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This is of course a very high bar to clear, as data such as people's names is highly confidential and almost impossible to get unless you're any one of these 750+ data brokers: https://privacyrights.org/data-brokers

Confidential? You can buy the voter list from your state government. They legally have to give it to you.

You'd also need a fake ID. And be willing to risk a felony conviction to add a single vote. It just doesn't happen here, despite the GOP trying to prove otherwise for decades.

> You'd also need a fake ID

For what? In my state there's no requirement to show ID. When I first moved here I attempted to show mine at the poll and the poll worker told me to quickly put that away and she didn't want to see it. I'm not even sure it's legal for them to ask for ID here, given her panicked reaction to me trying to show it.

Since then I've voted in this state for around 10 years and it's always the same. I could say I'm whoever I want, and just be given a ballot.

Edit: I don't live in NY either, as the other poster used as an example. ID should be an obvious and necessary requirement, but it isn't in many states.


Yeah, it's inconsistent between states. I'm in VA and an ID is required. Despite being a bleeding heart liberal, I'm ok with that safe-guard (despite much of the left being against the notion). I'd also prefer an actual national ID (not the half-baked RealID programs, which some states still haven't adopted).

It's not really "much of the left" that is against it, just the loudest voices. Pew research says [1 sorry for the ugly URL]

Support for photo ID requirements also remains widespread in both parties. More than nine-in-ten Republicans (95%) and about seven-in-ten Democrats (71%) favor requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/22/majority-of-...


I am p sure a lot of those that aren't for it aren't for it because of access to said ID is gated behind money (or unreasonably out of the way), which would need to be fixed first.

Without an ID, there's far more than just voting that they're not able to take advantage of. Yet I never hear of anyone having trouble living in this modern world that requires an ID for just about everything.

I'm not from the U.S. but as my country's elections work the same way, I feel compelled to weigh in on this. Here in the UK, you go to your local polling station, you give your name, they check it against the list, then cross you out and hand you a ballot. (This was tweaked in the last few years to require government ID, but the process remains the same. More on that later).

While it's true you could in theory say you were anyone on the list, you'd have to first know you were picking a name that wasn't going to be used, or hadn't already. This is already something of a reach. If someone uses a name that had already been used, or someone turns up later to vote and finds their name crossed out, it's going to set off alarm bells.

On top of the logistical challenges, this is a high-effort endeavour. A single person going to multiple polling stations repeatedly doesn't scale super well. Obviously you can try and do this en masse but the more people are involved the harder it would be to keep secret. If you're trying to rig a local council election with low turnout, it might make a meaningful difference. Does it work if you're trying to swing a congressional race or higher? I see the mentions of carousel voting, and am aware of the likes of Tammany Hall, but these are more of an open secret. What the likes of the GOP are alleging is that there's an invisible epidemic of voter fraud to engineer distrust of the system generally.

Sadly in the UK our long-established voting system was tampered with by the government of the time, who took a leaf from GOP voter intimidation and suppression tactics and mandated government-issued ID at the polls to solve a an almost non-existent issue, leading to tens of thousands of eligible voters being turned away at the polls. Thankfully this moronic and clear abuse of process is likely to be reverse before our next major election, however.


I've only ever seen one time it was tried. The experiment was wildly successful: https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/01/voter-fraud-weve-got-...

Looks like those were in states that don't require ANY ID to vote, which I find ridiculous, so I guess we agree. I live in VA, we require ID, so the problem shown in NY shouldn't be possible.

And again, you still have to be willing to commit a felony to move the needly by ONE vote, which is not likely to be very common. The risk/reward simply isn't there.


>Most of those nations have a mandatory national ID

And what are the fees for these IDs, something you conveniently are leaving out (hint: mostly not free)?


> And what are the fees for these IDs, something you conveniently are leaving out (hint: mostly not free)?

Not far from free? It costs €12 to obtain a Spanish DNI, and the fee is waiver for low income, or folks with lots of kids


Perhaps those nations don't have laws against poll taxes; the US does.

Exactly, you'd never see any airlines get popular in Europe on the back of fares costing less than a bus ticket

Unrelated link: https://xcancel.com/Ryanair/status/776292730179682304


"Exodus of capital" as if OpenAI didn't just raise 115b

That's a bonfire of capital into a gaping hole in the ground with zero chance outside of "military pork" and "overcharging the taxpayer" to ever make their money back. The brain capital loss here is what's going to spook investors.

>Why would you want an iPad?

Talk to Gen Z some time. They prefer tablet devices to laptops.


What's a computer?

when working?


Wow, in the past no presidents pushed for NASA to launch under deadlines. Imagine telling them they need to get to the moon before the end of the decade. Unprecedented.

Good thing we have a large number of CRUD SaaS experts to tell us what's wrong with the space program


Challenger was pretty directly caused by the Reagan admin pressuring NASA to launch it too, so yes?

Politicians have pressured NASA for launches previously and it has killed astronauts.


JFK set a goal that NASA managed to meet, but it is kind of difficult to see it as a hard deadline considering JFK was dead for years before any of the Apollo launches took place.

But even assuming we do view it as a deadline, the Apollo 1 losses are a pretty good argument that maybe we shouldn't repeat that.


JFK set the goal 8 years out, not less than three to align with his presidential term to try to make himself look good. He also got a lot of feedback from NASA on the timelines of what was possible so the goal wasn't pulled out of thin air.


As someone who worked on Orion I find this comment section hilarious.


Tell us about the flammable tape and the heat shield and the ECLSS and the power hiccup, about how while Orion has been in development SpaceX has built and deployed Cargo and Crew Dragon 2 and flown 20 crews into orbit, or how it costs six times more than Crew Drahon, so far. Or about the side hatch not opening easily under pressure (Apollo I anyone?). Or the status of the docking system for Artemis II.


We're just going off what we read in the news. I'm sure that informed commentary from someone with first-hand knowledge would be interesting.


How so? Hearing from someone who has worked in this environment would be enlightening.


Just as the comment above says. This discussion is a lot of armchair software engineers who don't understand the processes arguing about things they don't have any actual insight into. Just normal HN pedantry and certainty in subjects they have no expertise in. Also loads and loads of either astroturfers, or true believers in SpaceX. Mixed with a lot of hate for NASA, which having spent many 80+ hour weeks with working with many of their engineers, I find extremely sad (but maybe fitting for these political times).

But nothing you just said is enlightening, it's just shit-talking people who would probably admit at the drop of a hat that they aren't not aeronautical engineers.

Do you want to provide your specific insights into the announcement in the post?


Re: JFK and the 60s, I think the experts were in charge and had the final say on launch decisions with buy-in from all parties. Space exploration is certainly not risk-free.

Then you had Challenger, when experts were not listened to, and people died when they shouldn't have.

I don't understand the hostility.


NASA got astronauts killed during Apollo, for some reason people forget about that or think it doesn't count because they weren't flying when it happened. After that they pumped the brakes and reevaluated their approaches, but the whole program remained extremely risky.


NASA was also far better funded back then and didn’t have to fight congresspeople and the aerospace giants lobbying them. Things move a lot more quickly when money isn’t a concern and you’re not having to scatter R&D and manufacturing across the four corners of the earth to get congress on board with you.


> NASA was also far better funded back then

Is that true? The US has far more money to spend now, in real dollars.

> didn’t have to fight congresspeople and the aerospace giants lobbying them

Is that true? I doubt it. Big budget programs then probably were no different, though with fewer transparency and anti-corruption laws and rules.


>Speaking for my country

I like how none of you ever reveal this mysterious country you're from, probably so you don't get called on the claims you're making.

Anyway, in my country unemployment is 0% and everyone is rich and there are no problems. Why can't your country achieve the same?


As an example, the comment you're replying to is true for The Netherlands



People don't want to leak their personal information, duh. The country they are from is another bit of information that you can't take back from the internet once published. Why would you do that?

It takes a couple of minutes to find a country with the same laws via Google. Takes a second for LLM.


> Anyway, in my country unemployment is 0% and everyone is rich and there are no problems. Why can't your country achieve the same?

Where? I want to move there immediately. I bet you’re lying though.


Exactly, Twitter was known as a rock solid platform before. It even had a mascot for reliability, in the form of a whale.


It's the sneaky death of visa-free travel, unfortunately.


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