Then by definition absolutely every democratic country/society does not function, because guess what: It takes truly stupid amounts of money to win an election. Ergo, you need to buy the election.
Every single candidate and party and reform movement who have argued for removing money from democratic politics have all lost/failed without a single exception. You absolutely cannot win an election without money, without buying it.
The only saving grace is that the guy who spends the most money doesn't always win.
We can go on for years about how it's stupid you need money to win an election, how the amount of money is despicable, how the world is unfair. Whatever: We aren't living in ideal dreams, we're living in the brutally unfair and practical reality.
Some may downplay the importance of this, but I see it as absolutely crucial.
Supporting point 1, remember that he declared zero campaign expenses and never explained how he ran his campaign
Regarding the second point, the urgency under which his campaign took off and the proximity to the elections allowed him to elude mass-media scrutiny. A lot of shady details were unveiled since he became popular, which arguably would've made him unpalatable for a lot of his voters
ISW has a fairly good synopsis of the findings from the Romanian secret services here: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/likely-kremlin...
If you want a comparison to the US political situation, this is not your "Twitter did something shady which bumped Trump's result by 2 percentage points"
A better translation is: Chase Oliver wins the White House! (If you wonder who that guy is, Google him - that's what Romanians had to do with CG after the election night; he was on the ballot and you didn't even know it). All while declaring zero expenses. NSA and CIA suspect foreign interference. His only campaign was on TikTok. Looked eerily similar to Ukraine, Georgia (the country) and Moldova's Russian influence campaigns. He eluded TikTok's swarming detection algorithms. He was unknown until late October - the campaign started in earnest 2 weeks before Halloween. Oh, and he actually looks like RFK jr., talks like RFK jr., just didn't have the same notoriety going into the election
The votes were grossly manipulated through undisclosed funding. This would cancel the results in any democratic country.
but if a South African gave away $1M a day to support his candidate in the US, would that be foreign interference?
If you cheat in elections, the results cannot be accepted in any way. Involving shady, undeclared capital in elections is simply cheating and outside influence. It's a big thing, because we leave the governing of the countries to the elected.
Democracy only works if it the results cannot be bought. And while this is never 100% the case anywhere, such blatant disregard for the laws cannot be accepted slightly.
People can vote again, and you lose some money and time to redo the elections (and if people keep voting for the same people after knowing how they came to power, then all is good).
For me the line is very clear because I see it get muddies in Turkey (where I come from) so many times and could see the dire consequences.