Nonsense. They didn't "manipulate" anything. The company made a legal donation and they asked employees to make additional donations up to a certain target amount from the employee's own funds.
It's perfectly legal to email your coworkers about a political campaign and to ask them to donate. Does this kind of suck? Maybe. Is campaign finance a mess? Definitely. But would you really want a federal law that restricts what you can say about political campaigns while at work? I'm not even sure the Constitution would permit such a restriction on speech.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. I would guess Sony executives and the Sony Corporation have closely aligned financial incentives. It's perfectly reasonable for them to want to spend personal funds on the campaigns that Sony Corp thinks are important. We can't restrict corporate employees from spending their own money any more than we restrict the general public. Nor can (or should) we restrict what you're allowed to say to coworkers about a political campaign.
It's perfectly legal to email your coworkers about a political campaign and to ask them to donate. Does this kind of suck? Maybe. Is campaign finance a mess? Definitely. But would you really want a federal law that restricts what you can say about political campaigns while at work? I'm not even sure the Constitution would permit such a restriction on speech.