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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.
It's the other way around. He has money. He needs more followers (donates). He's buying them.
What's the benefit of getting a higher donor count? Is there some election rule about that?
Yes, it states it in the article but you need 40k doners and 200 from each state.
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.