Question for people with more experience than I have. Does there exist a mechanism to set up an account that only accepts pledges until I trigger it to take cash? Here’s the plan: I want to keep adding names of certified yeses until a vote is scheduled, and use the size of the pledge pool as a carrot to draw more Representatives in. This would clearly only work if pledges have some sort of commitment attached to them, since anyone can “pledge” $10,000 and a thoroughbred pony. Email me or discuss it here.
Take the poll. Also.
Never used BlogPolls before, so it’s my fault if the poll doesn’t work.
***Update***
Being new, I forgot that we can’t promise money for a specific vote. Oh well.
Faisal
I haven’t read the terms of service, but if you can trigger to a dollar amount then I believe you can use Kickstarter.
BillCinSD
I still don’t get why you are pushing the House rather than the Senate. I think House first is bad strategy and politics
Ailuridae
That’s a nice clean app.
dirge
What you really want is a contingency or escrow pledge: you get the money if and when you pass HCR meeting the following criteria…
Don’t know if ActBlue or anybody else provides such a mechanism, but somebody should.
Knocienz
Might want to check with a lawyer. That sounds like you might be crossing the quid pro quo bribery line; offering them campaign money but only if they vote a certain way rather than at least pretending that you are just giving money to candidates that you support.
dirge
Well… I gather that these days a corporation can donate unlimited amounts of money to a candidate in order to support an agenda in which they have a particular interest. Citizens United, blah, blah…
So it would seem to me that a reasonable approach would be to set up a special purpose Corp or LLC (non-profit if possible, for tax benefits) to receive donations in escrow, pending the given contingency (HCR), and manage those donations, in a more or less ordinary way, for the benefit of the donors unless and until the contingency comes to pass.
I’m imagining something that takes advantage of the various tax benefits accorded to retirement funds, so that your donations are tax-deferred until either HCR passes and they become political donations or until you retire and can start drawing them down.
From my perspective as someone who has a bit of light professional contact with related issues it sounds vaguely plausible, but of course I’m not a tax lawyer. Surely the details would be fiendishly complex if not impossible.
diakron
No-and-do-not-plan-to: I live in Joe Pitts’ district. Why waste my time?
Kat
On the poll results page, you need some html code to separate the three lines of results — p with arrows on both sides, for instance.
Chuck Butcher
funny, says I voted – no I didn’t.
Connie
Gabby Giffords is an asshole
PaulW
The problem: my Representative is Republican. He already votes No on HCR.
DJ Any Reason
According to Ezra, the Senate is doing their fare share in killing this too.
I plan to call Webb and Warner today. Anybody else?
cminus
Shouldn’t there be an option in the poll for us colonials, “I don’t have Congressional representation. Rub it in, why don’t you?”
psychobroad
My representatives are all lockstep republicans who voted against S-Chip. No point in calling.
Dayv
I didn’t vote because I don’t want to skew the results, but Jim Moran sent out a poll to his constituent email list asking their views on pushing forward with HCR. 2/3 said to go for it, and he’s one of the few “yes” entries on the roll call.
Graeme
I kinda lied in the poll: I emailed Pelosi, Feinstein, and Boxer.
I am what I am.
scarshapedstar
I’m represented by 3 odious Republicans: Steve Scalise, David Vitter and Mary Landrieu.