
charismatic and caring and kind andempathetic, placing them in government
because now they have time and theyhave income and they have ideas.
They can be assimilated very quickly andeasily and efficiently because of ai.
I think that would be a fun, fun future.
But again, that's my world.
There's a lot of other more negativebiases and approaches of ai, but
that's my rosy colored glasses view.
What do you think,

(51:27):
Reed?
You're talking about 50 years away.
But we I think all you reallyneed to do is tweak the
algorithm to influence outcomes.
Facebook already, what was that?
Cambridge Analytica stuff.
Didn, they influence
the outcome of an election
by
tweaking their algorithm.
I don't know, but I would

(51:49):
have to.
I'm not really sure if I'm spoton that, but, and what if you
have a super intelligent AI justmanipulating what everybody sees?
That, that's all you really need to.
And then the AI can determinewhat outcome it wants or
what outcome it.

(52:09):
The
people who own it wants tohappen, and that will happen
But if it's an but
enough.
Exactly.
But if it's intelligent, would it beable to, would it be able to give us the
best candidate, right?
Would could it pull cream fromthe crops, could it give us an
algorithmic view of who is the best?
Right now, again, I don't thinkthat AI is actually intelligent.

(52:32):
That's my, again, current belief, right?
It's not artificialintelligence presently.
It is there, there are someapplications that are becoming
smarter and I think obviously thecurve will happen very fast, right?
Five, six years.
It'll become more and more intelligent.
Right now it's just more uniquelyregurgitating what's already on Google.
But to your point, yeah, man, in thefuture, AI actually does sit back and

(52:56):
goes, how can I give Dave and Reid andJerremy this very specific bias in a
way that they're going to assimilateit the way that I want them to so
that I can be their overlord possible?
Right?
You start talking thenMatrix and Terminator.
But again, I think that if thathappens, that's pretty far away and
there is a tipping point where thatcould occur and and hopefully we have

(53:17):
minds in the right place that aresmart enough so that doesn't happen.
So this is
What do you think,
yeah, this is a great question.
I
is, man.
It's a good one.
I think it's going to, the tippingpoint's going to be whether or not people
think that the technology is working.
For you or to you,

(53:39):
Because I think a lot of the AI and howit's, coming up is very manipulative.
It's trying to basically separateyou from your money at light speed.
And so as this sort of gets into thesocial space my niece is in HR for like
law firms and she's, she was telling, wewere talking last week and she noticed

(54:01):
something really interesting because she'son the second half of her twenties and
she's talking about who's coming in, liketheir first classes, the recent hires.
And she said, they're so online,they like stare at your they can't
hold a conversation like, likethey're staring at their feet and
you almost have to text them whileyou're standing in front of them.

(54:24):
But Then she's saying that the generationbefore them, maybe the teens, maybe
not your teen Jerremy, but maybe teenand earlier, they're far less online.
They're very selective about whattechnology are because they've seen
what it does to, later generations.
I'm wondering, the, again, back tothe noise versus signal, if people

(54:48):
are perceiving that technology ishappening to them, that we might
create more Luddites that aren't asconnected, that aren't in the swamp.
I've been offline for the lasttwo, three weeks from social
media and my mood's improved.
So I am, I'm curious if there's gonnabe like a rebellion of the humans

(55:09):
against the AI and how that's gonna go.
I, I. I think it's gonna it'sdefinitely gonna change our culture
and it's gonna change our politics.
It's gonna change everything that we do,and I'm really curious how humans are
going to react to it more than anything
else.
As you gaze thoughtfully out the window.
Yeah.
For as long as I can.

(55:30):
I was, to that
point I was looking earlier about whenyou were talking about high school
education and stuff, there was some.
I've read some studies or somesurveys about Gen Z and asking Gen Z,
polling Gen Z about different things.
And it seems like Gen Z has analarmingly level of lack of education

(55:51):
on a lot of things, like a highpercentage of Gen Z doubts that we
landed on the moon, for example.
And other things like that.
So I don't know what direction it'sgonna go, is people being too online just
exposes them to too many TikTok videos.
We didn't land on the moonbecause the camera angles and the,

(56:11):
there's no stars in the background
or, and they're not
presented with the refutationto those arguments.
That's really the
Like you can take atelescope and just look at it
and
see.
you can get a really good telescopeand literally, visually look at
what
everyone's talking about.
That's on the moon right
now.
You can see the flags,
you can see them.
we'll just wait till we go back tothe moon and the rovers are there.

(56:33):
But of course then it'll bethey flew up there, there was
a secret mission back in 2023
and
they planted the rovers.
That's right.
Moon in 1969.
Dave, That's it, man.
Solving America's Problems.
Conspiracy Theory edition.
I in.
be very fun.
Yeah, I'm in.
But yeah, to, to your point, Reid man,like that is, it's the, we're always
gonna go circle back on education.

(56:54):
That's kinda like my main number oneplatform focus in general is I really
do think and feel and know that thiscountry needs a huge shift in education.
What we're taught, how we'retaught, where we're taught, why we
are taught, because there's, Davementioned the population is increased,

(57:15):
so we need more representatives.
That's one of the most obvious changes,but obviously technology, like the
speed at which things have movedand shifted, and the way that most
teachers and most schools right noware handling the technology shift.
It's just giving a kid a, a Chromebookand saying, Hey, now do everything that
you're doing, but just on this computer.

(57:36):
And they're not, we're not teaching ourchildren how to interact with technology,
how to interact with other humans, how tointeract and really the internal shifts
and the biometric updates that needto happen in order for our species to
evolve adequately is just not occurringbecause the technology is just increasing

(57:57):
at such a rapid pace and rapid speed.
So we'd need big changes there.
And for you to ask that questionabout ai, man, there's gonna be so
many really fascinating, extremelyunique topics on it, because.
The one that I think we glossed over oryou glossed over, I glossed over is the
Cambridge Analytica aspect to all of it.

(58:19):
And when I say Cambridge Analytica,what I mean is the ability for
Facebook, apple, and Google, right?
The CEOs, the decision makers to go,I don't believe that people should
see the information about this.
I'm just gonna make sure they don't
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
it.
It really isn't that hard for them to pullthat off, and it's gonna be very difficult

(58:42):
for individuals to figure it out andto understand what it is and how it is.
Like it's pretty simple for them to flipa switch and just no one see that person
anymore.
That
is
Okay.
Yeah.
Not all that hard is
actually an understatement.
I think
It's mindboggling, mindbogglingly easy,and I think there's an incentive for them.

(59:04):
Facebook actively censors political data.
Facebook does not.
If you post a political post, which I dooften less people will see that than if
you post a picture of your car and yousay, I got, I just went to the car wash.
More people will see that than theywill if you post something about
politics, because Facebook knowsthat politics is polarizing, and so

(59:28):
they make sure that less people seethose posts, which I actually do not
think is good because I think peopleshould be engaging in political.
Discussion and political arguments.
I think it's good for people.
I think it's good for society, andI happen to really enjoy political
arguments and discussions, butI know that most people don't,

(59:50):
most people see it as just people
see it as
advers adversarial,
And just intrinsically adversarial.
And so therefore
it is one thing you're notsupposed to talk about,
right?
Like societally, sex, religion,money, politics, don't have
conversations about those things.
And I'm over here what else

(01:00:11):
spins the world around?
Like
I know.
Those are
the things I want to talk aboutlet's talk about religion.
Let's talk about politics.
yep.
Agreed.
Agreed, because those are just funtopics and to your point, we can, and
have we can give visible audio audibleexamples of how individuals, and we're

(01:00:32):
doing it right now can just have an openconversation about something where three
people can either agree or disagree andthey can just have a conversation and
they can have discussions and they canlearn from each other as we have today.
One other thing I would like to learnfrom you, re before we start wrapping
up is earlier at the very beginningyou mentioned that you grew up with
a little bit more, I think you usedthe word electoral information.

(01:00:56):
Just give us a quick, liketwo minute background.
Why or what shaped you to havemore of an interest in politics.
When I was eight years old, my dad ranfor state senate in Georgia and so we
were, that summer when I was eight yearsold, 1998, we were on the road going

(01:01:17):
to every state fair in our district.
And dad was campaigning.
So I had this idea thathe was campaigning.
I knew what was going on, but you didn'treally understand like at the granular
level, it's oh yeah, my dad's runningfor state senate and he's gonna win.
But so we were going to campaignevents and I got to meet, people

(01:01:37):
like I met Roy Barnes at this one.
Fair.
'cause I think he was campaigning, he wasthe governor of Georgia in the nineties.
He was campaigning as well eventhough he was on the other side.
So I just had this, like passionfor politics from an early age.
'cause I really, it was really fun,when I was eight years old and we were
going, and I was listening to my dadtalk to all these people and try to

(01:01:59):
convince them to vote for him instead ofthe other candidate who was a Democrat.
And he ran as a Republicanin a rural Georgia district.
And it's been really interestingto see that evolve over the years
because he lost that election andit was a really close election.
And it was, rural kind of Appalachianareas were historic Democrat strongholds

(01:02:22):
going back to, the Dixiecrats andStrom Thurmond and stuff like that.
They were, it was like that type of voter.
So even though, Nixon really changedthe map in the seventies, it didn't
really fully materialize until.
The two thousands, and now it's a lotdifferent than it was then because

(01:02:45):
those, that district would absolutelynever be won by a Democrat, even
though it was won by a democrat
25 years ago.
So that's been reallyinteresting to watch.
And,
I just have been passionateabout it basically ever
since I was eight years old.
Just the political process,
yeah.
That's awesome, man.
That's really cool.

(01:03:05):
Yeah.
So it's, so what I heard you say then, isit just starts from as most good education
does, it's gonna start in the homes.
It's gonna start with parents caring,it's gonna start with individuals, just
our moms and dads pouring into us, right?
For every single person who'slistening, you might not think that
your 8-year-old cares about politics,and obviously they're not gonna

(01:03:27):
be denate voters at eight, but.
Our children will care about anythingthat we tell them they should care
about, and they will begin to understandthe importance and relevance of
anything that we as parents alsofeel is relevant and important.
To wrap up Reid.

(01:03:48):
If you had 60 seconds on a nationallyranked podcast and you wanted to
give your one line to fix voting inthis country, what would you say?
I'm gonna go back to my hobbyhorse, which is gerrymandering.
I would tell people that if we electpeople who are strong partisans, they're

(01:04:12):
not gonna be able to work with people onthe other side because they're strong.
Partisan tilt prevents them from beingincentivized to work across the aisle.
If we like people who are problem solvers.
who are more moderate and can workacross the aisle, then we're gonna
have a functioning government.
And the only way to have a functioninggovernment is to have competitive

(01:04:34):
districts up and down the board.
And like you said, having morerepresentatives is potentially
one way to achieve that.
But having competitive districts isalso another way to achieve that.
These strong partisans thatjust contribute to more bipolar
polarization in the politicalprocess are not solving problems.

(01:04:55):
Look at how hard it is forCongress to do anything now.
They're not it's not the wayit was even 20 years ago.
Congress was much morefunctioning than it is now.
And I think that problemreally goes back to
the polarization A but the polarization,which is enabled by the gerrymandering.

(01:05:18):
I love it.
Beautiful.
Take Reid.
Thank you for sharingyour time with us today.
Thanks for pouring into all of ourlisteners with your unique skill sets,
topics, questions, conversations.
Dave, thank you so much as wellfor being here and for all of
our
listeners.
Oh,
re do you have something else to say.

(01:05:38):
Oh I got a question foryou are, so you're planning
on running for president in 2032.
Yes, sir.
Are you how do you feel abouta potentially another Newsome
being president right before you?
I would give the chance of thathappening to be very small and
I would love to run against
Governor
Newsom.
It'd be an honor
to
you're right.

(01:05:58):
I think you're right.
I think his chances arevery small, but it's ironic
that
he
It is ironic.
Yeah, it
is ironic.
he
doesn't have the
and if he were to get elected in 2028.
that
could, that could present an issue.
'cause there'll be all these theoriesthat you're like his cousin or something,
it's a very valid point.
Yeah.
And we have to be technicallyrelated somehow, although he doesn't

(01:06:21):
share the e on my last name, I'msure that's a quick little family
fix at some stage in the backlogs.
But yeah, man, ultimately it'dbe an honor for me to share the
stage with anyone that really caresabout creating a better America.
And I think having certain topics andsituations addressed for me is really
focusing primarily on education.

(01:06:42):
I think fixing that, Ibelieve, fixing that.
I know fixing that will give thiscountry actually what it needs.
versus always just creatingthis, you mentioned it a
million times, polarization.
This bifurcation, this diversificationthat's happening right now where
we're splitting sides versus sayingThe biggest problem is this country
is less smart than we used to be.

(01:07:02):
We are more unhealthy than everand the way to fix a lot of these
components almost every single timewhen we really drill down into a big
topic that is a thorn in the side ofAmerica, we are deciding and coming
up with more and more relevancy to.
We need to change education.
We need to educate the populace better andin almost every way imaginable, but for

(01:07:28):
sure, regarding what this country is, whatit stands for, and why it stands for it.
So to our listeners,thank you for tuning in.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for tagging us on X andalso Instagram, and we look forward
to continually serving you in futureepisodes of solving America's problems.

(01:07:51):
Okay, so what did you learn?
What did you learn on this one?
What did I learn on this one?
A lot of fun topics, man.
Very circular in thisconversation, which was nice.
Yeah.
Discussing everything from ai.
To the degeneration of education againin this country showing up once more in

(01:08:13):
another topic, in another conversation.
I did learn and I think probablyrelearned my disdain for gerrymandering.
I think a few other peopleshare it which is fun.
That's the big one for me, man, toalso it's just so strange and odd that
eventually and ultimately someone withenough power and insight and wisdom

(01:08:35):
and also a motive can just go, Yeah.
I want my election to be this way.
And they just boop, take a sharpieout and make sure that happens is
pretty bonkers to me to use your word.
I think that one is,again, it's not illegal.
It's not really a topic.
It's not really something that people arediscussing or having conversations about.

(01:08:56):
Really.
Ultimately, I think you even said itthere's not tons of people talking
about gerrymandering needs to go away.
We are now, we are discussingthat presently in this podcast,
not only in this episode, butfuture episodes about voting.
I did love hearing and learningthat Reed, a, a gentleman like
myself let's label us a millennial.
Cares, has cared for awhile has enjoyed it.

(01:09:19):
And I did also hear certain, conversationtopics about his background in school and
how, and the higher education, gettinghis minor in history and things of
that nature is really where he startedsprouting the wings of the additional and
continued education that he currently hasand feels that other people need to have

(01:09:43):
especially as it relates to this topic.
What about you big man?
What you got for me?
What'd you walk away with?
I gerrymandering is so funny, right?
Because it's totally obviousthat I am gonna dig deep.
I'm gonna see if I can find anybodywho's yeah, I'm pro gerrymandering.
Other than a politician.
yeah.
Somebody besides yeah,more gerrymandering.

(01:10:05):
Bring it on.
It's the best.
here's the thing, I, it's not apart of the conversation because
I think everybody looks at it andbe like, okay, that's not fair.
And that, that totally goes against thegrain of everyone, and we're not talking
about it because we are pretty simplewhen it comes to what is important to us.
It's it is the kitchen tableissues, it's safety, it's wealth,

(01:10:29):
it's education, it's health.
It's not international trade,it's not foreign policy.
It's the what's in it for me at leastwhat is going to help me provide for
my family, have a family, or at leastleave the world a slightly better place.
And gerrymandering's not on that list,but it affects every single one of those.

(01:10:53):
So I think if we can tie, if we can tiegerrymandering to, hey, this is what's
affecting you, underneath it, right?
This is the meta issue.
The reason we're not talking about yoursafety, your wealth, your education,
the health of you and your family,or leaving the world slightly better

(01:11:15):
is because you're not represented.
It's,
It is like your representation won'tlisten to you because they don't have to.
That's.
Besides that, AI and that social media,how AI is trained and search engines
are bias, will affect probably theelection of your local dog catcher.

(01:11:36):
That's terrifying.
So I think that's what I learned.
A little spooky, right?
Crazy.
Yeah.
definitely Crazy.
Love it.
Awesome.
Dave.
Man, we're gonna continueto dive into the topic.
It's gonna be so much fun For allof our listeners, make sure you
throw us that five star review.
We are the best of the best, whatwe're doing and how we're doing it.

(01:11:57):
We are unique, we are different,and we really are diving down
into a lot of these problems.
We are collecting so much greatdata and we over time are gonna
continue to solve America's problems.