I had no idea that was even a problem

I think a lot of accounts are in this situation. According to Steemd.com there are 5550 dust accounts - that is accounts with steempower less than 0.01mv. They would have been created when the steem price was at it's height and the starting steempower given away very small. I think hardfork 13 changed the voting to require minimum 50 million rshares, and all these accounts then got stranded. I expect most of them have just given up and gone elsewhere.