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How elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns (www.cnn.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's a very long article with many examples, but these highlight well

One 82-year-old woman, who wore pajamas with holes in them because she didn’t want to spend money on new ones, didn’t realize she had given Republicans more than $350,000 while living in a 1,000 square-foot Baltimore condo since 2020.

By the time a Taiwanese immigrant from California passed away from lung cancer this year at age 80, she had given away more than $180,000 to Trump’s campaign and a litany of other Republican candidates – writing letters to candidates apologizing for not getting donations to them on time because she was going into heart surgery. She had only $250 in her bank account when she died, leaving her family scrambling to cover the cost of her funeral.

And a 78-year-old, a widow who limited showers to save on her water bill and canceled her long-term care insurance, didn’t understand why the retirement savings her husband had left her was dwindling so quickly. After CNN reached out to her family, they learned that the woman gave more than $200,000 in donations to Democratic political groups and candidates.

This whole thing is a plague, citizens United and this concept of pacs, and all this money in politics is absurd. I think in the modern day of internet and with each campaign setting up a website, and normal reporting and debates, town halls, and Rally's is sufficient, we don't need all these mailers, and constant ads, and texts, and so on and so on. it's more just a giant transfer of wealth from the people to networks and ad agencies.

All this money has turned politics towards sensationalism, and it's hurting society.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Amen to that. Not to mention the disproportionate amount of time and money spent on swing states. The US system is in dire need of reform and it might be too late. If Trump wins, that's yet another nail in the coffin.

If he doesn't, we need to band anyone and everyone who cares about democracy to insist on:

Money out of politics, as you argue
Ranked choice voting
Electoral college and voting rights reform (like a voting national holiday)