politics @lemmy.world GiddyGap @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

GOP presidential candidate offers $20 gift cards for $1 donations

www.axios.com GOP presidential candidate offers $20 gift cards for $1 donations

The communications director at CREW called it the "single thirstiest thing" he's seen in politics.

29 comments

Candidates must receive 40,000 donors, including at least 200 unique donors in each of 20 states, to qualify for the August debate.

It's an expensive attempt to attend a debate.
- Maybe there shouldn't be donor number requirements to be involved in a debate? Because all that does is gatekeep new faces.
  
  Our system is set up to continuously prop up the already well-known and controversial.
  
  You need some sort of way to cap the debate. Large debates aren’t debates. They’re just an opportunity for people to be asked one random question.
  
  There's got to be some threshold, though. I agree that new faces need to be able to get on the stage, but it can't just be anyone who wants to. Debates with too many candidates are chaotic.
Yea the Supreme Court got that so wrong. Money shouldn't equal free speech. And corporations are not people. Poor and rich people should have equal free speech and corporations shouldn't vote or buy our government representatives.
- Yea the Supreme Court got that so wrong.
  
  There's been a LOT of that over the last decade or so. Moreso lately.
- Poor and rich people should have equal free speech
  
  Should, definitely. But the founding fathers were so terrified of poor people they created the Electoral College to ensure the "right" people and not populists (look how that fucking turned out, ala Trump) got in charge. So the US has never really been about equal speech. Not that it isn't the goal, but it's a hell of a hill to climb when the foundation is so corrupt. :(
  
  But the founding fathers were so terrified of poor people they created the Electoral College to ensure the “right” people [...] got in charge.
  
  E-e-e-hhh... kinda. It also had to do with the fact that states like Virginia had comparatively few voters (they had lots of slaves, but fewer white men), so they were worried that they'd be voted down by the northern states. So the worry was that those states wouldn't want to join the Union. The Electoral College, which gave slave states a boost in presidential elections, was a sop to get them to join.
  
  A modern equivalent would be a state like California or Texas, with lots of non-citizen immigrants: they're not citizens, so they can't vote, but they do count for purposes of assigning House seats, and thus Electors.
Sounds like a bribe.
- And/Or a way for a rich donor to have a workaround for campaign donations limits.
  
  I smell money laundering.
  
  I'm confused about the mechanics of that. They still need to pay for the gift cards and that money needs to come from somewhere. And even if they manage to hide where the gift card money is coming from, a 20:1 money laundering scheme sounds ridiculously inefficient.
  
  I don't see how that would be possible.
  
  This seems simply a way to buy in to getting on the debate stage.
- Obviously they shouldn't be allowed to bribe people, and that's what they're trying to do.
  
  ...but is it that much different on their end than the current system? They give out money (to advertisers) which gets turned into votes without actually needing to create or support your own political opinions. It's the next logical step in the "money = free speech" reasoning. I can think of a lot of bad faith arguments that would allow this sort of indirect bribery...especially since they seem to be borrowing the idea from the marijuana gray market.
  
  Honestly, this doesn't seem terrible and wouldn't work outside of this sole purpose. They're the ones that created the barrier for entry in that way. Outside of this (ie, after debating), it's not cost effective at all. There's no other benefit other than to reach a minimum score for the debate. I mean, I'm not a GOPer and based on the little I've seen, I can't say this with a straight face for this case, but if someone truly believed in their message and thought they had a chance but aren't already entrenched in politics, this is a way to kind of bulldoze in and be taken "seriously". That being said, this seems more like a guy who thinks he knows better because he.has money.
Let me guess. Gift cards to any of the closing stores, eg: Bed, Bath & Beyond...
There's no corruption in the land of the free and brave!... Yeah right 🙄
- That's not corruption, it's alternative funding.
He should run the economy
Can someone please ELI5 why this is legal?
Someone is desperate to make the debates.
Need to pump those donor numbers somehow if the party is slowly dying off.

You've viewed 29 comments.