>An individual running for a seat in the House or Senate or for the office of U.S. President becomes a candidate when he or she raises or spends more than $5,000 in contributions or expenditures.

One generally needs a certain number of petition signatures to appear on a ballot, but apparently not needed just to legally be a candidate.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registeri...

Do you have to actually spend that $5000? Or can you just have it "raised"?

Create a nonprofit to accept the "raised" contribution, and then swap it with another candidate in the pool for "consulting fees"...

> Create a nonprofit

I like the enthusiasm, but this would get you slapped by the IRS (eventually). Any other ideas?

Maybe if we just pay each other in a ring through a legal escrow? Everyone puts in $5,001, the escrow pays everyone back $5000.

So we start a party where we all sign to get each other on the ballot and donate to a pool that allocates $5k to each of us? Can this $5k just be moved around per candidate which counts as spending?

This would become a problem if someone just joined the party with the intent of cashing out the 5k$ and leaving. Maybe you could fix this somehow with smart contracts? idk

Legal escrow! No smart contracts needed

if you cash out the $5k you lose candidate status.

“Fine by me, I’m $5k richer now!”

Assign it but don’t physically give it to them?

We can even make a political party out of it where everyone in the party is a candidate.

The Privacy Party is born.

All Aboard the Pirate Ship![0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party

To be fair the Pirate Party is very pro privacy for seemingly obvious reasons.

This has a very Slack vibe to it that I can dig.

No love for the Church of the SubGenious?

I gave you an upvote in the previous comment because I knew what you were talking about mainly due to Slackware's reference to Church of SubGenious. I don't think many know what that is though.

For those curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius

That is indeed a great idea. Where and how do I sign up.

It would be a great act of civil disobedience.

Oh, that is great!

I would like to add, just think of the chaos at the primaries if the act of declaring candidacy one also declares they are running for the R|D nomination. The voting machines can barely deal with 20 presidential candidates. Imagine what would happen if you had to thousands of people running for a congressional seat!

I nominate np_tedious for President, along with the rest of Hacker News.

I thought we were an autonomous collective.

Some of us are more autonomous than others.

Some are more collective.