YouSaid · the spoken record

Ellen Weintraub

lines on the record: 123
first: 2019-10-04
most recent: 2019-10-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You're just a citizen, and you should look at these things. Yes, yes, you can look at it. And let me also recommend another great website is opensecrets.org, run by the Center for Responsive Politics. They do a great job of taking the data that we collect and crunching the numbers and doing great analysis and charts.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The FEC is at FEC.gov. I've got a page on there that's got all of my statements and everything I talk about. And you can find”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I hope that these things are cyclical and maybe we're at a high point in polarization and partisanship, but the will will turn.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is getting is very hard. That is absolutely true. It is much harder to, but that was the part I always liked the best. That's the fun part, is where's the deal? See if you can find a place for four people to land, there's just a lot less interest in finding that place for the folks who would”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hamper you can really hamper are the Commission's ability to enforce the law, we can hamper the Commission's ability to give guidance and to make regulations. And since they had a very deregulatory libertarian philosophy, they thought that was a good result. So we've had a lot less working together.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, actually, if the three of us vote together all the time and we vote no, we can really restrict the activities of the election commission. We can really”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. No problem. For the last 11 years, the polarization on the commission, not unlike polarization in Washington in general, but on the commission, when you've got a 3-3 split, it's become a lot worse. It's a lot harder to reach a result that will get four votes. And when I first started on the commission, there was a real commitment on the part of all commissioners to try and work together, to try and find four votes to, you know, people would have to make some compromises on that. Nobody would think these answers were perfect. But if there was a place where four commissioners could land in order to give a clear answer, in order to write regulations, in order to issue advisory opinions, in order to enforce the law, that was the way the commission was set up. It was set up to compromise. But starting about 11 years ago, we got a new group of commissioners who said,”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm really hoping that situation is not going to last very long. I am hoping that the president's going to make nominations and the Senate will confirm them. I'm hoping to get colleagues who are willing to enforce the law. I mean, because that's another whole problem that we haven't even talked about is that for the last. Go ahead.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought that we should just say you can't take it if it's above the cash limits. Some of my colleagues disagreed with me. We didn't have consensus the last time it came up”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Legitimate candidate. I think the rule is you have to subject it to cash limits and not accept large amounts of money through Bitcoin. That's my view. But this is an area that the Commission, when it was presented with this, did not entirely agree. That was the part that we could agree on, that at least if we were to treat Bitcoin in amounts larger than the cash limit.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have had a couple of requests on this, and I think that some folks are probably going to be somewhat circumspect about accepting Bitcoin without some kind of improvader, without some kind of ruling from the FEC that says, here's how you should go about dealing with this new form of digital currency. And until then, they can just...”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, as I said, we've treated like cash. How do you treat cash now? Because people don't do suitcases. This is not because cash is harder because You can't get more than $50.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what shall you do, Alan, if you have to deal with it? What kind of regulation? Well, as I said, it's treated like cash. How do you treat cash now? Because people don't do suitcases. This is not, because cash is harder because the suitcase is full of money. You can't get”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have. We've had a couple of AOs on Bitcoin. I think that we should treat Bitcoin like cash. There are very strong limits on cash contributions because of its, you know, there are limits on case there are limits on cash contributions, and I think we should treat Bitcoin like cash. But I worry about it because, again,”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think anybody has done a lot of serious thought on how one would regulate that, how one would adapt the platforms, the legal platforms that we've established that, again, go back to the 1970s when none of this stuff existed. Nobody even thought about it. Speaking of the laws that are just hopelessly out of date for this”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And encryption can be a good thing. I want my information to be private and protected. But it's a perfect vehicle. But it does.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it's perfect. It's perfect for these people who are trying to spend this money. It's very hard to. Service where it's not even And with Facebook wanting to become more encrypted, WhatsApp is largely used in foreign countries, which is not as many people use it here, but Facebook wants more and more of the information to be encrypted, to be private. That's where they're moving.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The problem of individualized advertising that nobody can see because But you. I think the platforms have made some commitments about trying to capture those ads and make some kind of an archive, but I don't know if they're actually capturing all of them. Oh, it's perfect. It's perfect for these people who are trying to spend this money. It's very hard to tell. Then there are people who are getting it through WhatsApp or from some other private messaging service where it's not even any kind of even semi-public platform who sees that, who monitors that, who knows that it's in the Facebook.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Constituencies here in texts or however you're receiving it. And the more you get into these private networks, so there's the...”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, when you look at these targeted ad buys so that what comes into my feed, what the ads that pop up in my feed are not the same as the ads that pop up in your feed because somebody is targeting us because of all the information that sometimes that the social media platforms themselves are collecting, then it becomes much harder to monitor because the advertising is going out on an individual basis. And our campaign finance laws never anticipated that. They were set up in the 1970s for the most part in a world of broadcast advertising. So they don't really have a mechanism for reaching that kind of individual advertising. And it's hard for people to respond to it. So if you're a candidate and you're being attacked, but you can't see the ads that are attacking you, you don't know they're there because they're just going in different formats to different people's feeds in me.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What? In other ways through some. So let me ask you, I'm going to give you more to worry about. When you're thinking about these things, you've now got to deal with not just the amount of money, but how it's coming in, how it's spent in more creative ways, because online gives you, you know, a television station is pretty straightforward buying ads on TV stations. This is not straightforward. These ads are not straightforward. And they're not even ads necessarily.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just the people at the top, not just the people who are able to make million dollar contributions. So that's where you get into the corrosive influence of money in politics because it affects how policies get adopted or don't get adopted, how policies get stopped that maybe a lot of people want. I mean, you see this in Congress from time to time, public opinion polls show that High percentages of people want this policy or that policy, and somehow it can't get adopted. Well, what's stopping it? Maybe there are wealthy donors out there who are having a say at the expense of everybody else. So I think that's a problem. When you talk about the corrosive influence of money in politics, when it's coming in through dark money venues, then it's completely invisible and people can't don't.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the amount of money that is being raised and spent is in the billions. We don't know, but there are predictions that the cost of this election could reach $10 billion. I think the last one was in the $7 billion range. So the question is, what are people getting in return for that money? That's what you have to worry about. Are there rich donors at the top end who are getting undue influence over the process so that ordinary regular citizens don't really have that kind of a voice in their own government and aren't fully represented if politicians are adopting laws at the behest of their donors rather than at the behest of their constituents? That's a problem for the system, I think. We want a government, I want a government that represents the views of everybody.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, but it's not just money spent. It's like any value, right? Anything of value. It's not necessarily money. When you look at this, are you more worried about the corrosive effects of money on these elections? Because you have to now monitor this enormous gusher of cash coming through, which is already a difficult problem. Or sort of the more sneaky ways you can do it online. Like these social media sites, these online venues, the ability to use email and everything else to raise money, it probably raises your job at quantum level of... Just quantumly, I guess. I don't know.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, somebody should be investigating it. We will investigate if there are allegations of company. The phone had Well, there's that. We can't launch any new investigations now, but if there was evidence that money was being spent to perpetrate a voter fraud, then it should be reported and we could investigate that. If somehow this was being done without any money being spent, but there was still voter fraud, then it would be a matter for the FBI or state or local officers. But it's not just money.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. It's quite an expensive way to do it. Do you worry? So when you did this, you got a lot of attention for doing this, but you're going to keep doing prove it. We will investigate it if you can prove your allegation.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody wants voter fraud, but it tends not to happen. The nonpartisan Brennan Center in New York has done some studies on this, and they said that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to engage in in-person voter fraud. If you think about it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You would have to persuade thousands of people, each one of them, to risk going to jail in order to add one vote to the total.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I wouldn't be happy to get proof because it would be sad if there actually was proof of massive voter fraud. But I would like there not to be massive voter fraud. I haven't seen any evidence that there is massive voter fraud.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Do you think proof is really the point here? It's to create doubt. It's actually just what the Russians do without any proof to create doubt. There is no attempt here to provide proof. You don't expect to get proof, correct? You'd be happy to get proof. Well, I wouldn't be happy to get proof because it was...”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, that's really it in a nutshell. I am concerned about the state of our democracy. I want people to have faith in the system. There are so many good people out there who are trying to administer free and fair elections for the American people. And I don't want people to be needlessly scared and not to trust the results, but I also don't want measures to be adopted that are going to prevent people from voting who really do have the right to vote. And as I said, if this is going on, this is a massive crime and it needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed through the proper channels. Let's put the evidence before law enforcement and let them go after it.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I know, Right, they do, especially the media. But actually, let me read from the letters. I think this is critically important. What I wrote to you in March 2017 is just as true now. Our democracy depends on Americans' people's faith in our elections, your voter fraud allegations run the risk of undermining that faith just as seriously baseless allegations of fraud have been used to rationalize indefensible laws that deter certain U.S. citizens from exercising their right to vote, words matter, and facts matter.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hear that some people find Twitter to be quite a venue for political speech. Yes, I know, yeah. And it seems to be a good way to get certain messages out. And it seems to be nice that some people actually pay attention to.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If there really isn't evidence, and as I said, I haven't seen any, then it's harmful to the democracy to be promoting this view. I think there are also increasing numbers of people who are worried about what's going to happen in the next election. And will people accept the results?”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would like to know who paid for those buses. So, what I said was let's see the evidence. The evidence should be produced, but if there isn't evidence to be just raising these allegations, which, as I said, have been around for a really long time, this notion of voter fraud, it is a sticky one, as you've said. It kind of sticks in the imagination.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I asked if he had evidence, and if he did have evidence, I said he should bring it forward to the appropriate law enforcement officials, because if indeed this happened, if thousands of people were voting illegally, then that is a massive crime and it should be pursued. And by the way, it probably, it's hard for me to imagine any kind of a grand conspiracy involving thousands of people that wouldn't involve spending some money somewhere along the way. Right, which is where you come, which is where we come in because that money was certainly not reported to us.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which he has been. She To So, what the president did was in a rally in New Hampshire this summer. In New Hampshire, he said that he could have won New Hampshire in 2016, not forth, quote, thousands and thousands of people coming in from locations unknown. And so you sent a letter saying, no, not so much. You want him to substantiate the claims of voter fraud.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the issue with voter fraud is I have not seen any evidence. And in fact, to the contrary, the studies that I have seen have shown that there really isn't any evidence. There was a case in Kansas either earlier this year or last year where the proponents of voter fraud trotted out all their favorite experts, and the judge found them totally lacking in credibility. They just couldn't come up with any real evidence to document this. And as I said, there are real ramifications. It is not a victimless process if you adopt a lot of”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is the problem. That's what I worry about people who are worried about voter fraud will adopt really stringent restrictions and that will end up impairing real, legitimate American citizens who have the right to vote from exercising that franchise. They're just putting obstacles in the way and making it more difficult to vote. And we should make it easy to vote. Obviously we only want American citizens to be voting in our election, but we want every American citizen to be voting in our election so that the government represents as many of the people as there are in the country.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think he keeps saying that. But in fact, scholars have studied this. People have looked into this after the 2014 election. One scholar looked at every election between 2000 and 2014. Over a billion votes and found 31 instances of potential credible allegations of voter fraud. It just doesn't happen.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was an allegation that millions of people voted illegally, engaged in voter fraud in the last election. In particular, there were people bust from other places to New Hampshire to vote. And therefore, the vote tallies were wrong because people were the tallies were right, but they represented illegal voters and therefore the results did not go the way they should have. The notion of this canara voter fraud has been around for a very long time. It seems to make intuitive sense to some people that there must be people voting illegally three and four and five.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm an old person. You are not an old person. I am an old person, but not at all. Everyone should vote. Everyone should vote. Young people That is true. Young people tend not to devote as much as old people. And if they want a government that represents their values and their interests, then they have to show politicians that they're going to hold them accountable at the ballot box. That's what politicians. You are pushed to get people to.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or your music, or who you everybody should. Everybody should. Right We don't mean to say old people shouldn't vote because I'm an old person. You are not an old person. I am an old person. Old people's joke, but young people's your vote. Everyone should vote. Everyone should vote. You're right. Young people don't vote a lot. That is true.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I say this whenever I talk to younger potential voters that you wouldn't let your grandparents choose your clothing or your music or who you went out to everybody should so you shouldn't let your grandparents choose your government right choose the people who are going to adopt the policies that are going to affect your life in so many ways so you don't mean”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They all matter a lot. All elections do. I think it's a privilege to be able to vote. My son, for the first time, will be voting in a presidential election this year, and I told him if he didn't vote, he's not allowed to eat. He's not allowed any food from my home if he doesn't. He has to go to the polls.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't consider it a tussle. I have an obligation to make sure that everybody has the right information about the law. And I also worry a lot. I think big picture, you know, I worry a lot about the state of our democracy. I worry about the fact that we don't get a lot of people to turn out and vote in a Bafo year we'll get in the mid 60% of people turning out to vote and people say wow isn't that great in the last midterm people were just over the moon at the turnout and it was really only about 50% of folks who turned out and actually exercised their right to vote. Midterms matter. People tend to focus on the presidential, but midterms matter a lot.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I Well, I think that there are many good bills out there. I encourage citizens to inform themselves, and if they see particular bills that they want to see passed, they should contact their members of Congress, particularly in the Senate, and try and exert pressure to get this done. Because it really, I agree with you. It's kind of a problem.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“126 people who reported giving more than a million dollars. There were a dozen who gave over $10 million and there was one family that gave over $100 million. So there are huge amounts of money being raised and spent. And we want to make sure that we are adequately getting disclosure of all that. And as I said, particularly at the top ends. So, the honest ads act and the disclose act would help with that. And from a disclosure perspective, which is my core mission, that's what I'm interested in. But also, I think the bills that would shore up our cybersecurity and impose sanctions on anyone, particularly foreign actors who might seek to intervene in our elections, I think are really important and would give the American people a lot more confidence that our elections were secure.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, from my perspective, I'm very interested in both the Honest Ads Act and the Disclosed Act, both of which would provide better disclosure mechanisms and ensure that we actually were getting disclosure of all the money that's being spent, particularly large amounts of money. I mean, I'm not so worried about the $25 contributions. I'm very worried about $25 million contributions. And there are such things. And Citizens United gave us the world of super PACs. I think in the last election there were...”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So there needs to be sufficient funding provided to every state and county to make sure that they can acquire the tools they need to ensure that they have the cybersecurity that they need in place so the voter registration database can't get hacked and so that we have confidence on election day that all the votes are being tallied properly. So there are bills to provide more money to the states and localities so that they can have the resources to protect themselves and protect all of us and make sure that we have a free and fair election in 2020. And even those funding bills are tied up in Congress right now.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I definitely do. So one of the Yes, various forms of election protection. Many of them, some of them about disclosure, some of them about providing better cybersecurity, some of them involving making sure we have sanctions in place so that people would be deterred, particularly foreign spenders, would be deterred from trying to interfere in our election because there would be huge consequences if they did. Providing more money to the states and localities in order to make sure that that's where the rubber hits the road in terms of election administration. Our elections are pretty decentralized. So the folks who are actually administering the elections, running, manning the polling stations, and collecting information for voter registration databases and making sure that people have the opportunity to vote. All of that is happening at the state and local level.”
2019-10-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT