Hey North Shore Full Stack Technologies, thanks so much for reading! I thought about making it a one-size-fits-all article, but I doubt it would matter. Personally, I’d love both sides to go nuclear about internet advertising, because registering voters (at $60 a pop according to those articles I linked) is better for society than spending $60+ on Google and Facebook ads.

The real issue is that any paid troll worldwide could connect to a US-based VPN, click on 1000 ads a day (one every 20 seconds or so), and cost either campaign $10,000 per day or $300,000 per month. And that’s not to mention that you could easily automate software to do that and escalate the rate up to $1,000,000 per troll per month.

Personally, I think the most underhanded tactic of all is that 80% of coronavirus relief went to people earning more than a million dollars annually. Casually wasting a campaign’s money through some clicks online is small change.

As a Democrat and liberal, I thought you would be well-aware that Republicans only win national office through gerrymandering, voter suppression (aka voter ID law and election day not being a holiday), and electoral college hijinks. If we had mandatory voting like Australia, we would end up with a multi-party system because Democrats would get 70% of the vote annually. Here in Virginia, when we finally removed gerrymandering, progressives swept both houses of legislature and immediately started implementing social justice reforms.

Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to read and respond. Thank you for your compliments about my writing. I’ll go ahead and remove the article (unlist it from Medium) at your request. Cheers!