The Difficult Arguments Against Vote Buying

Why is this? Is it really so bad to exchange your vote for money or some other reward?

For most of American history, vote buying was common, although frowned upon. Until the last years of the 19th century, voting took place openly and voters could come with completed ballots – helpfully distributed by political parties or printed in party newspapers – thrown into the ballot box. In such circumstances it was easy to find voters who would gladly exchange their vote for a drink or some money.

With the advent of secret voting – Massachusetts was in the lead due to the requirement of private voting booths and blank ballots provided by the state, vote buying has become much more difficult. However, although every state and federal government banned this practiceit persisted in some parts of the country.

In his authoritative biography of Lyndon B. JohnsonHistorian Robert Caro describes how in 1934, as a campaign staffer in Texas, LBJ “sat in a San Antonio hotel room at a table covered with five-dollar bills and passed them to Mexican Americans at the rate of five dollars.” a vote for every vote in their family.” Story from Time magazine, 1960. described the “half-pint vote” as an ongoing practice in southern West Virginia, where the “standard payout” for someone’s vote was “a half pint of bourbon and $2 to $5 in cash.” In 2012, the Ministry of Justice successfully prosecuted two Arkansas men for a scheme to buy votes from residents who requested absentee ballots.

Are such cases of vote buying reprehensible? I believe that most of us share the instinctive feeling that trading votes directly for money is vile and outrageous. But convincingly explaining why is harder than you think.

Harvard economist Greg Mankiw pondered this question when asked by his colleague, philosopher Michael Sandel, during a Sandel session. famous course on justice.

“If you economists are so in favor of voluntary exchange,” Sandel challenged, “would you extend that conclusion to allowing a person to sell his voting rights to another person?”

No, Mankiw said. Even if both parties to a voluntary exchange betterthe sale of votes should be prohibited due to “externalities.” This is how economists talk about the impact a deal could have on unrelated third parties. When Alex agrees to vote for Bob in exchange for (say) $25, he also influences the future of Clara, who may be forced to tolerate policies Bob supports that she opposes.

But wait. Suppose Alex agrees to vote for Bob not because he is paid to do so, but because Bob convinces him to do so in a conversation. Or charms him with flattery. Or forces him to do it, bending his ear until he agrees. Or tricks him into doing so by lying about what his opponent will do if he wins. In all of these cases, no payment is required, but the result is the same: Alex votes for Bob, potentially harming Clara’s future.

If all these methods of getting votes are allowed, why not use direct payment?

Karlan, a Stanford law professor, offers other explanations. The flashy benefits promised by candidates don’t actually become real until the public decides to elect a candidate, while naked vote-buying with cash removes the public from the process entirely. In this sense, vote buying turns the whole point of elections upside down.

Conversely, if voters are paid to mark a particular candidate on the ballot, they have no future claims against that candidate. “If Candidate A believes she has fulfilled her obligations to Voter X by paying him,” Karlan wrote in her law review essay, “this may undermine any sense of her continuing duty to represent him.”

Some scientists offer a justification for fairness for banning direct vote buying: Poor people are more likely to sell their votes, so elections will be skewed in favor of the rich. Others argue that votes are not personal property; they belong to the body politic and cannot be used by individuals for personal gain.

These are all clever arguments, but does any of them really clarify why trading votes for money is so widely considered scandalous? I believe that vote buying seems to most of us to be a desecration of something sacred. No matter how corrupt our politics may be, act Voting still evokes a sense of awe—a sense that we are participating in a serious and eloquent ritual on which our system of self-government revolves.

When voting became a secret act, it took on a supernatural character. In the final hours of his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton spoke of “the great secret of American democracy.” Perhaps direct vote buying, which by the 1880s had become completely associated with corrupt political machines – was anathematized.

Until recently, all this could have been of purely theoretical interest. But two modern developments have once again made it extremely easy to pay people for a guaranteed vote. One is the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and text messaging; It’s easy to send confirmation of your vote from the voting booth. Another option is the post-pandemic adoption of easy absentee voting by mail or at public drop boxes. The voter only needs to fill out a ballot, then give it to a campaign worker to seal it in an envelope and mail it.

In an era when many other norms have faded into the background, this Is the norm still protected? For more than a century, it helped bring an element of the sacred to America’s often tumultuous system of self-government. With all due respect to philosophers and economists, this is reason enough to preserve it.

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Jeff Jacoby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @jeff_jacoby.