The deposit system in the UK seems to work fine for us. It's not enough (£500 currently) to be a meaningful expense to any candidate actually trying to win, bu

The deposit system in the UK seems to work fine for us. It's not enough (£500 currently) to be a meaningful expense to any candidate actually trying to win, but it's enough friction for 'fun' campaigns that we get enough to be funny but not enough to really interfere with anything. And, yeah, ours is called a deposit because if you get 5% of the vote you get it back - and the phrase "lost their deposit" to reference a candidate who thought they were real utterly cratering on election day is pretty widely known. Of course the UK's system of government is largely a patchwork of oddities that, put together, mostly work for us, so how well any particular oddity will work in another system is invariably debatable.