12 Comments
founding
Oct 13, 2022·edited Oct 13, 2022

So, for donations to have an effect - you need to start with a close race - that seems clear.

However, do you have any insight into the mechanisms by which dollars turn into votes?

Is get-out-the-vote spending most effective? Running TV ads? Donations to PAC's vs candidates?

Also, ActBlue seems to charge a lot for credit cards* - like 4 percent. WinRed *is not even a non-profit*!

Are these places value-add in terms of picking the best way to give, or are they silent on that once some outside party develops a list?

*I also get the feeling that ActBlue is charging 4% for bank debits? I am not sure.

But, if this is the case, they should just stop doing that.

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author

I don't think there is great evidence on the differential benefits of various expenditures. I believe candidates get the lowest ad rates.

Considering the large amounts of money flowing through campaigns, it seems surprising that there are not more donation aggregators.

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founding

Alternatively, I might wonder "how does ActBlue raise over $1 billion each cycle anyway?".

I mean, why not just give to candidates or to the Party PAC?

Then again, I have never understood why paypal is so popular. Just another middleman skimming a bit off the top ...

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Terrific article. Where is "Part 1: The Senate"?

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Rep. Schweikert did not vote to certify the PA election. Not clear why this does not qualify him as an election denier.

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author
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022Author

Thank you for this correction. Unfortunately, the WinRed portal is acting oddly and doesn't allow edits at the moment. Working on it...

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founding

I see you curated the list of republicans to remove election deniers - which seems like a good idea to me.

Has your policy been to do the same for dems when the GOP has won? When republicans win, I think one to three dozen dems tend to vote against the electoral count? Did you take past deniers off the actblue list?

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author

I did indeed put some thought into that. If you have specific corrections please let me know.

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founding

I don't see any from 2016. The 2004 list is here:

https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll007.xml - and I think (?) it is clean. There might be one name from Ohio still in the house.

But we would have to decide if these were legit attempts to overthrow the election, or just political statements to feed the base. I think in 2020 the GOP wanted to overthrow, in 2004 the dems did not. I am not sure about the 2016 intentions of the dems.

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author
Oct 17, 2022·edited Oct 17, 2022Author

One Democrat who comes up in this regard is Stacey Abrams, who raised questions about the fidelity of the 2018 Georgia governor's race, which she lost. Even in that case, to my knowledge this year she has not referred to Brian Kemp as being illegitimately elected.

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founding

IMHO, Stacey Abrams is not an election denier, but I understand the case.

I think it is much like Nixon's defeat in 1960 at Kennedy's hands. There actually are questions about that election and in Abrams case there are questions as well.

But, I'll tell ya, here's one rule that decent people should have: if your party is in power, please don't complain about rigged elections. When you look around the world you DO see a lot of rigged elections, but it is the party in power that is cheating to stay in power. Abrams was facing a GOP controlled process ...

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