If I offered up my vote in the upcoming election on Ebay, would I be breaking any laws?
Dunno about America, but in The UK it’s punishable by an unlimited fine, and up to 2 years in prison.
Here in Minnesota, it’s the candidate who bought that would be violating the law. Since you offered it for sale, I suppose the District Attorney could charge you with aiding & abetting this illegal sale or something like that.
We had a case where a candidate was charged with violating this law because he gave away Twinkies to voters. He eventually won the case (after the election was over), because the judge said that the value of a Twinkie was so nominal it could hardly count as ‘something of value’ sufficient to cause a person to change their vote. But the judge did not specify any exact amount as the limit, so candidates still have to be careful about this. It’s generally assumed that anything less than around $5 (about 1 hour of minimum wage at the time) is probably OK.
I don’t know if you are doing anything illegal, but the implication is that the buyer would be voting twice. Or, the buyer is someone who isn’t qualified to vote, and can now vote with yours. Either way, he’s doing something illegal.
This old Wired article begins to touch on it a little. Seems that you’re okay trading, but not selling. Depending.
To sell something, there have to be two parts: offering payment, and agreeing to give something in return for the payment. How could simply giving away Twinkies, or even $50 bills, be determined to be vote buying if there is no request or agreement to vote a certain way in return? I know it looks bad, but what is the letter of the law?
**Two and a Half Inches of Fun ** what state are you in?
Illinois.
Federal law on the topic:
18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute (Emphasis added.)
And how does one enforce vote buying anyway? Does the voter take a camera into the voting booth with them?
What if I never intended to honor my pledge to sell my vote? Let’s say I was voting for McCain all of the time, but I “sold” my vote to Romney for 10 bucks. Then I go into the booth and vote for McCain anyways. Since I wasn’t really selling my vote, it should be legal right, but maybe a civil matter for Romney…
How is it then legal to promise to lower taxes? I’d say that has value .
You’d probably still be in trouble under the federal statute, which explicitly prohibits soliciting a violation. You’d probably still be charged with soliciting under state law; if not that (or in addition to it) you could be charged with conspiracy or some other inchoate crime. Also, by claiming that you never intended to perform as agreed, you could be on the hook for fraud.
Can you video yourself voting?
Can you really be charged with fraud? My understanding is that there is never considered to have been a contract since the thing contracted for was illegal.
What exactly is consideration? If my girlfriend offers to give me oral sex if I vote for Obama are we violating the law?
To inject a particle of reality into this discussion, laws against selling votes were put into place for serious reasons. The practice wasn’t about you trading a vote for a blow job and it wasn’t about presidential elections, which require too many votes to make buying them feasible.
Local elections were far more vulnerable. Mayor, sheriff, city council and the like at one time held considerable power and perhaps more important, controlled patronage jobs, collected bribe money from illegal activities like prostitution, and doled out permits for activities. A few hundred votes could make the difference in these elections and a thousand dollars could buy that many votes. The money would go to people like bums and winos, those who weren’t normally planning on voting but who could easily be bought. Preston Sturges’ movie. The Great McGinty uses this plot.
The movie is much exaggerated, but Chicago has that sort of reputation in politics for the best reasons.
Ballots were not as secret in those days, either, so it was often easy to tell how a person voted. They wouldn’t have gotten the money until after they voted the right way.
Today vote buying is far less of an issue. Reform laws took away much of the graft and patronage in local politics. Voting machines made ballots secret. Districts are larger, more populous, and more heterogeneous, so that small shifts in voting would have less effect. A two dollar payment wouldn’t get anyone to walk down the street, much less sell a vote, and the modern equivalent would be too high for the meager rewards.
It does occasionally happen. Here is a documented case in which federal prosecutors obtained convictions.
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Vote_Fraud_Intimidation_Suppression_2004_Pres_Election_v2.pdf
The votes were for local elections, but it’s a federal crime since the Voter Rights Act of 1965.
Vote buying prosecutions are almost always for large-scale attempts to shift elections, made more risky by the obvious fact that the more people involved the more likely it is for some to talk.