Possibly, but it'll depend on your POV and where you draw the line on what's bribery.

Scenario 1: I represent a mega-corporation and I want legislation changed to make it easier for my factories to comply with pollution laws by changing the definition of pollution.

Is it bribery to say to politicians "Our friends see the current standards on pollution are an impediment to the way we do business. Friends help each other out. Would you like to be our friend?"

Scenario 2: I represent a small business, and there's legislation proposed that would make it illegal for me to trade on certain days.

I've always given small donations to my local politicians because they've done things that helped my business, but now there's this threat that could ruin my business.

Is it bribery if I tell them "If you support this legislation, we, and all the other local businesses owners like me will no longer be donating to your campaign, we're going to support your opposition instead".

I realize it's fundamental to American politics now, but that doesn't make it fundamentally wrong.

I don't disagree on the fundamentals, but I think there's a lot of side effects of something like this.

How should election campaigns be funded?

I've heard suggestions of having the state pay for campaigns, everyone gets a fixed budget (or some variation of this). But this leads to issues then around who should be eligible to have campaign funding from the state and regulation around that. If Anna is standing as a candidate, what's to stop Anna's friends Barry, Celeste, and Dina standing, but spending all their campaign funds on promotion that makes it clear that Anna is actually a much better candidate.

Should candidates be able to contribute to campaign expenses themselves? For instance, in situations where there's a lot of travel involved - having better accommodation, more comfortable transport options, more assistants to help them out/etc can make a difference on even a short campaign.

What constitutes a donation? Just money? Time? Resources?

Can I hand out flyers, run a phone tree/social media account for the local council/town/city elections?

What if I own hall, can I let a candidate use that for free?

Maybe I own a restaurant, and want donate the use of that to a candidate for a big campaign speech where they're going to invite all the press. The press wouldn't ordinarily be interested in this no-name candidate, but the event is at that restaurant that you can't get a reservation to without waiting for months. I also happen to have a bunch of celebrity friends that might just attend. You can be sure that all the journos will be wanting to come along, and that it'll be making the news, even if it's just for the celebrity thing.

Maybe I'm best mates with a candidate - I love flying my private jet, can I fly them around and let them use my Uber Lux account?

If I'm on an hourly contract working for the campaign, can I work overtime without charging the campaign?

I'm not sure what the details of our rules actually are, except that your party gets funding if you got more than 4% (edit – correction: 2,5%) of the votes in the last election and that people are free to volunteer their time.

Clearly the system as it stands now is terrible and needs to be fixed. Start fixing it now, and worry about the edge cases later. A 10% improvement is better than no improvement.

It's done by independently advocating for the candidate. And it's pretty hard to tell people they can't do that. Should you need to fill out a financial disclosure form to be allowed to write a positive comment about Bernie Sanders on Reddit?

Not long ago, I stumbled upon an old book in my uni library - Congress meeting notes from 1860s. It was fascinating to read about some dude who bribed congressmen to get his book published/distributed (the $50 book was about some tax rules, thousands of copies sold). One of his trial responses has stuck in my mind: "You gotta know someone to get things done". Nothing has changed. Oh, in that particular case, back then, a couple of congressmen lost their jobs, but no one went to jail, even though it was proven the bribery took place.