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Comment by cbg0 | Hacker News Reader

It's possible but spending has to be reported to the electoral authority, which it wasn't.

So any third party can spend a bunch of money without the knowledge of the candidate that they purport to support, purposefully not report it, and then that candidate can be disqualified?

If that's how the system works, it incentivizes abuse.

No, you would still be on the hook for breaking electoral law by not reporting spending, even as a private individual not part of the election. This wouldn't be relevant for making a few flyers as the law won't come after you for that, but spending hundreds of thousands on tiktok bots will definitely cause a stir.

Right, so what about if I don't like a candidate and I intentionally pump 1 million euro into her campaign so she gets disqualified? This is what the parent is asking about.

I don't have a clear answer on that for you, but nobody was disqualified in this situation as the election was annulled and will restart from scratch.

This hypothetical situation though is a bit unlikely, as we're talking about quite a lot of money to pump into someone's campaign and anyone doing this will still be subject to attempting to manipulate the electoral process if they do not abide by the law, which could land them in jail and lead to an annulment of the electoral process.

Sure, but right now we're talking about a situation in which quite a lot of money has been pumped into someone's campaign! This situation is proof that people are willing to interfere in the election. The problem is that once you introduce the idea that the election can be "annulled" a bunch of people are going to be motivated to hack the election to get it "annulled" in some way.

> a bunch of people are going to be motivated to hack the election to get it "annulled" in some way.

There will be trials for this, and both the people who bought the ads (if they can be found), but more importantly the media publishers who pocketed the millions will have to answer questions to prove this was legal.

You can't unilaterally "pump some millions" to buy some electoral ads. Someone pocketed some millions and will need to show receipts.

As you well know since you are Romanian there are not many cases of people tried and in jail in Romania for corruption. Now take a state actor and imagine that they are responsible. Let's not kid ourselves and pretend there will be repercussions for this mess except - if possible - make people trust even less the 'system'.

Not many cases? There are many people tried and jailed for corruption, including previous mayors, senators, ministers, more than one prime minister even. Of the many possible critiques of Romania, not jailing corrupt politicians is among the weaker ones.

Most of those cases of even the prime ministers were just for show. Getting a suspended punishment while not having to pay anything back from bribery and no repercussions. This is equivalent to how I punish my kid, stay in the corner for five minutes and promise you don't do it again.

If you also relatively think the couple that are actually in jail they are too few for the amount of politicians or general corruption that is in prevalent Romania.

>and lead to an annulment of the electoral process

That would be the goal.

"but nobody was disqualified in this situation as the election was annulled and will restart from scratch" - how is this logical?

Nothing will change from the annulled election to the new election (candidates will not be invalidated, TikTok will still be there). So if the annulled election was invalid on whatever criteria, the new election would also be invalid on the same criteria...

Honest candidate will just report your spending. :-/

If i spend money on all the other candidates and don't declare it, will they get disqualified? Or is this a rule that only gets applied when the wrong person wins=?

You would be in legal trouble for breaking electoral law. Based on what happened today, if there is proof that the electoral process was tainted, the elections can be annulled by the constitutional court.

>You would be in legal trouble for breaking electoral law. Based on what happened today, if there is proof that the electoral process was tainted, the elections can be annulled by the constitutional court.

So, your stance is that any foreign nation can disqualify any candidate they like by running a few ads for them?

Think seriously about what you're saying.

This is not a "stance", I'm mostly talking about the law, and that's something that judges decide on, not myself.

Foreign nations are not allowed to be involved in the electoral process in Romania by law and could lead to the annulment of the electoral process, which is what happened. The process will start again from scratch, nobody was disqualified.

Yes. That’s how it is in North America too. “A few ads” probably no, but if it’s enough to be significant then yes.

Since political advertising is and needs to be regulated, it needs to be regulated. What platform allowed the unauthorized ads to be run and who are we putting in jail? Local TV, radio and print gets held accountable, but a stick needs to be taken to foreign owned social media companies to make them acknowledge their social responsibilities.

But why would the result of the new elections be different unless they disqualify that guy? It's not like there is a way to somehow force his voters to forget the illegal ads etc.

look, the law requires this declaration of funding. There is a constitional article in which the elections must be correct. By doing this, there is an unfair situation and the corectness of the elections is no longer guaranteed. Also, there is no natural growth of a candidate from 5% to 22% in two weeks. It was a massive attack on the people minds with very well crafted messages, practically saying what the people want to hear. This is no work of a person, it points out to a state actor with such vast resources.

Yeah but the consequences would be for that rich person, wouldn't it? Not the candidate themselves

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