This year is the 80th anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, do they really need to go through the history of IDs? We need to rebuild confidence in the integrity of elections, Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step.
The states that historically had the worst race issues all have voter id anyway, it is the Northeast and West coast that are refusing.
People didn't lose confidence in the integrity of elections because our elections lack integrity, they lost confidence because they were told in a way that resonates with them that our elections lack integrity.
Voter ID would just be security theater in that it's an onerous rule that does nothing to help any actual problem aside from making things look better to some people.
It doesn't even matter if you agree with the claims that were made about voter fraud, I can't think of any good faith argument by literally anyone on the political compass that it didn't cause people to lose faith in electoral process.
Maybe people shouldn't have faith in the electoral process, and the way to rebuild confidence in the integrity of the electoral process is to rebuild the integrity of the electoral process first and tell people about it second.
Notice how there’s no cries of election integrity problems for this election? Because the “right” party won.
There are pretty strong arguments that many states illegally (according to their own rules) expanded the scope of postal ballots in 2020, added people to the voter rolls without adequate checks that resulted in people getting added who shouldn't have, etc., which could very plausibly have added up to enough to tip the knife-edge election.
> Notice how there’s no cries of election integrity problems for this election? Because the “right” party won.
I don't think anyone seriously disputes that the civil service has a partisan imbalance. If (and it's a big if) the "deep state" were to cheat, it's pretty clear which side they would cheat for. Well before the results came out this time, it was widely reported that the Republicans had filed hundreds of lawsuits questioning various election irregularities and the Democrats... hadn't. So yeah, only one party doubts the integrity of the election (or, if you want to be more cynical, only one party cares whether it's being rigged, since both parties know which way any rigging is going). That's exactly what we'd expect, whether it's being rigged or not?
Also consider that maybe only Republicans filed suits because their presidential candidate lost.
But more direct to your point: No consequential voting irregularities were found, and this time around the Democrats arguably had an even stronger incentive to commit widespread voter fraud than before, while the current President is a Democrat, and yet somehow all the fraud from 2020 is now just gone. That stretches credibility, to say the least.
The top LGBT-friendly employer these days is Raytheon. Even pre-Trump the Dems were the party of big government, unions, urbanity, education...; now they're also the party of military interventionism, the media, and really most of the establishment.
> Also consider that maybe only Republicans filed suits because their presidential candidate lost.
I'm talking in the run-up to this election before the outcome was known.
> No consequential voting irregularities were found
Now you're subtly narrowing the goalposts a whole lot. Voting irregularities, no (other than that ballot box getting set on fire, but I guess you're saying that's not "consequential"), but plenty of potential crime in the overall process (lists of names being added to the rolls at the last minute, that sort of thing). The legal challenges will likely be dropped, if they haven't already, because the Republicans won the election anyway, so what relief could they possibly ask a court to grant?
> the Democrats arguably had an even stronger incentive to commit widespread voter fraud than before, while the current President is a Democrat, and yet somehow all the fraud from 2020 is now just gone
Some of the alleged misdeeds of 2020 were only possible because the pandemic created an excuse - rapid expansion of postal voting in violation of the law and/or under "creative" executive orders was something that could happen in plain sight then, but would be rather harder to brush under the carpet now. But, again, a lot of the same allegations were being made in the run-up to this election - we're only not hearing so much about them because the Republicans won.
The what? Slapping a pride flag on a jet engine isn't exactly a political bias, it's a marketing / reputation-washing gimmick.
> Even pre-Trump the Dems were the party of big government, unions, urbanity, education
"Even pre-Trump"? This goes back to the 1950s.
> now they're also the party of military interventionism, the media, and really most of the establishment.
You are implying that the Republican party is not also this. That implication is utter nonsense beyond what can be excused by ignorance.
> Now you're subtly narrowing the goalposts a whole lot. Voting irregularities, no (other than that ballot box getting set on fire, but I guess you're saying that's not "consequential"), but plenty of potential crime in the overall process (lists of names being added to the rolls at the last minute, that sort of thing). The legal challenges will likely be dropped, if they haven't already, because the Republicans won the election anyway, so what relief could they possibly ask a court to grant?
Voting or voter registration -- citation needed. Voter fraud is a criminal offense, the courts can do plenty.
> Some of the alleged misdeeds of 2020 were only possible because the pandemic created an excuse - rapid expansion of postal voting in violation of the law and/or under "creative" executive orders was something that could happen in plain sight then, but would be rather harder to brush under the carpet now. But, again, a lot of the same allegations were being made in the run-up to this election - we're only not hearing so much about them because the Republicans won.
You don't think the Democrats would love to make a stink about it if there was any hint of real irregularities? Or are you claiming that the irregularities only were irregular in the Democrats' favor, and that they lost in spite of committing widescale voter registration fraud?
Oat milk lattes and pride parades were your chosen example. Raytheon is there.
> You are implying that the Republican party is not also this.
In the Trump era they're not - the media/establishment has been firmly anti-Trump, and he's been loudly calling for scaling back overseas military activity.
> Voting or voter registration -- citation needed.
I mean the 70+ lawsuits are widely reported.
> Voter fraud is a criminal offense, the courts can do plenty.
Against an individual who voted fraudulently, if they can prove it was wilful and if they can even find the person, sure. Against an official who "forgot" to make a required check, or "accidentally" allowed someone to register past the deadline, or didn't manage to connect up a database that was supposed to be connected up? Very hard to prove anything, and hard to get past qualified immunity too.
> Or are you claiming that the irregularities only were irregular in the Democrats' favor, and that they lost in spite of committing widescale voter registration fraud?
No fraud of the sort that you'd find a smoking gun for - no-one directly lying, no orders to break the law in so many words. Just a bunch of procedural errors and mishaps, probably not even coordinated, that add up to nudge the vote a few tenths of a percentage point in one direction. Not enough to tip the balance when the margin is as big as it was this time around.
... that the federal "deep state" doesn't matter, since elections are handled at the lowest level by state authorities - which are tightly controlled in red states, as much as in blue states (if not more, arguably), by the locally-dominant party. This is just how business has always been done in good ol' Murica.
Writing sweeping statements like the one you make, indicates that one lives in a partisan bubble.
The whole point of the "deep state" concept is that it's not controlled by the formal political structures at all - yes the state bureaucracy is nominally accountable to the elected executive, but in practice it's made up of humans who are unlikely to be 100% loyal to their boss or their organisation's stated mandate (and with the chain of command being pretty long, there's plenty of room for small disalignments to compound). Even in red states (and red counties), the offices of the state bureaucracy are, systematically, often in blue islands. It's got nothing to do with state vs federal, because it's the same kind of people who work in government jobs[1] either way.
[1] OK, "government office jobs" or something, yes the typical military employee is quite different from the kind of people I'm talking about. But you know what I mean.
If true, that obviously cuts both ways.
But really I think you're just being paranoid and somehow biased against state employees - who are definitely not all "blue" by any stretch, particularly in red states. If you really think any low-level minion, or even middle-manager apparatchik, will risk their jobs by substantially fiddling numbers against the will of their boss, there is no argument that will ever cut through your ideological lenses.
It does, but ultimately it adds up to a drift towards what a typical government employee would want to do rather than what the elected representatives decided - and government employees are not a representative sample of voters.
> If you really think any low-level minion, or even middle-manager apparatchik, will risk their jobs by substantially fiddling numbers against the will of their boss
What's "substantial" though? There are a lot of things that are just a nudge at any given layer. Your boss tells you that there's some new bullshit requirement that says you have to check voter rolls against the juror database, but he doesn't sound particularly enthusiastic about it, and the department's already understaffed. So maybe you stick it on the pile, or you send an email to your subordinates late on Thursday afternoon, and maybe your boss never follows up on it and neither you do, and maybe the end result of that is that the checking never happens and your state's election laws are perhaps violated (and maybe some people who shouldn't have been able to vote got to do so), but even if the Reps win their lawsuit against your department the chance of anything getting pinned on you is essentially nil.
Maybe, but I do think it's a worsening of partisanship - time was when the civil service felt a responsibility to remain strictly neutral and implement the policies of our elected leaders, right or wrong. Now people put their personal morals first and are less willing to implement a law they disagree with, and while there are good sides to that, it's also reducing trust in government services.
> they're definitely not something that can substantially and continuously influence a presidential election in a single direction in a country of 400millions.
Could they overwhelm a popular landslide? No. Could they nudge the vote enough to tip the balance in a knife-edge election? Perhaps.
Ironic though because lefty social media just spent a solid year telling people that both candidates were trash and Gaza would suffer regardless of who got elected.
We have multiple sitting Congressmen and other government officials still refusing to admit Trump lost in 2020.
Against that we have people saying we need Voter ID? Is there any more better time to use the "arranging deck chairs on the Titanic" analogy, except for perhaps on an actual sinking ship?
I've heard those arguments, but the thing is there are several cases around the country right now where ballot-level fraud _was_ caught[1].
Without doing any research I'll say that while it's easier to generate a bogus ballot than it is to generate a bogus hundred dollar bill, it just doesn't scale to the point where it's useful. It's a pain in the ass to get your hands on enough ballots, fill them out, and deliver them to a drop box or whatever. You can't just pull up with a wagon full of ballots and drop them off.
How much is it worth to somebody to flip a county? Which county do you flip? How many ballots will you need to flip it? What's the risk/reward ratio like?
[1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/mesa-county-mail-ballots-frau...
The ID check is presumably still attached to the envelope rather than the ballot, right? (Otherwise you have massive deanonymity problems). If there is fake voter registration happening, presumably obtaining fake IDs by the same methods is just as easy.
I'm sure a certain amount of e.g. individuals submitting their dead relatives' ballots happens - but anyone doing that can probably grab their relative's ID too, and go to two polling stations. I doubt any large-scale partisan fraud via in-person submission at polling stations is going on, because it's impractical to make that happen while keeping it secret - the only way it could happen would be with widespread official collusion, and again in that case an ID check wouldn't move the needle.
How does checking an ID ensure eligibility better than what's already done? And similarly for ballot casting - how would IDs make a better uniqueness/registration check than what we have?
> a) id requirements disenfranchise voters and b) official collusion is the “only way” are structurally and by evidence unfounded
It's well documented that many legitimate voters do not have IDs. And it's widely accepted that large-scale in-person voter fraud is not happening and there's no real plausible way for it to happen; if you want to claim that it is or it can, the onus is on you.
> In your argument they provide only hand-wavy service for an otherwise unsupported conclusion.
Please grow up. The over-the-top rhetoric doesn't make you more convincing, quite the opposite.
Papers referring to voter ID disenfranchisement rest almost entirely on address-field-correctness deficiency (people move), which is a minimal problem other fields requiring human resolution.
To nurture your aside: People who achieve things identify the factual and structural nature of problems. Articulation is a scale factor. Good luck!
OK, and what is it that ID checking would change about this?
> Papers referring to voter ID disenfranchisement rest almost entirely on address-field-correctness deficiency (people move)
And? Supposing that's so, what difference does it make?
B) It’s administrative and readily-solved.
So what is the concrete difference an ID check makes to the process, and what concrete attack does it prevent? You already get your name checked and crossed off the list, in a world with an ID check you would... get your name checked and crossed off the list?
> It’s administrative and readily-solved.
Then why hasn't it been?
One of the things I used to see pushed back on, but it seems to have gone by the way side recently, is not citing the original source but rather citing the someone saying something about the source. Its increasingly pervasive in all types of research adn contributes to a giant and slow moving slide of meaning creep.
The OP mentions that reviewing the history would inform the discussion. You dismissed being informed and simply provided a truism - specifically accepted a truism common from oen side. If the issue is confidence in integrity, but there never was an integrity issue, then fixing an integrity issue is neither possible nor a solution to the confidence problem.
Again, I see this everywhere - from polite conversation to academic discourse adn it troubles me about the larger state of knowledge and knowing in the world.
I'm sorry, but saying "review the history," without specifically referring to things that happened in history and why they are relevant today, is absolutely worthless and a copout. If you have a reason why voters can't use ID today, say it, this "educate yourself" crap is a weaselly way to get out of defending your position while looking down your nose at the same time.
You can't work without ID. Surely that's worse than not being able to vote, not being able to eat?
As always, you should ask "what purpose does this serve?" Do we need voter ID laws? Well, is there a widespread voter fraud problem? No [1].
When you declare something to be "common sense", you betray either a lack of knowledge of why something is the way it is, you know why it's like that but you're willing to lie about it to push an agenda or you have a position of privilege where something doesn't affect you so you just don't care.
So if voter fraud isn't a widespread problem, you should then ask who is pushing for this and why? Also, why are things the way they are?
A big part is that as many as 7% of Americans don't have the documents required to prove their birth or citizenship [2]. So Voter ID laws disenfranchise a right (voting) to millions of people.
Voter ID is really about voter suppression. Why? Because you need ID to register and vote. If you don't have it, you lose that right. If you think those people are more likely to vote against your interests, you do what you can do make sure they can't vote.
As a real example, Alabama has Voter ID laws but in certain counties that have a large black population, the DMV (where you would have to go to get a valid ID) was only open one day a month [3].
That's entirely intentional. Make it difficult to get an ID then it's less likely you'll vote.
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...
[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...
[3]: https://www.governing.com/archive/drivers-license-offices-wi...
https://electionfraud.heritage.org/
Is the above site BS?
- felon (this appears to be far & away the most common)
- moved
- shouldn't have even been allowed to register
- voted twice
- illegally delivered absentee ballot for another person (while not claiming to be that person)
- etc.
The common theme, aside from the absolute rarity of these events (e.g. 36 total in GA over perhaps 40 million votes over ~25 years), is that none of them would be addressed by more stringent identity verification checks at either registration or at the polls.
Clicking through the site, I actually am unable to find a single instance where enhanced ID would have helped. Not saying they aren't in there, just that apparently they are very rare events, even in a dataset of extremely rare events.
I don't think anybody thinks there is zero voter fraud.
The position of OP was that there is not widespread voter fraud.
Yes and no. Mostly yes [1].
The first thing to note is that it comes from the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 [2] comes form the Heritage Foundation. Trump's 3 Supreme Court nominees were chosen from a Heritage Foundation list [3][4]. The Heritage Foundation is largely responsible folr the 50 year Republican project to turn the USA into (quite literally) a white theocracy.
Now that doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong. it's just like a reverse appeal to authority fallacy. But you should be immediately skeptical and scrutinize everything they say because there is obvious and historic bias.
Nobody, including myself, has calimed there is zero voter fraud. There are isolated cases and that's impossible to prevent. Interestingly, if you look into those individual cases, it's largely right-leaning people doing things like being registered in two states and voting twice or filling in their ailing parents' absentee ballots.
So the Heritage Foundation is just blowing isolated cases of voter fraud to imply it's a widespread problem in order to push an agenda aimed at voter suppression.
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/peop...
[2]: https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FUL...
[3]: https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...
[4]: https://www.heritage.org/impact/supreme-court-nominee-brett-...
This perspective is coming from someone who largely agrees with their ultimate conclusion that we should have Voter ID laws, but there were legitimate counter-points that got missed which should be addressed before implementing voter-id laws.
In a recent episode they went off for quite a while about selling off UHF and VHF frequencies which was also a pretty clueless claim. Sacks thinks they should auction them more frequently and allow startups to buy them for new technologies. I sort of get what he is saying, but how does that change anything? You are just trading one problem for another. You have all the same ownership problems we currently have but you are using it for something with arguably less public good, which is used strictly for profit. How would selling off the frequencies to Microsoft, Apple, and Google (since let's be honest they would have the most money to buy into these experimental land grabs, not some small startup) be any different than ABC, NBC, and CBS owning the airwaves? Yet somehow the group just kind of followed along with this groupthink concept like tech bros.
I do think that they have a bit of a responsibility to fact check and do some due diligence on these types of topics, because as OP's article points out, there are a huge majority of their listeners who will blindly trust anything this panel says as gospel and truth. Many people idolize them since they have made a lot of money and are successful businessmen that they don't make mistakes. Granted that is a larger debate on how society is too trusting of their heroes or leaders, but it is still the current situation nonetheless.
I used to listen to the podcast diligently. I now listen to between 1/3 - 1/2 of the episodes. Basically if I have extra time or the topics are of particular interest to me. But I will no longer make time for the podcast like I used to, I only use it to fill time I might otherwise have if I am caught up on other podcasts.
IMO Chamath and Jason are probably the best of the group. With Chamath being the most informed. I have to give Jason credit because he seems to be the one most willing to bring up counter-arguments. Without Jason this podcast would just devolve into utter nonsense. Sacks' rants about conspiracy theories used to be entertaining, and I love to hear opposing opinions on things to better expand my awareness, but they are so constant and extreme now, that they are just annoying at this point. Friedberg is mostly a background character IMO which is a shame since he tends to be the most centralist and evidence-based of the group. But as is normal in this world, those level-headed opinions get drowned out by the loud people shouting conspiracies and anger fueled rants.
The group clearly has potential as we have seen them hitting the potential. But they are pretty confident with their position as the number one podcast in the world (no idea if that is true or not, but that's their claim) and they seem to be flying pretty close to the sun as a result. It might be going to their heads.
If they see this I would recommend they hire a research team to fact check them throughout the episode or to inject opposing opinions on things. They can afford it and if they are the top podcast in the world than one could argue that they have an ethical obligation to do so. Also limit Sacks' talking. Sometimes I feel like he talks for 1/2 the episode and that's usually when the podcast goes off the rails.
Best of luck to them either way. I don't really care. There is a lot of great content out there that I can listen to besides them (and I have already started shifting towards). But I enjoyed them enough at their peak that if they can bring it back I'd be happy too.
I don't know if IDs are free in all states, but if they are, I would be more inclined to support it as a requirement for voting.
I also would want to get an objective handle on how the IDs are treated. I have had friends get questioned because "Their signature didn't match the ID." I can see how that would quickly get perverted.
How do you feel about their revisionism around Jan 6?
> I don't know if IDs are free in all states, but if they are, I would be more inclined to support it as a requirement for voting.
The IDs being free is good, but not sufficient. The ID issuing organization also must be funded sufficiently to provide comprehensive access to ID-related services to all citizens, regardless of disability, population density, cost of provision, etc.
Elsewhere in the thread is mentioned the predominantly-Black county that has a DMV only open one day a month. Why do you think that is?
This is a massive trope some people bring up all the time. Please show credible data that this is true and I'll happily admit I'm wrong.
About 10% of eligible voters don't have the ID they would need. The people most likely to lack proper ID for voting are young, Black or Hispanic, and poor.
Lots more details in the report!
Our entire free market economy operates on this premise. Govt auctions certain exploitation rights, the rights go to the highest bidder which is presumably the one that can exploit the resource for the most value. VHF UHF frequencies were not auctioned, they were instead handed out to well-connected aristocracy, such as when Senator Edwin Johnson (D-Colorado) lobbied and got a band for Denver within 10 days [1]
Are you saying patronage is superior to the free market ? Or is there a better system I'm not aware of ? I'd love to hear it.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090804163725/http://dumonthist...
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Edit: I tried to be civil, but people here are clearly ideological & want to commit voter fraud to empower themselves at the expense of everyone else. It's obvious. Go ahead & downvote. You cannot escape the fact that we know the truth behind your empty rhetoric. You might as well give it up because it only makes you look bad.
Let's be honest here. For all of the highfalutin rhetoric of curiousity on this site, there are many ideologues who wish to narrow the discourse. To ignore reality. Y'all are doing great! Keep it up! Go ahead & bash the "All In Podcast", Trump, Republicans, the American People, or whoever inconveniences your plans at this moment. Please keep on doing what you are doing. You do you! America voted resoundingly against you. They don't like your agendas. Neither does most of the world's population. Now go buzz off into the dustbin of history.
Further, it is a superficially reasonable solution to a non-problem.
Fwiw: "time and time again, voter photo ID laws are proven to be ineffective tools to fight voter fraud — in the rare instances it does take place. While voter photo ID laws aim to prevent in-person voter impersonation, an almost non-existent form of voter fraud, other types of voter impersonation are similarly rare and not cause for significant concern. According to the Brennan Center, the rate of in-person voter impersonation is extremely low: only 0.00004% of all ballots cast. It’s worth noting that this rate is even significantly lower than other rare forms of voter fraud, such as absentee ballot fraud, which voter photo ID laws do not address."
"Voter fraud is so extremely rare. Out of 250,000,000 votes cast by mail between 2000 and 2020, there were 193 criminal convictions. By those numbers, a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than they are to commit voter fraud. Further, there are already measures in place to detect irregularities and investigate potential cases of voter fraud, making the need for further legislation even smaller."
Drivers licenses are issued by a single state-wide government agency in each state and there are national standards for their security.
Student IDs are issued by thousands of educational institutions, both public and private, and they don't have the same security standards.
It is much easier for election officials to distinguish genuine from fake drivers licenses than genuine from fake student IDs, so it actually makes a lot of sense to accept the former as voting ID but not the latter.
I know less about hunting licenses, but if they are issued by a statewide agency, they would be closer to drivers licenses than student IDs, so accepting them but not student IDs makes sense too.
To your point of how official they are to obtain: "Hunting licenses can generally be purchased at any retail outlet that deals in hunting and fishing equipment, such as sporting goods stores." [1]
University ID cards are generally hard to get, and significant if forged. Let's not gloss over the other side of this coin where this type of fraud that is prevented by voter id is vanishingly small. To be blunt, it really is just a modern poll tax, a way to disenfranchise specific demographics.
[1] https://www.fws.gov/initiative/hunting/purchase-hunting-lice...
It’s kinda like the DNSSEC of politics.
In recent years we've seen where the loyalties lie for the likes of Sacks and Calacanis. You see this as various SV movers have fallen in line politically in a way that alienates the majority of the workers that created their wealth.
Go back 10-20 years and there was a lot of delusion in the tech space that companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix or whoever that are somehow "different" to Corporate America. Since the pandemic, I think all of these companies have gone fully mask off.
You, as a tech worker, as a nuisance to these people. You cost money. They are doing their utmost to suppress your wages and create fear and uncertainty through permanent, rolling layoffs. It's a constant effort to get you to do more work for less money.
The likes of Calacanis, Sacks, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Pichai and so on are united in one thing: solidarity with the billionaire class. So maybe All-In is entertaining but you should never forget it has an agenda to serve the billionaire class.
As an aside, I do agree it's crazy to be nickel-and-dimed for things by gov't agencies that my tax dollars have already funded.
It's totally subjective but David Sacks lost me completely around the time Ukraine was invaded. That's roughly when I gave up on the podcast. He had major I'm Very Smart syndrome and it seemed almost hair-raisingly embarrassing that anyone took him seriously. To each their own, though. I know a lot of people respect his opinions.
So, not listening is actually being a cool kid.
I really can't wait for when kids will find Rogan "passé", and talk about the next history book they're reading for fun with friends.
If one them sees this, I hope they take it kindly. The podcast has gone downhill drastically. The level of discourse has dropped considerably. They make all sorts of claims with very little evidence.
Recently they have all agreed that voter ID laws "just make sense." But they don't even bring up any of the unpleasant history around IDs.
When DeSantis was running, they didn't ever talk about him flying immigrant around as a horrible political stunt.
They've been leaning closer and closer to anti vax stances.
I still listen.. but I'll probably stop soon. It's becoming a bro podcast.
David Friedberg has the best mind for evidence, and he speaks less and less.