This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and the Libertarian is Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard's the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution. He's a Lawrence A Tish

Professor of Law at NYU and is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

Today Richard I want to ask you about your column from this week which covered many important changes to voting rights,

topics of voter suppression and the integrity of elections in the United States.

A lot of legislation to talk about. I think maybe let's start with the Freedom to

vote act which is in front of Congress. You suggest it may make it easier to actually

cast illegal ballots which I don't think is their intention. Can you fill us in on what's in it

and why you take issue with the bill?

Yes, I can certainly give you some sense about this.

The Democrats have the following kind of general ED fix

about the way in which election should work.

And their basic position is that no valid ballots should ever be left uncounted.

And so what they tried to do is to create a system of mechanisms that will ensure that more and more people

can vote.

Amongst the mechanisms that they want to put into place are the ability to register on the same

day that the ballot is cast and then also to increase the way

in which mail ballots can be collected and dated and so forth.

So if a thing comes in without a date on it, they're going to say this is going to be all right,

they may allow for late counting.

It's a very complicated statute with lots of given things.

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