Let Freedom Ring
columnist: Todd Andrew Barnett

Topic: Election 2008
Don't We All Sell Our Votes?

---

Nineteen-year-old University of Minnesota college student Max Sanders is in hot water with his state government. He is simply accused of selling his presidential vote on eBay at a bidding price of $10, although it is true that he admitted that he did it as a joke.

---

by Todd Andrew Barnett
(Libertarian)
Thursday, July 17, 2008

Nineteen-year-old University of Minnesota college student Max Sanders is in hot water with his state government. He is simply accused of selling his presidential vote on eBay at a bidding price of $10, although it is true that he admitted that he did it as a joke. According to an old 1893 Minnesota law, it is illegal to sell and purchase votes. Because of this edict, Sanders is charged with one count of bribery, treating, and soliciting. If he's found guilty, the maximum that he could face is five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

That's a tragedy for him, but it's not a surprise nonetheless. Not only that, it's both perplexing and hypocritical to the nth degree. It's perplexing because the state's officials who want to prosecute him say that it's "wrong to sell your vote" because our troops in the U.S. military "died for our right to vote" and we mustn't "take that lightly." Furthermore, these same officials act as if votes can't be bought and sold during any election season. In their reality, that never happens. That alone says more about these government sycophants than they care to admit. After all, they are disconnected from the evils of politics, especially when votes are bought and sold all the time during any campaign season.

It's hypocritical because politicians employ "bribery, treating, and soliciting" to buy votes in order to win their elections all the time. From whom do they buy them? The electorate, of course! Political candidates, historically speaking, bribe their constituents for promised future benefits of all kinds in return. But that's what a campaign does: it buys votes from the electorate wholesale.

Barack Obama, the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party, is doing just that. Isn't he "refining" his positions on so many issues? After all, he must do this to snatch the independent votes he needs to win the presidential race in November. But this poses a problem for him here. He'll most likely return his votes to left-leaning Democrats during the primaries if he purchases way too many independent votes. And what about his "refined" (which means updated) positions on the issues? People who are furious over his updated stands on the Iraqi occupation, capital punishment, firearm bans, campaign finance reform, taxpayer-financed subsidies for religious organizations, and federal immunity from phone companies that illegally assisted with the Bush administration by wiretapping us thought that their votes were finalized. In the world of politics, there's no such thing as final vote sales.

John McCain, on the other hand, may be facing a bigger problem than he bargained for as the GOP's anointed presidential candidate. He is certainly having trouble securing votes from his party's conservative base. A good majority of them are not pleased with his positions on many issues, especially immigration and campaign finance reform. Point of fact, they haven't been for quite a long while. He has, in every sense of the way, become a de facto hard sell to that bloc. After all, those issues are deal-breakers for that base. Moreover, that base is struggling to sell him their votes because they dislike what he has promised to give back in return. Although he's been trying to swing them to his side (and it appears that it hasn't been working out for him to say the least), he also needs to purchase votes from independent voters. That's one of the predicaments that one finds in politics. If your goal is to amass votes from, say, your conservative bloc, you'll find it increasingly difficult to snatch votes from, say, the class warriors who support repealing tax cuts for the wealthy, which is a tax more on the poor than it is for the rich.

What most people don't fathom is that campaign promises cost politicians money. In order for them to carry them out, they would have to fleece money from taxpayers who rightfully produced the fruits of their labor and give it to the politicians who didn't, even if it's for the good of society and the country. Americans should have realized by now that legalized theft, even for political campaigns and the election season, is the American way. After all, as H.L. Mencken once correctly asserted, "Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

The only considerable difference between an eBay bidder who buys a vote and politicians like Barack Obama and John McCain who both buy votes is that the bidder spends his own money to complete the sale. Obama and McCain merely spend taxpayer funds -- coerce other people to give money to them -- to complete the sale (although the sale is never done). Thus, one can properly conclude that, since people are more likely to spend their own money carefully and wisely than they would with other people's money, the eBay transaction is better than the alternative. Do you see the distinction now?

Many people who found out about Sanders's entrepreneurial move must have been appalled with his actions. After all, they seem more likely to believe that Sanders, who is eligible to vote in his first presidential election, had the temerity to do such a thing. How arrogant and foolish he is, they must be thinking! In their mind's eye, they must also be thinking, "Where does he get off doing this? The military's died protecting our right to do this! He has no right to do this! What nerve!" After all, as Hannepin County prosecutor Mike Freeman noted, "We have an opportunity to clean up laws and we often do, but selling your vote -- I don't care whether it's an 1893 law or a 2005 law. If it came up tomorrow, I'd vote for it."

Aside from the collectivists' ludicrous and moronic claims that he "has no right" to act the way he did and of the U.S. military "died protecting" our right to vote (claims that can be disputed and refuted another day), it's not that he was arrogant and foolish to do this. It's that he's naive.

Why is that, you ask? Because Sanders truly believed that someone would be willing to pay $10 or more for his vote. And why would anyone want to anyway? The chance of your vote influencing the outcome of any election is nil. One vote simply won't accomplish that. The likelihood of Obama and McCain tying in all 50 states on Election Day is even roughly nil. No single vote will be the deciding factor in this election. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, one more or less vote won't have a significant impact on the race on that day.

Moreover, if one vote doesn't matter, will two votes -- the vote a person makes and the vote he buys -- make a considerable amount of difference? Of course not! Certainly his vote total will go up by 100 percent, but that tells you how deceiving percentages often are. It's just only one more vote; that's it. So what would motivate someone to pay $10 or more for such a vote? If someone can find that person, tell him that a bunch of leprechauns gave me a pot of gold coins for me to sell.

There is, however, a fly in Sanders's legal and entrepreneurial ointment there. How can the customer who's interested in the young college kid's vote know that the vote he's buying is cast for his candidate whom he supports? It would be impossible for him to prove it anyhow. He would have to take Sanders's word for it. That just shows how very risky the transaction is.

So, the question to the statists who want the young man locked up in a prison cell is this: don't we all sell our votes? And, considering that we do, what's so bad about that?

Did you like this article?
If you did, Thumb It!
5 thumbs so far

2008 Todd Andrew Barnett, all rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, July 17, 2008
Last modified: Friday, July 18, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Todd Andrew Barnett only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Todd Andrew Barnett is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

Report violation by Todd Andrew Barnett of Nolan Chart LLC's terms of use policy.