# If Money is Speech, Why Can't I Sell My Vote? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 20, 2014, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-money-is-speech-why-cant-i-sell-my-vote/688807 "2014-05-20T08:04:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2014, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-money-is-speech-why-cant-i-sell-my-vote/688807/61 "2014-05-24T06:36:04Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > … Actually, forget that, it’s irrelevant… OK > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > … I love the idea that you think giving government bureaucrats the power to punish people for presenting “misleading” information or " emotionally charged bile" won’t lead to potential abuse… As I said in a previous post, in the context of campaigning, the government itself is the subject of the dialogue, so it could not realistically have a direct role in regulating the content. It would have to empanel _ad hoc_ groups similar to juries (random draw from a large pool) to rule on what can be permitted. I can imagine no other way to make a system work, apart from involving foreign countries – which sounds beyond the pale, but the state of political dialogue in the US has deteriorated so severely (nearly fifteen thousand posts in “Stupid Republican Idea of the Day”) that we really ought to be looking at some kind of way to fix it. “More freedom” looks like the opposite of fixing it. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2014, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-money-is-speech-why-cant-i-sell-my-vote/688807/62 "2014-05-24T07:40:19Z")
Truth is usually not completely black and white in politics, and when people lie in ways that harm another, we have libel laws in place to deal with that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-money-is-speech-why-cant-i-sell-my-vote/688807.md?page=3)