Top all-time · #7879
Adam Bonica
Personal blog · data4democracy.substack.compoliticsdata
Adam Bonica writes On Data and Democracy, a personal blog at data4democracy.substack.com about politics and data. Since 2025, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “An Investigation into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite this Substack by Adam Bonica for the argument that money mainly keeps candidates from running at all, not that it swings elections. Other comments discuss US political fundraising and texting.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Data-driven insights illuminating the challenges and potential paths forward for American democracy.
Most-linked posts?
- An Investigation into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-08-03
- The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-14
- Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-07
What Hacker News says?
It is less that it swings elections, though it has marginal effects via voter mobilization, and more that it keeps candidates from even running at all: https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/money-doesnt-buy-elect... Money won't get you a Democratic senator in Texas, but it makes you 100x more likely to get you a Republican lawyer than an average Republican.
Comment linking /p/money-doesnt-buy-elections-it-does
on “Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban”Submitted Data and Democracy: Charting Assault on American Democracy and a Path Forward as a story · 92 points
HN discussionThe "No Kings" protest had absolutely no subject or issue other than repeating Trump's name. What would it have meant for it to have been successful? What I mean by that is what could "X" be in the sentence: "If X policy had changed, the No Kings rallies would have accomplished one of their goals"? It was just an astroturfed Democratic party rally that drummed up participation by mass text spam from Indian call cent…
Comment linking /p/the-mothership-vortex-an-investigation
on “How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA”Submitted An Investigation into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine as a story · 28 points
HN discussionMeanwhile, the US cut out a special exception to the do-no-call list for political text spam, leading to me personally for about a year getting about 10-15 text messages a day from Democratic scam PACs that have to be "unsubscribed" from individually , from each of hundreds or thousands of phone numbers. So an exception, and the exploitation of a loophole. They'll never stop punishing me for having donated to Bernie…
Comment linking /p/the-mothership-vortex-an-investigation
on “France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls”Submitted How to Dismantle a Democracy, Legally as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted An Investigation into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hook and Squeeze as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
