I think I’ve asked this before, perhaps elsewhere, but I’d appreciate new thoughts. Corruption has always been a problem in democracies, and vote-buying is one part. But I wonder if it’s possible to turn this into a virtue?
Suppose, at the polling station, you could openly buy more votes? That you yourself cast, that is. Everyone gets one vote free, but pay (say) $100 and you get a second. Pay (say) $1000 and you get a third; $10000 and you get a fourth. Etc. Having purchased your block of votes, you then go and vote in secret.
It seems to me that this would allow the ordinary citizen to counter the vote-buyers; simltaneously setting a low entry price to make multiple votes attractive but making significant vote-buying prohibitively expensive. And, of course, the actual vote is secret, so someone handing out money has to trust their ‘employees’.