Bitcoins with elections

[nelruk]

In US, I've heard some candidates accept BTC for donations. This really inspired me to ask myself about the electoral financing in political campaigns.The US' electoral commission is more energic when it comes to show the spending of the parties but in other countries (specially in Latin America and Africa) I say also good because withdrawing will be easier and they will have more control about their spending but it also let the door open to use some money laundering during these times or am I wrong?

What do you think about the paper of Bitcoin in elections?

[Jay Gatsby]

Which candidates accept BTC for donation?

[Justine]

In US, I've heard some candidates accept BTC for donations. This really inspired me to ask myself about the electoral financing in political campaigns.The US' electoral commission is more energic when it comes to show the spending of the parties but in other countries (specially in Latin America and Africa) I say also good because withdrawing will be easier and they will have more control about their spending but it also let the door open to use some money laundering during these times or am I wrong?

What do you think about the paper of Bitcoin in elections?

Kind of open up all kind of fund raising issue if they do that. There are rules for taking money and limit on how much money politician can accept per person.

[master-P]

Candidates running for office would still need to gather the identity of the people giving the donations the same way they gather the identity of people giving fiat based donations.

Campaign donations is one thing that bitcoin is not appropriate for. It would make it too easy to appear that many people are donating to a candidate when in fact only one person is giving a lot of money (more then they should be). This could result in the candidate being inappropriately influenced by the person donating a lot of bitcoin to their campaign.

[oceans]

I honestly did not know that some candidates actually accept bitcoin. I can imagine it may raise a lot of suspicion though to be honest when accepting bitcoin, as stated I know they are only allowed to accept a certain amount per person and with bitcoin they could somehow cheat that or even mistakenly not realise someone is giving more and it could look bad for them.

[SamTsuedo]

I think bitcoin donation would make Governments more concerned against btc as it's hard to keep track of it.

[pawel7777]

Candidates running for office would still need to gather the identity of the people giving the donations the same way they gather the identity of people giving fiat based donations.

Not required for small donations.

Under the FEC's opinion, campaign treasurers bear the responsibility for the legality of each donation, and for now virtual-currency donations are limited to $100.

http://bitcoinvox.com/article/905/more-political-candidates-accepting-bitcoin-donations

Which candidates accept BTC for donation?

This one for example:

http://www.coinspeaker.com/2014/07/28/one-congressional-candidate-accept-bitcoin-california/

Christina Gagnier, is not only a technology lawyer and a business owner but also she is a democrat representing  California’s 35th Congressional District. According to the latest news, she became one more US congressional candidate to accept donations in bitcoins.

[BitcoinBadger]

In US, I've heard some candidates accept BTC for donations. This really inspired me to ask myself about the electoral financing in political campaigns.The US' electoral commission is more energic when it comes to show the spending of the parties but in other countries (specially in Latin America and Africa) I say also good because withdrawing will be easier and they will have more control about their spending but it also let the door open to use some money laundering during these times or am I wrong?

What do you think about the paper of Bitcoin in elections?

If they accept bitcoin as a donation may be in the future they legalize bitcoin more supportively and help make bitcoin acceptance easy to the folks

[master-P]

Candidates running for office would still need to gather the identity of the people giving the donations the same way they gather the identity of people giving fiat based donations.

Not required for small donations.

Under the FEC's opinion, campaign treasurers bear the responsibility for the legality of each donation, and for now virtual-currency donations are limited to $100.

http://bitcoinvox.com/article/905/more-political-candidates-accepting-bitcoin-donations

Which candidates accept BTC for donation?

This one for example:

http://www.coinspeaker.com/2014/07/28/one-congressional-candidate-accept-bitcoin-california/

Christina Gagnier, is not only a technology lawyer and a business owner but also she is a democrat representing  California’s 35th Congressional District. According to the latest news, she became one more US congressional candidate to accept donations in bitcoins.

I think it would still be easy to make it look like a bunch of $95 donations for example were coming from multiple people but instead were coming from one person (and the person running for office knew this, or would later be made aware of this after he won the election).

[beetcoin]

I think bitcoin donation would make Governments more concerned against btc as it's hard to keep track of it.

i don't think government cares about that. in fact, the republicans in the supreme court are responsible for the citizens united case, which made way to bring even more money into politics.

[H.W.Z]

I think it is not good for the BTC. After receiving BTC, they will dump them all to fiat cash for the spending of campaign. It probably will cause the price drop.

[dankkk]

I think bitcoin donation would make Governments more concerned against btc as it's hard to keep track of it.

i don't think government cares about that. in fact, the republicans in the supreme court are responsible for the citizens united case, which made way to bring even more money into politics.

Having a lot of money involved in politics is a good thing as long as the money is involved in issue advocacy as opposed to candidate advocacy. Issue advocacy is something in which a specific issue is advocated, for example trying to get the keystone pipeline built; it will allow for a public debate regarding various issues that people consider to be important enough to spend money on.

[OperationMortar]

What do you think about the paper of Bitcoin in elections?

Bitcoin is a worldwide currency and the thing is - you can't prove elections through the whole world just because it's impossible and not every BTC user will answer your question. So? What are you gonna do?

[Elwar]

I can see Bitcoin being used for some anonymous campaigning, stuff that spreads the message without going through the usual channels.

I recall during Ron Paul's campaign a guy set up a phone polling system that he had to pay for, he could get X amount of calls to voters for Y dollars...he had people send him money via PayPal to do the calls. People sent him some money, he made a lot of calls until the FEC contacted him and said they considered that a donation and that he could not exceed the maximum donation.

If the same thing were done via bitcoins with the calls anonymized then money could be used to campaign without using the usual FEC channels. All completely illegal but unstoppable. Perhaps a decentralized Internet advertising method could come along that uses bitcoins which could be used as well.

[LancangDam]

I can't understand the idea of elections because it's diffult for me to get how the greatest anonymous currency will provide its own elections.

[itsAj]

I think bitcoin donation would make Governments more concerned against btc as it's hard to keep track of it.

i don't think government cares about that. in fact, the republicans in the supreme court are responsible for the citizens united case, which made way to bring even more money into politics.

Having a lot of money involved in politics is a good thing as long as the money is involved in issue advocacy as opposed to candidate advocacy. Issue advocacy is something in which a specific issue is advocated, for example trying to get the keystone pipeline built; it will allow for a public debate regarding various issues that people consider to be important enough to spend money on.

I think this will be a key issue when it comes to the involvement of bitcoin in elections. In citizens united v. the FEC, the supreme court found that people and corporations were able to spend as much money as they want on an election as long as the money was not directed towards a specific candidate. Donations to a specific candidate can still be limited.

As long as it is not the candidates themselves that accept bitcoin, but rather then PACs that support the same political party and ideas that a candidate supports then I can see bitcoin being used in elections. 

[Fabrizio89]

There was an article from vice sometime ago about the topic: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-change-voting-the-way-its-changed-money. A political party in Italy (Movement 5 Star) was experimenting with a similar concept in their meetups, I guess it could soon become a reality at least in internal issues that require members voting and then probably in real elections.