[HN Gopher] 90% of crypto's Illinois primary spending failed to ...
___________________________________________________________________
90% of crypto's Illinois primary spending failed to achieve its
objective
Author : speckx
Score : 119 points
Date : 2026-03-20 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mollywhite.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mollywhite.net)
| Arainach wrote:
| Is there a writeup of the objectives of lobbying/spending here?
| Are specific bills/topics proposed for the upcoming session?
| duped wrote:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cryptocurrency-and-ai-...
|
| They're concerned about regulation, as always.
|
| Note that this election has no impact over the current
| congress. Senators and Reps won't be seated until January.
| shagie wrote:
| Chicago is the home of the Chicago commodities exchange... and
| like New York has a bit of influence over businesses dealing
| with banking taking place in New York, so too does Illinois
| have influence over the regulations around the question of
| commodities and related markets.
|
| https://nationaltoday.com/us/il/chicago/news/2026/02/24/cme-...
|
| https://businesslawreview.uchicago.edu/online-archive/commod...
|
| Another bit is things like sports betting laws... and how they
| interact with prediction markets.
|
| https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/sports-betting-tax-beco...
|
| https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/illinois-regulators-say...
| selectodude wrote:
| Furthermore a fair number of the largest crypto trading firms
| (DRW, Jump, Wolverine) are HQ'd in Chicago.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Pretty sure primary sending isn't very helpful when it's intended
| to change election results.
|
| What's helpful is donating to people who you already know are
| going to win so that they do you favors later on.
| itsdesmond wrote:
| The article suggests something like 90% of their spend was
| intended to change results. Can you help me understand your
| comment? I don't get it.
| arijun wrote:
| They are saying that was a bad strategy and not the usual
| one. I have no idea to what extent that's true.
| shimman wrote:
| It's the same strategy they used in 2024 to a great effect:
| if you are against the crypto industry we will attack you.
| Not support the other candidate, but just attack you.
|
| The intention is to not waste money on supporting
| candidates, but to attack those that challenge the crypto
| industry.
|
| It's a very unique strategy in US politics that has been
| deployed quite successfully at varying times (Bill Clinton,
| uber, airbnb). Now with the elites being so brazen about
| their opulence they're taking it to the extreme.
| vasco wrote:
| He means in politics you don't need to bet on the winning
| horse, you can just bribe him after he wins. Or bet on both.
| itsdesmond wrote:
| Sure but like... he's just some fucking guy on a tech
| comment thread (as are we all). You don't think the
| professional bribe guys know a thing or two about doing
| bribes? Nah. The people who won wouldn't take their money.
| It had to be those losers.
|
| This is not a story about people being bad at bribing, it's
| a story about The people rejecting candidates who were open
| to taking those bribes. Not necessarily because they took
| crypto money, more because shit policy positions usually
| come in sets, and we're not into it.
| blitzar wrote:
| > The people rejecting candidates who were open to taking
| those bribes
|
| The people voted for candidates who were openly taking
| bribes from other people.
|
| > You don't think the professional bribe guys know a
| thing or two about doing bribes?
|
| Crypto bros know better and wont hire the professionals
| daft_pink wrote:
| I mean that receiving election funding generally just
| correlates with winning and it doesn't cause winning.
|
| Everyone wants to write checks to the winner, because
| they think they will win. But writing checks to some
| random candidate doesn't result in them suddenly winning.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't understand how a blanket statement like this can apply.
| In a voting district where one party is heavily favored, such
| that that party's primary election winner is basically going to
| win the general election (e.g. New York City), then primary
| spending seems like the only place to influence the election.
| blitzar wrote:
| The aim is not to influence the election it is to own the
| person who wins the election. The less likely they are to win
| the cheaper it is, but higher the chances it is all for
| nothing.
| rfw300 wrote:
| On those terms, they also wasted a lot of cash. 90% of it went
| to candidates who lost (or opposing candidates who won).
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Why would a candidate compromise their platform like that if
| they aren't going to lose without those donations and won't
| even lose if the money is spent against them?
| elgenie wrote:
| That works mainly because the money comes with a heavily
| implied threat: don't vote the way we want and the money spigot
| stops, or even reroutes into the coffers of your opponent.
|
| But if that all happens, including the opponent funding, and
| those opponents get routed, then the bluff's been called and
| the lobby's hand has been found wanting.
| tptacek wrote:
| Nobody's lobbying achieved objectives in the Illinois primary,
| which is more a statement about the ineffectiveness of lobbying
| (at least in these kinds of races) than anything else. The
| candidates that won were the candidates you'd expect to win given
| demographics and the recent political history of the region.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's interesting how much money is spent lobbying at the
| primary stage, when you can always just shop around congress
| AFTER the electins for the cheapest whore to buy out and find
| someone for pennies on the dollar.
| epolanski wrote:
| Not easy and effective post election .
|
| The candidate doesn't own you anything and cannot receive
| donations directly anymore. Thus you get to pull the
| corruption, illegal, or indirect, less effective, cards.
|
| Supporting the candidate to get him elected is much
| different.
| drysine wrote:
| owe
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > cannot receive donations directly anymore
|
| Yet they all seem to exit office quite wealthy, despite
| their rather modest government salaries.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Not all.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Maybe it's a sign that your "pennies on the dollar" theory
| needs some work?
| elgenie wrote:
| In jurisdictions in which there's a large imbalance between
| the parties the general election is a foregone conclusion;
| the primary of the dominant party becomes the real election.
| Primaries still have lower turnout and feature candidates
| with less name recognition, so the potential impact of money
| is quite high.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've often thought that the "effectiveness of political
| spending/lobbying" is often promoted by those who receive the
| political dollars and lobbyists.
|
| And since it's a great way to answer the "If your
| side/candidate/issue was so great, why did they lose?" question
| without having to deal with any introspection whatsoever.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There was a really amusing article in _Bloomberg
| Businessweek_ a few years ago which pointed out that most of
| the really big donors just sprayed money at a unicause
| indiscriminately and that Michael Bloomberg was the only one
| that showed any sign of investing rationally.
|
| I mentioned that to my wife and she of course rolled her eyes
| because it seemed so self-serving to her. (Last night we were
| sitting around the kitchen table and talking about how much
| better _The Economist_ was than _Bloomberg Businessweek_ and
| how I finally canceled my subscription to the latter when
| they hired genius financial writer Matt Levine [1] to write a
| whole issue boosting crypto in a 200% cringe writing style
| just before the FTX scandal broke)
|
| [1] ... sent him an email about how sorry I was for him!
| bombcar wrote:
| If you start looking at "candidate spend" vs "results" you
| get metrics that .... people don't want to talk about.
|
| Of course the media tending toward "every election is super
| close, impossible to call, tune in tomorrow" before the
| election and "it was so obvious he'd win" afterwards
| doesn't help.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244024127965
| 9
|
| it's not necessarily straightforward that "more
| fundraising => win" because "better candidate => more
| fund raising". Like definitely if a candidate gets people
| excited they are going to raise more small money
| donations and some big donors are sensible, though of
| course one senseless whale can blow out the numbers. [1]
|
| Note Clinton and Harris outraised Trump by large margins
| in 2016 and 2024
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_in_the_2024_Uni
| ted...
|
| [1] as someone who has run third party candidates for
| office I am going to push back on some of the discourse
| around access because in most places the restrictions
| aren't that bad and if you find it hard to get enough
| signatures on the ballot and find it hard to get at least
| some money from donors you are going to find it hard to
| get votes
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If you start looking at "candidate spend" vs "results"
| you get metrics that .... people don't want to talk
| about_
|
| Not if you correct for incumbency. The thing people want
| to talk about is that money buys elections.
| bombcar wrote:
| The whole point is that "money buys elections" is what's
| under discussion - is it true? Does it, or does the money
| spent, even if it correlates, not cause?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _whole point is that "money buys elections" is what's
| under discussion - is it true?_
|
| No. What is true is candidates and NGOs push this angle,
| and folks who lose elections like it as an explanation
| for why they aren't represented.
| longislandguido wrote:
| > The candidates that won were the candidates you'd expect to
| win given demographics and the recent political history of the
| region.
|
| If the news is to be believed, the online influencer with no
| elected office experience came within a couple points of the
| experienced politician that won, so I would disagree with your
| assessment.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lefty-influencer-kat...
|
| A 4 point lead over someone barely over the Congressional age
| requirement with no experience is hardly a clear-cut win and
| almost margin-of-error territory.
| __loam wrote:
| Using a new york post article to dismiss the insurgent left
| on grounds of experience is one way to describe it I guess.
| Schumer and Jeffries have decades of experience between them
| and the Democratic party has the lowest approval in its
| history among its base. Kat Abughazaleh is more in step with
| where that base is on foreign and domestic policy, ignore the
| progress her wing of the party is making at your peril. There
| will be more Abughazalehs and Mamdanis in the future because
| those politicians are actually interested in delivering
| public services to their constituents instead of more
| technocratic hand wringing combined with the bloodiest period
| of foreign policy since Vietnam.
| longislandguido wrote:
| You may have misunderstood my point.
|
| I'm not discrediting anything except the notion that this
| was business as usual and the winners were as expected.
|
| The article was simply the first I found as reference
| (could not remember the original source I read about this)
| and I make no comment on its bias.
|
| This is starting to get into 2015 "nothing to see here,
| Donald Trump will never win" levels of denial.
| __loam wrote:
| I may be taking out some frustration on you undeservedly
| here.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> because those politicians are actually interested in
| delivering public services to their constituents.
|
| You sure about that?
|
| How does letting 20+ homeless people die in freezing
| temperatures deliver them public services like shelter when
| severe weather bombards the region? Or get the roads
| properly plowed out and the garbage taken care of after a
| horrible blizzard? Mamdani already failed in delivering
| even the most basic of services to its constituents. How do
| people not realize this is the guy they were voting for?
|
| Its also one thing to talk about delivering public services
| to the constituents. Its quite another to explain how you
| intend to pay for such luxuries when the city and the state
| already have copious amounts of duplicitous public services
| that would cover such initiatives already. Why would you
| need a free grocery store when there are hundreds of free
| food shelfs and non-profits that offer free meals in the
| city?
| tptacek wrote:
| This "Democratic party has low approval" thing is a canard.
| The Democrats have low approval because Congress has low
| approval and because the Democratic base is angry we're
| fully out of power right now. Many of the people responding
| to polls saying they disapprove of the party would crawl
| across broken glass to vote for them in the midterm
| general.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Abughazaleh has 0 experience governing. To claim that she
| is actually interested in delivering public services when
| there is literally no evidence of that is laughable. There
| were 2 other candidates in this race from the insurgent
| left as you call it, both were local and have experience
| governing. If the insurgent left voters backed either of
| them they very likely would have won. Instead they backed a
| tiktok clown and it cost them.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The candidates that won were the candidates you'd expect to
| win given demographics and the recent political history of the
| region.
|
| That doesn't imply that lobbying doesn't work, only that it
| doesn't work _like that_.
|
| Suppose there are two main candidates in the running, one of
| them is running on issue X and the other on issue Y. You're not
| going to get either of them to change their position there. But
| if you care about issue Z, which most people aren't paying
| attention to, and you give money to the one that supports that,
| they're more likely to win because they have more money.
| They're also more likely to support your position on that issue
| if they know it means they get more money.
|
| You probably can't get a candidate polling at 3% up to 51%, but
| you can often get a candidate who is only 3 points behind the
| front runner into the lead. Or get the front runner to change
| their position on something most voters aren't paying attention
| to in order to dissuade you from doing that.
| mindslight wrote:
| Focusing on whether a given candidate is helped by lobbying
| dollars or not is a red herring. The only thing that matters
| there is whether the candidates themselves _think_ they 're
| helped by those dollars.
|
| > _if you care about issue Z, which most people aren 't
| paying attention to ... They're also more likely to support
| your position on that issue if they know it means they get
| more money._
|
| This is the crux. You give money to both candidates, while
| you frame the issue in terms of things voters don't
| immediately recoil at and don't work to understand. The part
| that IS population-facing you dress it up in dishonest
| language that makes the average person who disagrees think
| they mustn't have the average viewpoint. For example
| Faceboot's recent semi-successful lobbying to require OSs to
| betray their users.
| gigatexal wrote:
| This bodes well for democracy. Hopefully things stay such that
| they can't be bought. Once they can be we are in trouble.
| yborg wrote:
| The Krishnamoorthi Senate loss was a shock, he had more money
| than virtually the rest of the field put together and had name
| recognition and was a sitting 5 time House representative.
| Nobody knows who the Lt. Gov. was, even with Pritzker's
| backing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _he had more money than virtually the rest of the field put
| together and had name recognition_
|
| Money doesn't buy elections. Someone gets shocked about this
| every cycle when the overwhelmingly-funded toast sandwich
| lands with a thud.
| uoaei wrote:
| Your statement is one of those "not even wrong" pedantic
| ploys that falls apart at the lightest sneeze in its
| direction.
|
| Money is the only way to exert pressure on society and
| narratives. If you think that has no effect on elections
| then you are about as antisocial and antipatriotic a person
| as I can imagine.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Money is the only way to exert pressure on society and
| narratives_
|
| It's not. Every piece of state and federal legislation I
| personally wrote language into passed before I was
| wealthy. Showing up is incredibly hard for a lot of
| people. Being decent and eloquent when you do is
| impossible for the rest.
|
| I've donated to get power and gotten involved. The latter
| absolutely smites the former, to the point that donors
| are almost being taken for a ride outside a few idiot
| candidates who unfailingly lose.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm fond of telling people that Krishnamoorthi called me
| personally, on the phone, twice, to raise money in elections
| he ran unopposed in. Each time he had a story for why it was
| important I donate to him and not some other Democrat in a
| contested race.
|
| Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
|
| Chicagoland progressives _fucking love_ Juliana Stratton, by
| the way.
| uoaei wrote:
| Reinforcing the status quo is one of the primary reasons
| lobbying is deployed.
|
| You can trust that people with money are frugal and only spend
| when they expect to see a return.
|
| If the region was going to go that way anyway, then the
| lobbying was wasted spend. So what would you rather have as
| your truth: that the money was spent to overturn public will,
| or that it was a dumb error to spend that money in the first
| place? What does that say about the people who see the status
| quo as something worth preserving?
| jmyeet wrote:
| You can't talk about what happened in the Illinois primaries
| without talking about the other PACs who spent big, specifically
| AIPAC and other dark-money Israel-affiliated PACs that spent to
| defeat pro-Palestinian candidates (eg Kat Abugazaleh) without
| ever once mentioning Israel [1].
|
| It's far more accurate to say that pro-Zionist groups spent big
| in the Illinois primary and got mixed results. Crypto just went
| along for the ride.
|
| There is a war in the Democratic Party between anti-genocide
| candidates, who enjoy 90% support in the base, and the
| establishment who is doing everything to defeat them, up to and
| including intentionally losing the 2024 presidential election
| [3].
|
| Nobody cares about crypto.
|
| [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-
| illino...
|
| [2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-
| ahead...
|
| [3]: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-
| gaza-...
| ourmandave wrote:
| I don't understand why they'd throw an election so the other
| pro-Israel side can win.
| t-3 wrote:
| They didn't throw the election per se, they just didn't try
| very hard to win a fight they could easily lose. Why burn
| bridges with a very important ally over something that might
| not end up being your problem?
| tptacek wrote:
| This is just activist cope. Voters in Illinois CD7, where I
| live, didn't put Melissa Conyears-Ervin (lavishly supported by
| AIPAC) into a tight second-place run against La Shawn Ford
| because Israel bamboozled them. If you look at the map of where
| the MCE votes came from, it's very unlikely any of them gave a
| shit about Israel whatsoever. Her votes followed the exact same
| pattern as they did in 2024, when she gave Danny Davis (the
| long-term incumbent) a run for his money, and when she wasn't
| supported by AIPAC at all.
|
| In the Illinois 9th, AIPAC supported candidate seemingly at
| random in an attempt to split the progressive vote and clear a
| path for Laura Fine. Didn't work there either.
|
| It may very well be the case that Israel is disfavored by a
| strong majority of Illinois Democrats (I'd certainly understand
| why). What your analysis misses is _salience_ : people care
| about lots of things they don't vote about. Poll primary voters
| here; you will find a small group of them that think Israel is
| the most important issue in the district (they will be almost
| uniformly white PMC voters and they'll be disproportionately
| online). Mostly you're going to find voters that (a) hate Trump
| and (b) are concerned about the economy.
|
| It's clearly not the case that "anti-genocide candidates" enjoy
| a 90% share of the Illinois Democratic primary electorate,
| because they didn't win.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Did you miss the part where I said that the AIPAC and AIPAC-
| affiliated PAC spending _never_ mentions Israel?
| tptacek wrote:
| Did you miss the part where I pointed out that the results
| were _identical_ to just one cycle ago where AIPAC wasn 't
| a factor at all? I'm a politically engaged Illinois
| Democrat (to the point where I have precinct maps of CD7
| and CD9 running for local political discussions), I
| understand what AIPAC was doing here. Unfortunately for
| your argument, it doesn't appear to have had any effect.
| jmyeet wrote:
| First, IL-7 was nothing like it was in 2024. What are you
| talking about? In 2024, a 14 term incumbent, Danny Davis,
| was seeking reelection. Now there's some noise here
| because IL-7 changed in the 2021 redistricting and became
| more Democratic but still, Davis is a long-time veteran.
|
| Davis was a progressive but has a more mixed record on
| Israel funding and defence bills. He's concered with what
| he has called a "humanitarian crisis", which is more than
| most, but never gone so far as to use terms like
| "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" AFAIK.
|
| Davis faced challenges in 2024 but won pretty handily.
| One of his challengers wasa the future 2026 AIPAC chosen
| candidate, Melissa Conyears-Ervin. AIPAC indirectly (eg
| through UDP) spent _millions_ [1] in the IL-7 Democratic
| primary and still came in third.
|
| So, IL-7 in 2026 was a massively funded primary in an
| open field with no incumbent and 2024 was a 14 term
| incumbent seeking reelection without massive spending. In
| what way are they comparable?
|
| Bonus question: if millions are spent to oppose a
| candidate and _they still win_ , how can you say the
| results were "identical"?
|
| [1]: https://chicagocrusader.com/la-shawn-ford-wins-7th-
| district-...
| tptacek wrote:
| MCE got the same votes she did in the 2024 primary in
| 2026. It's not complicated; just get the precinct level
| results, give them to Claude, and tell it "put this on a
| map". Remember you'll need precinct results both from
| Cook County and Chicago. She played in exactly the same
| parts of the CD7 map that she did last cycle, and ranked
| the same.
|
| Tell me what AIPAC had to do with that, given that AIPAC
| was not involved in her 2024 run.
| thuridas wrote:
| I Will never understand why US allows this kind of political
| intervention.
| tptacek wrote:
| Pesky thing called the First Amendment.
| wyre wrote:
| Citizens United _cough_
| tptacek wrote:
| A case where the opposition claimed that under a correct
| reading of the Constitution they had the authority to ban
| books.
|
| I don't like lobbying and campaign finance either, but
| people shouldn't pretend these are simple or absurd
| arguments.
| vkou wrote:
| Money is speech, and is sacred, but books with gay people
| in them aren't speech, and need to be carefully controlled.
| kubb wrote:
| They really interpret the First to protect lobbying and
| campaign donations?
|
| I mean the Second as written also isn't primarily about the
| right to pack heat, so it's not that surprising.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| The First Amendment does not explicitly mention campaign
| spending (or political campaigns at all), and until 2010,
| the First Amendment was not considered to apply to monetary
| spending in political campaigns.
|
| The right to petition the government _is_ explicitly
| protected, but that doesn 't apply in the case of IL-9,
| which was an open race and therefore none of the candidates
| were actually elected representatives.
| polothesecond wrote:
| If donating money is free speech why don't you try giving
| some to a group categorized as a terrorist organization
| Henchman21 wrote:
| _Citizens United_ is an abomination. Its the reason we 're
| in dire straits at present. It "legalized" bribery.
| culi wrote:
| If Mongolia pays a bunch of US citizens to vote for some
| candidate that promises to push the US towards militarily
| supporting Mongolia, do you think the First Amendment
| supports that?
|
| Or more accurately, imagine if the US had special rules and
| exceptions for dual citizens of Mongolia and the US that
| don't exist for any other country and then it allowed those
| dual citizens to push for certain candidates without having
| to be registered as a foreign lobby.
|
| Now try substituting Mongolia with Russia or China.
| PearlRiver wrote:
| A lot of rich people were afraid democracy would change the
| world but it turns out those with money will always have the
| power.
|
| And this is not an American thing every country has its
| lobbying industry.
| tootie wrote:
| AIPAC was promoting the third place finisher. They opposed both
| Biss and Abugazeleh who finished first and second.
| delecti wrote:
| In his victory speech, Biss credited J Street. So still
| Israel, just not AIPAC specifically.
| tootie wrote:
| J Street is specifically anti-war, anti-settlement and pro-
| justice.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Kat Abugazaleh was a carpet bagger with literally 0 experience
| governing. The fact that she came close to winning is an
| indictment on our meme obsessed voting population and imo proof
| that ranked choice is absolutely needed. There were multiple
| bonafide progressives in the race with local roots and
| experience in the state house but the progressive movement
| abandoned them in favor of a candidate who ran their campaign
| from tiktok with 85% of the fundraising from out of state.
| Honestly a disgrace.
| jmyeet wrote:
| That's a long way of saying "Kat ran a better campaign".
|
| I have criticisms of her campaign, specifically
|
| 1. She was a carpet-bagger (as you said). She moved in
| Illinois in 2024 I believe;
|
| 2. She initially ran in a district she didn't live in. I
| believe she initially lived in IL-7 but ran in IL-9 and moved
| there at some point;
|
| 3. She chose to primary a relatively good candidate, Jan
| Shakowsky. My working theory is she was trying to fly under
| AIPAC's radar by primarying a relatively pro-Palestine
| candidatei; and
|
| 4. She essentially advocated for going to war with China over
| Taiwan for literally no reason. Nobody in her district cares
| about this. You can blame that in part on having a bad
| foreign policy advisor but the buck stops with the candidate.
|
| And despite all of that and _millions_ being spent against
| her by pro-Israel groups she still got ~30% of the vote and
| came second.
|
| But as for "better candidates", I'm sorry but my advice is
| "run a better camapign".
| __loam wrote:
| This is what I've been saying to the people who blame the
| voters for Trump's win in 2024. Democrats knew how
| dangerous he was and how weak of a candidate he should have
| been and they still decided to skip the primary and run an
| unpopular candidate so late in the race after it became
| clear that Biden wasn't going to make it after the first
| debate. They met a serious and decisive moment with
| incompetence and the public is facing the consequences of
| that. They should be taking this all more seriously and
| doing introspection on the loss rather than blaming the
| voters.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Oh I agree she ran a better campaign given that there isnt
| ranked chocie voting. Im just stating that I am very
| unhappy that 25% of the dem electorate are looking for
| clown meme candidates. Thats by far the biggest lesson from
| her campaign, 25% of primary voters do not care about
| anything other than memeage. I cant say thats a good way to
| get competent politicians but it is now the world we live
| in.
|
| > But as for "better candidates", I'm sorry but my advice
| is "run a better camapign".
|
| I know this is wishful thinking but itd be nice if politics
| had just a little bit of substance instead of purely being
| a popularity contest where competence at governing is
| irrelevant.
|
| Also Kat still lost. If the progressives backed one of the
| local candidates they likely win, so its hard to really say
| she ran such a great campaign. She blew it for them
| amavect wrote:
| >imo proof that ranked choice is absolutely needed
|
| Ranked choice still succumbs to a spoiler effect.
| https://realrcv.equal.vote/alaska22
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU
|
| Approval voting works better and simpler, and STAR voting
| works even better though with more complexity.
| https://www.equal.vote/beyond_rcv_zine
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Approval makes the game theory too complicated imo. Too
| easy to think of cases where a voter leaves off someone
| because they want their favorite to win but then ends up
| with neither winning. STAR is the best but voters might be
| too stupid to figure it out. Really multi district is the
| best but unfortunately no chance of that happening it seems
| amavect wrote:
| I think the threat of unapproved candidates winning would
| lower a voter's approval threshold to include other
| candidates. Increasing the approval threshold happens
| when the voter likes all of the candidates, in which case
| there isn't too much of a problem.
|
| I really want to believe that ordinary people can handle
| STAR voting. Not too far from product reviews: most will
| initially vote 5, 4, or 0. As long as the system
| encourages more honest voting (instead of lesser-evil
| voting), it can help fix our corrupt political system.
|
| Full agreement with multi district/proportional, but I
| don't know how to sell it to normal people (they want
| THEIR representative).
| buddhistdude wrote:
| "The cryptocurrency industry super PACs dumped $14.2 million into
| the Illinois primaries. 90% of that - $12.8 million - was wasted,
| in that it went to opposing Democratic candidates who won their
| primaries"
|
| I read that as them having mistakenly sent the cryptos to the
| "opposing candidate"
| Quinner wrote:
| The quote is the wrong way of looking at this. The typical rate
| of successful primary challenges is only 3%. If you take that
| to 10% its an enormous success, incumbents will say "if I
| oppose crypto then I triple my odds of losing in a primary,
| better not do that."
| DFHippie wrote:
| It's not quite like that, though. 90% of their funding
| supported candidates that lost or opposed candidates that won
| -- they opposed the winning outcome. They supported the
| winning outcome with the remaining 10% of their funds, but
| here they pushed on the side of the contest which was already
| a lock anyway. So it isn't clear that any of the money they
| spent achieved anything.
| IshKebab wrote:
| What? Are you trying to say their spending had no effect
| because their spending had no effect?
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| ..could be a built-in feature of the matter?
|
| :-D
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Fortunately, you can't typically "buy" elections by donating to
| campaigns.
|
| Campaign spending does have an effect for unknown candidates, but
| once the voters know who you are and what you stand for, further
| spending doesn't move the needle.
|
| It's true that the campaign with most money usually wins, but
| that does _not_ the money caused the win!
|
| One way to think about it is that the most popular candidate
| naturally gets the most donations, just like they get the most
| votes. It can also be a good investment to be on good terms with
| the future winner.
| lagniappe wrote:
| >Fortunately, you can't typically "buy" elections by donating
| to campaigns.
|
| Having a Fox Mulder moment, because I too, want to believe.
| However, it makes me think, if it didn't work to some degree,
| whatever that may be, it wouldn't be common.
| bombcar wrote:
| Having been involved in some political campaigns and
| movements, I totally believe that nobody knows the ROI on
| where the dollars are going.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Political campaigns certainly need money, but there are
| heavily diminishing returns pretty quickly. In races where
| all the candidates have money just throwing more in doesnt
| seem to accomplish much.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| "Good investment" is looking a bit suspicious there
| mmahd7456 wrote:
| Throwing money at a Republican primary candidate in Illinois is
| probably as ineffective as it would be in New York. The big
| cities are just too deeply Democratic.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It's a primary. They put money against one Democrat in the
| hopes that some other Democrat who doesn't know about
| regulating crypto grifts will win.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Good. I vote against anybody who is supported by crypto pacs as
| one of my top priorities in primaries. Unfortunately, Schiff beat
| Porter for the Senate seat in California, but happily the
| grifting Rishi Kumar continues to lose every seat he runs for.
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