Lots of helpful information! Thanks.
The reason I asked about the philanthropist rejection by lobbies thing is because I had asked what determines which lobbies I can approach, and I thought someone said that only the ones with the same reputation as me would show up (ie if I was philanthropist, only philanthropist ones would show up as options). Therefore I was confused when I tried to approach them and found that they *weren't* philanthropist, or at least they didn't like philanthropists. I think I misunderstood the response -- clearly that is not how it works. Only the ones with the same reputation as me will *accept* my approach; I get that now. I still don't know what determines which lobbies actually show up as available for me to suck up to before votes, though, and that was my original question. Is it random? It seems random.
I did finally figure out myself that the "pushing your case" option *gives* merit rather than costing it. I was confused by the wording. The word "for" messed me up - I thought that meant the cost (ie "Go buy some oranges for $1"). I thought that it was something that cost merit and gave me something else in return (that "pushing your case" meant something specific regarding the vote, maybe influencing others to vote your way), so I didn't dare click it because I'm always so low on merit. Am I the only one who was confused by that? If so, then never mind me. If the wording is confusing for others too, maybe it could be slightly modified to something like "Concentrate on pushing your case (+0.3 merit)"?