Interesting question, I bet it’s at least partially spurred on by the musk PAC paying people to vote nonsense. That one is likely even more clearly illegal than this, but I’m not against little nudges like this to get people to do their civic duty. I suppose we’ll see how it plays out in court.
I actually like this.
This is not a gimmick of handing out “random” checks (which, we now know, all went to people who had already voted Republican), this affects all members equally, as a statement of values.
You can write in “abstain”, or leave blank, whatever you want if you don’t want to endorse any particular candidate, but democracy is important, and this might help push people to overcome the inconveniences that are often used to discourage people from voting.
I agree that actual democracy is important. However, most voting is barely democracy.
The end goal would be direct democracy, but in the mean time under representative democracy systems first past the post isn’t a very good system for democracy, that honour really only falls to mixed member proportional respresentation (though any voting system is better than first past the post).