Detail: the website takes donations in rounds that end on a specified date. Each donation has three parts: a political recipient (say, the DSCC), an offset recipient (say, the NRSC), and a backup charity (say, Village Reach). The backup charity must be scrupulously non-political. At the end of each round, the website finds all the donations which match, gives the political recipient who gets more money the difference in donations, and parcels out each side’s remaining money (which will be equal) proportionately among their named charities.
A $100 DSCC/NRSC/VillageReach donation is thus guaranteed to cause the difference in donations between the DSCC and NRSC to go $100 in the DSCC’s favour; I just don’t know whether it will do so by increasing the money the DSCC gets, or reducing the money the NRSC gets. But either way, if there are donors on both sides then VillageReach will get at least some of the money, and if they’re roughly evenly matched it’ll get most of it.
So the big question is: how could this be made to seem attractive to people? It seems like very few would understand it. “No, give to the DSCC directly - that way they get all the money! Otherwise some Republican will put money in and take away your donation!”
I think this is exactly how to do this. I’m not sure how effective it could actually be, but I’d really like someone to make an honest go for it.
One note: I think there is a motivation for underdog supporters not to contribute, since presumably the less-well funded candidate needs funding more than the better funded candidate. I think this should be relatively small though, at least for races that are at all contentious.
In theory you could state with each donation how much you’d need to take off the other side in order not to give it to your side and look for matches in a process a little like betting markets, but it’s hard to imagine that working out in practice, so maybe you just aim this tool at evenly matched races.
Detail: the website takes donations in rounds that end on a specified date. Each donation has three parts: a political recipient (say, the DSCC), an offset recipient (say, the NRSC), and a backup charity (say, Village Reach). The backup charity must be scrupulously non-political. At the end of each round, the website finds all the donations which match, gives the political recipient who gets more money the difference in donations, and parcels out each side’s remaining money (which will be equal) proportionately among their named charities.
A $100 DSCC/NRSC/VillageReach donation is thus guaranteed to cause the difference in donations between the DSCC and NRSC to go $100 in the DSCC’s favour; I just don’t know whether it will do so by increasing the money the DSCC gets, or reducing the money the NRSC gets. But either way, if there are donors on both sides then VillageReach will get at least some of the money, and if they’re roughly evenly matched it’ll get most of it.
So the big question is: how could this be made to seem attractive to people? It seems like very few would understand it. “No, give to the DSCC directly - that way they get all the money! Otherwise some Republican will put money in and take away your donation!”
I think this is exactly how to do this. I’m not sure how effective it could actually be, but I’d really like someone to make an honest go for it.
One note: I think there is a motivation for underdog supporters not to contribute, since presumably the less-well funded candidate needs funding more than the better funded candidate. I think this should be relatively small though, at least for races that are at all contentious.
Yes, this problem came up in my discussions.
In theory you could state with each donation how much you’d need to take off the other side in order not to give it to your side and look for matches in a process a little like betting markets, but it’s hard to imagine that working out in practice, so maybe you just aim this tool at evenly matched races.