One person, one vote, but it is crystal clear that (1) not all votes are of equal weight in federal presidential elections, which means that (practically speaking) it’s NOT really one person, one vote; (2) money buys access to the legislative process, which means that not all voters have equal influence.
Not that vote-buying would solve this. New Hampshire and Iowa votes would clearly bring in more money than votes in solidly red or blue states.
You are missing the point. All votes are not currently equal.
Who gives a shit when the proposition we are debating is whether or not to make votes more unequal? The fact that some votes are marginally more or less values today is not a valid argument against screwing up our electoral system even more.
I dunno. There’s a twisted logic to it, isn’t there? Money=speech (the USSC has been pretty damn clear on that), all we need to do is establish that voting=speech and then it’s pretty easy to get to money=voting at which point selling your vote is constitutionally protected.
I can’t think of any reason that voting wouldn’t be political speech.
If we concede that money is speech and protected under the First Amendment, then we must permit vote-buying. It is as simple as that. “Here sir, you may be wavering between Candidate A and Candidate B, here is a hundred dollars, if you will allow it to sway you to vote for Candidate A, I will give it to you.”
The correct answer, of course, is that money is not speech, is not Constitutionally protected, and Citizens United and several other decisions the courts have made along these lines are transparent truckling to the interests of conservatives and the oligarchs they serve.
Because it’s a secret ballot and you have no way of proving how you voted, so why should anybody pay you?
(and **BrainGlutton **as well)
That might have been true in the 1800s, but we now live in an age of ubiquitous cell-phone cameras. Pay them outside the booth when they can prove they voted for you - I believe the Internet colloquialism is “tits or GTFO”.
No, wait, wrong one ! “pics or it didn’t happen”, that’s the one.
That being said, turn the answer around, why don’t you ? Secret ballots were implemented specifically to curb third parties influencing voting, be it through intimidation or bribery. The former I think we can all agree is a bad thing. The latter, well, I also happen to think is socially harmful to the extreme, but the OP was wondering why that was. In essence, it’s like he’d been asking “why is stealing bad, when it comes right down to it ?” and you’d answered “because you’ll go to jail if caught”.
That’s not wrong, but it’s still not a good answer to the question.
Generally, at least one reason that stealing is bad is because one party of the transaction is an unwilling party.
And, yes, if you sell your vote today, that is not legal. But, laws CAN be challenged and can be changed.
So, why do we persist with a law that blocks a willing seller (the voter who will provide a vote proxy for one election cycle) and a willing buyer (name any campaign you like) from conducting a transaction that both would be happy with. (Say to voter doesn’t care WHO their proxy is used to vote for)
Drug trafficking (also a willing seller/buyer scenario) is illegal because the sold substance (e.g. cocaine) is believed to be a special kind of evil [as opposed to alcohol or tobacco].
Originally vote selling was to prevent those with wealth from taking control from those without the same wealth. Given Citizen’s United – the half billion being spent by just two brothers and the likely BILLION dollars that will be spent to benefit Romney-- isn’t that argument now mute?
Kind of a weird form of speech. People under 18 can’t engage in it, felons can’t engage in it, non-citizens can’t engage in it. A vote cannot be spontaneous, it only happens when the government says so and puts into action a pretty cumbersome process to monitor and regulate it. There are specific laws dealing with voting that are not intermixed with laws on speech. Also, it is generally thought to be private, just between the voter and the ballot counters, as opposed to being a matter of exercising the press or religous liberty.
I don’t think speech is the correct way to think of voting. I’m not sure there’s a term for it, but I’d say “civic duty” is a better description of voting rather than speech. If I think of other civic duties, it is a short list of things, and it is absurd to think that people should get paid for those: should attorneys be able to pay jurors personally for their time? Of course not, it is ludicrous.
Moot, not mute.
This argument to me is like saying, “I already do something unhealthy, I drink a sugary soda every day. Since I’m already doing unhealthy things, I might as well take up smoking.” Well, no, drinking unhealthy soda does not mean that smoking is okay. I think Citizens United is a disaster, but that doesn’t mean that we should adopt bad laws because some line in the sand has been crossed.
That’s not a reason you can’t sell your vote, it’s a reason why buying votes might not be a good bargain. I note, however, that the prohibition against selling votes exists for a reason: people have tried to in the past.
Those are good points. Alright, it’s not speech. It’s not quite analogous to jury duty, either, though. The right to serve on a jury is always couched in terms of the defendant’s right to equal protection. You can’t sue for the right to serve on a jury yourself. The same is not true of voting; while a candidate can challenge voting regulations, voters can do that too.
Felons can be restricted from doing it, but I think felons can vote in certain states.
Yeah, the more I think about it, voting is voting and voting isn’t like many other things.
And there’s a few localities that allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. Doesn’t change the underlying point, however.
It’s illegal because you can just set up incentives like this at certain polling places where your favored candidate has stronger support, and try to tilt the vote that way.
Which doesn’t exist.
Money doesn’t equal speech, and no court has said so, and that’s why we still have laws against bribery or vote-buying.
Money spent on speech is protected as speech. That’s what the courts really said.
Yep. Though 5% at Home Depot can add up.
Bribing a politicians isn’t enough for you?
It has said no such thing though.
It said money spent on speech is protected like the speech itself. That’s all.
Well, no, those two statements don’t fit because no court has said “money is speech.”
The courts have said money *spent on speech *is protected, as in Citizens United. But not that any money is speech.