You live in Chicago and ask that? :-) You have to be found out, and someone has to bother to prosecute you, and they have to win. That's a lot harder than googling the campaign finance database, especially if there are people who have something to lose if you're stopped.

If making an unpopular opinion known (or a known opinion becoming retroactively unpopular) risks ruining your livelihood, that's a huge disincentive to make any but popular opinions known. That kind of chills the incentive to participate in any but the most anodyne politics, doesn't it? (There are brave people who'll run those sorts of risks, and become famous heroes or hissings and bywords depending how it works out. But they're the exception.)

If you still want to influence matters, at least doing it secretly (and hence, generally, corruptly) offers the chance you won't be ruined by an unpopular choice.

("More robust prosecution" has filled American prisons to an unprecedented degree. Since crime rates are down, maybe there's some causation there, though I'm skeptical. But offenses haven't gone down to the same degree that inmate numbers have gone up. There are limits to what throwing the book at 'em can do.)