Say a politician promises to cut taxes or boost social spending and then a natural disaster strikes or an adversary attacks. Either war or repairs and relief consume time and money. Holding them to it would force suboptimal decisions.
Money however is fundamentally fungible and performs best when it flows. Fraud being legal would force far more caution and selectivity which would do vast systemic harm. Why invest if there is no guarantee that it isn't just a gift that may be paid back?
They are interfering with election.
The whole idea of fact checking is naive. Nobody is trustworthy enough to determine truth. Everyone who tries turns it into "truth is whatever powerful people say it is" (which is itself circular logic of course, but the people deciding on the meaning of truth are rarely all that bright).
Jokes aside, I think that democracies which are split up into executives, legislatives and judicatives are not well designed from an architectural standpoint.
What's missing is a society of technologically specialized gremiums that evaluate knowledge and truthfulness, and are able to either control the press or to control the legislative process.
So many laws have been created out of misinformation, stupidity, and resulting fear... So that generations to come are harmed by this shit. It's absurd.
In Germany, we technically have the "Rat der Wissenschaften" but it basically has no purpose. It's just there for nothing, and has no power over any other instance.
The irony is that in Germany the only instance that was able to do anything against the misinformation cases was actually the Bundeskartellamt, which serves the purpose of finding out wrong flows of money and does financial audits in illegal syndicates.
If you lie to me and I end up signing a contract that benefits you vs. if you lie to me and I end up signing a ballot that benefits you. Where's the difference?
I'm not going to touch this analogy, it's in bad taste and doesn't elucidate anything.
I would assume explicit actions like mislabeling ballots or actually changing someone's vote on them is a crime. Perhaps even tricking people about polling place locations or the party of candidates. But it's obviously very dangerous ground once you venture multiple degrees of freedom off into policing conspiracy theories or political ads, given the risks of abuse. It should be just as hard as to convict people for murder via such distant effects. Especially since in voting, people have access to alternative views, including yours.
So why is lying on a job application for the purpose of getting a job illegal, unless that job is an elected position? (note that lying on behalf of someone else to help them get a job is also fraud, so the same question could be asked of someone lying on behalf of or in support of a candidate)
To make the question more explicit: why should the non-legal, but supposedly fundamental, right to "freedom of expression" protect your ability to lie to me about a political candidate, but not a contract?
A trivial example would be a divorce where one partner has been caught with a false statement or action. Any sexual intercourse at a date between the lie and the other person finding out would potentially be rape since consent might have changed if the person has been truthful. If both sides are cheating on each other then we would be in the weird state were both were raping each other at the same time, as both would be using deception in order to obtain the victims agreement before the act.
The wast majority of cases described in the Wikipedia article is when one party is asleep, which to me is not about deception at all but rather the state of the victim and their ability to consent. Further down the article, the California case is interesting but involve other crimes in connection to the act which muddles the definition. Last we have the Israel one with the religious aspect, and I strongly doubt a similar case would be allowed in places where such religious aspects would hold less weight. Being consistent under the Israel case, a gold digger would similar be raping it victim since they too would have lied about their interest in a long-term relationship.
If you're intending to obtain some benefit or deprive them of something, but fail to clinch it and 'take their money' as you put it, the statement still triggers liability under most theories of fraud/misrepresentation. Generally some injury needs to be suffered, though.
So no, it's not the stealing. It's the speech with bad intention.
As a sidenote, fraud and misrepresentation generally have some of the most interesting rules regarding evidence. The law really drilled down into what's a sufficient record and what's not in respect of attribution of liability in this area.
Where the offenses aren't linked to theories of compensation or restitution, but instead are based on punishment, they're less likely to require injury and more likely to look at it as a factor in determining the magnitude of the punishment.
The rules regarding fraud in connection with TARP funds, lies to federal agents, etc. all run on this line.
Tell a federal agent you aren't guilty of something when you are? That's a charge. There's no harm to the agent. No injury. Just the lie.