Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings spent $2 million helping Gavin Newsom redraw California's congressional maps to benefit Democrats.
Now the Netflix billionaire is back, and this time he brought his wife.
What Hastings has spent to control California elections over the past five years makes $2.5 million look like a rounding error.
The $2.5 Million Campaign to Defeat Proposition 39
California's Proposition 39 is straightforward: show a government-issued ID to vote in person, write the last four digits of your ID number on your mail-in ballot.
A grassroots campaign collected more than 1.3 million signatures to put it on the ballot this November.
Thirty-six states already require it.
California would become the 37th.
The measure also provides free voter ID cards to any eligible voter who needs one.
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, are spending $2.5 million to make sure California never joins them.
State campaign finance records show Hastings dropped $1 million on September 3 into a labor-backed "No on 39" committee.
Quillin added $1.5 million to a separate coalition tied to the ACLU within days.
Together, they sent $2.5 million in a single week to make sure Californians never have to prove who they are when they vote.
Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio helped put Prop 39 on the ballot.
"California politicians are getting special interests to bankroll their dishonest smear campaign against Prop 39," DeMaio said, calling the measure "truly the bipartisan solution for Voter ID to restore trust in our democracy."
A Fox News poll from July found 77 percent of registered voters support requiring photo ID at the ballot box.
A recent survey showed 55 percent of California likely voters oppose Prop 39 – a split that shows how far Sacramento has drifted from the rest of the country.
Prop 39 supporters also accused Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta of deliberately writing the official ballot title to frighten voters away from the measure before they ever read the text.
A Sacramento judge approved Bonta's version anyway.
Reed Hastings Has Been Buying California Elections for Years
In 2021, he spent $3 million to protect Newsom from a recall election.
In 2025, he cut a $2 million check to Newsom's redistricting committee – the one Newsom branded the "Election Rigging Response Act."
The man who funded a project called the "Election Rigging Response Act" is now spending $2.5 million to ensure California stays one of the few states where you can vote without showing a single piece of identification.
Quillin has poured millions into criminal-justice committees, the failed Prop 16 racial-preferences campaign, and left-wing prosecutor races across California.
She is now one of the top individual donors on the ACLU's anti-voter-ID coalition.
Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli warned in June that California's election system has "serious structural vulnerabilities."
"Universal vote-by-mail with no voter ID requirements creates conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding public confidence," Essayli said.
His office opened multiple election fraud investigations in coordination with the FBI's Los Angeles field office.
Why the Fight Over Prop 39 Is Bigger Than California
Eighty-three percent of Americans support voter ID – including 85 percent of California Republicans and even 19 percent of California Democrats.
Two Silicon Valley billionaires are spending millions to override what the country has already decided.
Netflix reaches 300 million subscribers worldwide, yet Hastings keeps pulling from his personal fortune to protect a system with no citizenship check, no ID requirement, and mail-in ballots that pile up for weeks before anyone counts them.
Hastings has funded the Newsom recall fight, the redistricting push, and now the campaign to kill Prop 39 – bankrolling California's left-wing political machine for years while calling it a defense of voters.
Reed Hastings and Patty Quillin are protecting a system that has delivered every California statewide Democrat victory for the last two decades.
The vote on California’s voter ID law is November 3, and 83 percent of the country already knows the right answer.
Sources:
- Hannah Nightingale, "Netflix co-founder, wife spend $2.5 MILLION to stop California voter ID ballot measure," The Post Millennial, September 18, 2026.
- "Netflix Co-Founder, Wife Invest Millions To Block Voter ID Push," The Daily Wire, September 2026.
- "Fox News Poll: Significant support for both voter ID laws and mail-in ballots," Fox News, July 23, 2026.
- "Polls Show Majority Of Americans Support Voter ID As SAVE Act Stalls In Senate," The Federalist, July 29, 2026.