Could Bill Gates run on the platform that if he was elected President he would give 1 million dollars to every person in America? Or would this be illegal?
To assure the people he would actually give the money he could put it in a binding trust that paid out 1 million dollars (hell, he could make it five million) if he was elected President.
It’d be tricky, given that he’d be $299,900,000,000,000 short.
I’m not sure of the legal issue though I would be sure he does not have enough money to fulfill that promise by quite a load.
Current population 295,734,134 estimate
295,734,134x1,000,000 = 295,734,134,000,000
A load more then his current estimated worth of 46,600,000 2004 Forbes
:smack: Not a math major by any means
46,600,000,000
$157.57. Might buy my vote if I were hard up for cash, but my ethics generally don’t go for any less than $20,000.
Nah, he could do better than that. All he has to do is pay off 51% of the voters, not every man, woman and child. 70 million voters oughta be enough, and he could pony up $657 for each of them.
Or, more efficiently, he could just buy a dozen senators.
The Federal vote-buying statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1973i:
(emphasis added)
Voteauction dot com was shut down for trying to facilitate the buying and selling of votes (link).
Even if it were legal and possible, wouldn’t the resulting inflation pretty much effectively wipe out the value of the million bucks?
Just think what giving every voter a million dollars would do to the economy.
It would be the liberal/socialist dream come true…leveling the playing field and all that. Of course, it would be a complete disaster, but what the hell. 
Not that its likely to happen…even the US government couldn’t give every man, woman and child a million dollars…or even give every family that much.
-XT
Would he enough money to buy off the right states?
The OP’s suggestion isn’t vote-buying, though. Whether you get a million dollars has nothing to do with how or whether you vote. He’s promising to give everyone money, not just those who vote for him. I think it would be perfectly legal, in the hypothetical situation that someone could actually do it.
Step 1: Give each person who votes for you a handful of cash and then $.01 for everyone who voted for the competition.
Step 2: Everyone goes to jail.
Step 3: Pardon everyone who voted for you 
Yeah, it would be wiser to give just the richest two percent of the population 500 billion dollars to divide. Much better for the economy.
Well, you’ll recall that $300 income tax refund stunt that Bush pulled. I know of more than one person who voted for him because of that.
A different question in the same vein;
A little unsure on the numbers but how big a general tax cut it would be if Gates (somehow) turned most of his assets to cash and paid for $30b worth of tax bills?
And furthermore, would that be illegal?
What I mean is assume, he’s running and his campaign promise is that he’ll spend $30b of his own money to partially cover taxes for everyone making less than $100k a year…how big a drop in taxes could that be?
Or if you want to get even more crazy, he runs as a Democrat and decides to put $30b towards the federal taxes of all Texans. Assuming it worked and Gates took CA, TX, and NY he’d basically have the election locked up. How illegal would that be?
If Bill Gates said that winning the Presidency would make the new XBox and Halo 3 come out faster, he’d be President tomorrow.
14 year olds can’t vote.
But the badgered parents of 14-year-olds can.
Actually, elementary errors are the sign of math majors everywhere…
“I got the right answer!”
“Yes, except it was off by a factor of 1000!”
“So?”