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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

because campaign finance rules apply here. that is what is different. For all the belly aching people have with corporate donations to campaigns and similar this is the same.

What is the going rate for such developers? Tools, servers, and bandwidth. What is to stop someone from exploiting this as a loophole? Hence, that is the big deal. Dress it up and it is still a pig.

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Shades of gray. There's some significant gray area when it comes to more tangible things like servers, etc, but I think if you're having a hard time discerning between a group of individuals volunteering time and a group of individuals who use obscene wealth to derail the democratic process in terms of effects on democracy, we probably need to reframe the conversation somehow.

Would a celebrity endorsement be a dressed up pig? The going rate for a Kardashian tweet is absurd. But how would it be "fair" if they were disallowed from tweeting if everyone else could.

I think it's impossibly complex and nuanced, and trying to paint this kind of activism as equal to corporate and individuals buying elections is blatantly disregarding that complexity. There goal is to balance the contributions of individuals and special interest groups in a way that no single party is able to grossly tilt the process in a way that harms it. What that means in the real world is incredibly complicated and to be determined, but I can't see individual volunteering of time and skill as being the same as individuals volunteering millions of dollars.

That's a good point: why are donations of labor not counted as (capped) political contributions? Or are they, and for what contexts? Why those contexts?

If I donate the use of my event center for a campaign rally, that counts toward the limits, but not if I help serve coffee at the rally?

Here's the FEC guidelines:

>The donation of office machines, furniture, supplies--anything of value--is an in-kind contribution. The value of the donated item (the usual and normal charge) counts against the contribution limits. A donation of services is also considered an in-kind contribution. For example, if you pay a consultant's fee or a printing bill for services provided to a campaign, you have made an in-kind contribution in the amount of the payment.

>If you sell an item or service to a committee and ask the committee to pay less than the usual and normal charge, you have also made an in-kind contribution to the committee in the amount of the discount.

>Under limited exceptions in the law, you may provide certain goods and services without making a contribution to the committee. These exceptions are volunteering, travel expenses and business services.

http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/citizens.shtml

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Ah well, at least there are SuperPACs...

EDIT: I can think of some arguments to justify no volunteer contribution limits: it's effectively already capped by the amount of labor you can give in total, and is thus inherently limited.

The reason why donations of labor are not counted as political contributions is that they are the traditional way for labor unions to contribute to candidates while avoiding campaign spending limits; the unions have lobbied (sympathetic) politicans and regulators (who are members of many of the same unions) to leave them alone. Large labor unions have contributed vast quantities of (paid) member time to a great many political candidates, campaigns, and causes for more than 50 years, and rules like this give them an advantage over corporations in the regulatory and political arenas.

Poor misunderstood, disadvantaged corporations...If only their employees cared more and were willing to donate their time to make sure their employer was seen in a better light.

The union members are usually either paid or pressured into "volunteering" for candidates; it can also be a requirement for advancement in the union. If union members were making the decision of whether or not to support political campaigns without union influence, your point would be correct; but that's not what's happening.

> The union members are usually either paid or pressured into "volunteering" for candidates

You can probably find some stories like this, but they will be a tiny minority. There's no way a reasonable and informed person would say it's "usual".

There is a long tradition in all democracies of people volunteering their time to support candidates, whether that's collecting signatures, holding signs, or developing software. Volunteering is not a meaningful locus of campaign finance abuse.

Campaign finance laws do not apply to donated labor. Volunteers exist for every single political campaign.

>Personal Services An individual may help candidates and committees by volunteering personal services. For example, you may want to take part in a voter drive or offer your skills to a political committee. Your services are not considered contributions as long as you are not paid by anyone. (If your services are compensated by someone other than the committee itself, the payment is considered a contribution by that person to the committee.) As a volunteer, you may spend unlimited money for normal living expenses.

> For all the belly aching people have with corporate donations to campaigns and similar this is the same.

It's not the same at all. Every human being has an equal 24 hours a day they can spend doing things. If you choose to spend some of those hours helping a cause you care about, more power to you.

In contrast, corporations have hundreds of millions of dollars (more than all but the richest people) to spend on their interests. And a corporation can't "care" about a cause, it can only spend money to advance its interests and try to make more money.

You don't think a lot of people who volunteer for campaigns are just trying to "make more money" by protecting or expanding entitlement programs (or regulations about unions, or ...) that benefit themselves?

But we're not building tools for the campaign. We're building tools for the grassroots movement the campaign has sparked. We're building tools for people to coordinate on the ground, organize, find rides, create fliers, learn information, become excited, etc.

Tools, servers, and bandwidth are all things we cover ourselves. And thankfully we have services like Heroku & Cloudflare that make this easily possible.

This is the one opportunity for people who have labour but not capital to influence the process, so of course you want the "loophole" closed and politics turned firmly over to money?

The FEC rules on this are very simple: Volunteers can donate as much of their time as they wish, and it is not factored into the FEC reporting requirements.

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