I’m a fan of donation swapping, but I don’t think this is legal under US campaign finance law. (If someone else knows for sure, please tell us. Edit: Peter says it’s not legal. Edit: Peter now only says it’s illegal for non-Americans, but I also think it’s illegal for Americans as a way to get around the individual contribution limit.)
Edit, meta: several people have downvoted Caleb’s comment after he no longer endorsed it, and some have downvoted his reply too (both to below zero). This isn’t right, epistemically or in terms of desert. Downvoting a retracted idea doesn’t improve the conversation, and Caleb’s comments are clearly good- and truth-seeking. If you want to punish the author for saying something that turned out to be unpopular, you should consider the effects of that policy (here and more generally) on the community’s epistemic culture. See also Oliver’s comment.
Edit: Caleb’s comments are safely back in nonnegative territory, for now, but I’ll leave the above note since it’s still worth saying.
It’s not legal to receive donations directly or indirectly from foreign nationals for any US race, but volunteering and asking people to donate is okay.
The legality of donation swapping seems pretty unclear to me. My limited and insufficient understanding is there’s no actually exchange of goods, and you can’t verify whether someone will actually carry through with the match.
On reflection it’s not obvious to me that the small chance of a public comment being picked up and casting negative light on a campaign (particularly if I am wrong and donation swapping in this case is not legal) wouldn’t offset a fairly small donation to a campaign making the activity negative in expectation. I’ll retract my previous comment.
“A foreign national may not direct, dictate, control or directly or indirectly participate in the decision-making process of any person (such as a corporation, labor organization, political committee or political organization) with regard to the person’s federal or nonfederal election-related activities. This includes decisions concerning the making of contributions, donations, expenditures or disbursements in connection with any federal state or local election or decisions concerning the administration of a political committee.”
I commented separately before I noticed the meta edit to this comment. I was going to write another comment admonishing people downvoting Caleb’s reply here, but instead I’ll just say that I strongly agree with Zach’s take here, and that I have pretty bad feelings right now toward the people who downvoted Caleb’s comment (post-unendorsement) and reply.
This is speculating about hidden motives in a way I feel uncomfortable about, but I have a bad feeling there might be some political downvoting here, where people are downvoting the comments because they want people outside the community who this post to see that those comments had negative karma. I hope I’m wrong about that; but it matches a pattern I’ve seen on other Forum posts connecting to external partisan politics. If I’m not wrong about it, I very strongly condemn it.
I’m a fan of donation swapping, but I don’t think this is legal under US campaign finance law. (If someone else knows for sure, please tell us. Edit: Peter says it’s not legal. Edit: Peter now only says it’s illegal for non-Americans, but I also think it’s illegal for Americans as a way to get around the individual contribution limit.)
Edit, meta: several people have downvoted Caleb’s comment after he no longer endorsed it, and some have downvoted his reply too (both to below zero). This isn’t right, epistemically or in terms of desert. Downvoting a retracted idea doesn’t improve the conversation, and Caleb’s comments are clearly good- and truth-seeking. If you want to punish the author for saying something that turned out to be unpopular, you should consider the effects of that policy (here and more generally) on the community’s epistemic culture. See also Oliver’s comment.
Edit: Caleb’s comments are safely back in nonnegative territory, for now, but I’ll leave the above note since it’s still worth saying.
It’s not legal to receive donations directly or indirectly from foreign nationals for any US race, but volunteering and asking people to donate is okay.
The legality of donation swapping seems pretty unclear to me. My limited and insufficient understanding is there’s no actually exchange of goods, and you can’t verify whether someone will actually carry through with the match.
On reflection it’s not obvious to me that the small chance of a public comment being picked up and casting negative light on a campaign (particularly if I am wrong and donation swapping in this case is not legal) wouldn’t offset a fairly small donation to a campaign making the activity negative in expectation. I’ll retract my previous comment.
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/foreign-nationals/
I think it would be pretty hard to argue that a donation swap didn’t at least involve indirectly participating in someone’s decision to donate.
I commented separately before I noticed the meta edit to this comment. I was going to write another comment admonishing people downvoting Caleb’s reply here, but instead I’ll just say that I strongly agree with Zach’s take here, and that I have pretty bad feelings right now toward the people who downvoted Caleb’s comment (post-unendorsement) and reply.
This is speculating about hidden motives in a way I feel uncomfortable about, but I have a bad feeling there might be some political downvoting here, where people are downvoting the comments because they want people outside the community who this post to see that those comments had negative karma. I hope I’m wrong about that; but it matches a pattern I’ve seen on other Forum posts connecting to external partisan politics. If I’m not wrong about it, I very strongly condemn it.