It seems reasonable to me, for an early debate, assuming the minimum qualifying donation is small (like $1 or $5). For an early debate, I think one of the main

It seems reasonable to me, for an early debate, assuming the minimum qualifying donation is small (like $1 or $5). For an early debate, I think one of the main goals would be to give exposure to "deserving" candidates who don't necessarily already have it. Polling isn't good for that since it will exclude anyone people haven't already heard of. But the question becomes what is "deserving" and how do you measure it? It's not like counting donors is perfect, but what is? And it has some things going for it: 1. Talk is just talk. If you can get a decent number of people who don't personally know you to support you with at least a few bucks, you've got some kind of appeal. 2. There are already a lot of laws, reporting rules, etc. around campaign donations that you can piggyback off of. That is, the campaigns are already tracking this stuff very carefully and, if they cheat the numbers, are risking something a lot worse than being left out of a debate.