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Vote-buying

oooo!

a significant contribution!

we have a loser who thinks his team lost because the other team cheated.

deep.

geo.
 
How do you define vote-buying?
 
never heard of any of those guys.

geo.
 
Vote buying?

If it means people are paid to vote for a particular candidate, then, no, it doesn't happen often enough to make a difference. We have that secret ballot thing, after all.

If it means pols spending millions for slick and deceptive ads, that sort of thing determines most elections.

If it means senators and representatives get paid off, that happens all the time, too.

Pols take in millions from special interests, then use that money on slick advertising to convince the voters that either they are the best thing since sliced bread, their opponent is related to Beelzebub, or both.

And yes, it happens in every election, by both parties.
 


All of that is peanuts, compared to the use of the public treasury for wealth-redistribution, for the purpose of vote-buying from specific groups of voters.

THAT is the real "money in politics" that we ought to do away with, rather than fretting over campaign contributions so much.
 
There are two types of legal vote buying that goes on in the US

The buying of the votes of Congress through campaign contributions. The Lobby industry would not be as big as it is if buying the votes of Congress did not work

The second is through pork barrel spending on the individual districts, which the congress person will promote as doing his part for his voters
 
61 Electric Bron-Yr-Aur said:
Don't get out much?

61 Electric B-Y-A.
Click to expand...

on occasion. not much today... 4 essays on Romanticism to write... just finished. yay for me!

and not much the sports fan anymore, i don't really bother to keep up. btw that fella's name appears to be Ron, not Rod. But, i suppose as long as Vinnie is calling em, I will be a Dodger fan.

Lakers played... wonder how it came out.

I don't think people buy votes so much as grease the machine. and Roberts and Scalia and Thomas... they say that is just fine with them, so, whaddya gonna do? Competition and Excellence, as you note,

anyway. have fun... i'm going home to eat and read the paper and watch Nature on PBS... my sabbath ritual.

geo.
 

Yes, it is. Compared to farm subsidies and bailouts of failing industries, the money spent on campaigns in peanuts. However, perhaps there wouldn't be so much redistribution if it weren't possible to purchase your very own senator.
 


You forgot the third kind: redistribution of wealth from the havalots to the havalittles and gottanothings. Class warfare is alive and well as a vote-buying tactic.
 
Votes are bought with corporate and personal welfare programs primarily. It's not a direct "give me your vote and I'll pay you off" system, but more the ideology that the two primary parties are selling in order to get votes.
 
Lobbying is of far greater concern to me. Both parties are in the pockets of big businesses. It doesn't matter who we vote for if they aren't going to represent us. The election itself just becomes a giant song and dance routine.
 
West Virginia 1960. Old Hubert Humphrey met his Waterloo courtesy of a lot of satchels of Cold Cash.
 
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