Over at Wise Bread, Paul Michael asks, “Would You Sell Your Vote?”

I wouldn’t actually sell my vote, but if someone offered me money to vote for them, it would only be my own convictions against lying that would keep me from a.) taking their cash and b.) voting for the other guy, since the vote buyer obviously can’t be trusted. That’s one of the things I don’t understand about straightforward vote buying. If someone is unprincipled enough to take money to vote a certain way, why would anyone expect them to be principled enough to tell the truth about how they voted? If John Doe gives Jim cash to vote for him, what guarantee does John have that Jim actually did vote for him?

That’s why the more traditional version of vote buying works so well. Instead of offering cash to individuals to (maybe) get their vote, politicians have learned another tactic. They don’t offer money to individuals in exchange for individual votes — they offer money to a class of people in a ploy to get enough votes from that class to win the elections.

I see no ethical difference between Jim voting for John just because John handed him a hundred dollar bill and Jim voting for John because John has promised a subsidy that’ll give him several hundred bucks. If a person on welfare votes for the candidate who has promised to extend or increase his benefits, has he sold his vote? If a businessman who makes $150,000 a year votes for the candidate who has promised to cut taxes, has he sold his vote? What about the reverse? What if an investor votes for a candidate because the candidate’s opponent has promised to punitively tax profits on a company the investor has stock in, or a retiree dependent upon his Social Security votes against the man who wants to slow the benefits’ increase? Are these situations equivalent to vote selling? I can’t see any substantial reason why they aren’t.

So, how do we prevent vote buying? If there’s no ethical difference between voting because someone handed you cash to vote and voting because the candidate in question supports a policy that would give you cash, I don’t honestly think we can. We can’t stop people from voting for their own benefit. We can’t even prove they’ve done so. How do you separate those who vote a certain way because the vote benefits them personally from those who vote a certain way because they genuinely believe in the principles behind the policy (and the fact that it benefits them personally is irrelevant to them)?

Should we simply drop all laws against vote buying, and hope that people’s disgust with the slimy characters who most often engage in such outright behavior will keep the activity in check? I don’t think so, but I’m not sure that the current solution is the best one either. It’s just something to think about.

More on Palin

A couple of new Palin stories have popped up over the weekend, and I feel the need to address them, since I talked about her on Friday.

• Bristol’s Pregnancy. Politically, I couldn’t care less about Palin’s teenage daughter’s pregnancy. I think that what we’ve seen publically (a family that is supporting their daughter, who is not only carrying the baby to term, but marrying the father) speaks well of the family’s dedication to their principles, insofar as they’re openly showing love and support for their daughter. I don’t buy the idea that this is a condemnation of abstinence-only education any more than I think that a more robust sex-ed program (including, say, distribution of condoms) is somehow undermined if some teens decide they’d rather risk sex without protection.

  Beyond that, I really don’t think this is any of our business.

• Alaska Independence Party I’ve seen this mentioned on a few blogs, but the closest thing I can find to an actual news story right now is a blog post at ABC News:

  Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

  …

  [Lynette Clark, chairman of the AIP] says it’s not accurate to describe the party as secessionist — they just want a vote, she says, adding that the members of the AIP hold different opinions on what Alaska should be.

  “We are a state’s rights party,” says Clark, a self-employed goldminer. The AIP has “a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law.”

  …

  “Governor Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982,” Rogers says, providing some voter registration documentation showing her to be a Republican. “As you know, if she changed her registration, there would have been some record of it. There isn’t.”

  On the assumption that this is true, I have to admit it poses something of a problem for the McCain campaign in general, as I can imagine a lot of mainstream independent and conservative voters being perturbed over Palin’s involvement in such a group. Even if it’s true, it doesn’t bother me personally — it might, in fact, be a point in her favor — but then, I’m somewhat on the fringe myself because of my somewhat libertarian bent.

  That said, I’d like to have a bit more evidence than the say-so of a couple of members of the AIP before I believe the story is true. [Update: It's looking more and more like this isn't true. I'm almost a bit disappointed, but I guess it's better for the campaign this way.]

• She should be home with her son. Please. This is sexist claptrap. Biden was a suddenly-single father, and didn’t give up his political career for his sons after his first wife died. How many people saying that Palin should stay home with her children would have said the same thing about Biden^[a]? Singling out Palin makes it clear that these people believe that mothers should stay home with their children and that fathers can’t possibly get the job done alone. It’s doubly sexist and, therefore, doubly offensive.

• Ongoing investigation in Alaska If you’re not familiar, Palin is currently under investigation for having fired Walter Monegan, Alaska’s Public Safety Commissioner. Monegan claims he was fired because he failed to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, an Alaskan State Trooper.

  Again, this is something that could come back to bite the McCain campaign overall, but something I don’t really care much about myself. Monegan was a political appointee, and I see nothing wrong with the idea that the governor can simply dismiss him, regardless of her reasons^[b]. Even if the reason given (Monegan’s refusal to fire Palin’s former brother-in-law) is completely true, it may not be as bad as it sounds — the brother-in-law isn’t exactly a saint, and, from what I can tell, deserved to be fired.

In Friday’s post, I said that I found Palin interesting, and that’s still true. To me, she’s still easily the most interesting of the four candidates in the national executive election, and I haven’t seen anything that sours my opinion of her, though I still reserve judgement until I see more of her.

I find it very interesting that all of this stuff coming out about Palin seems to be hitting the national news pretty quickly, but I’ve yet to see much of anything in the national media about Obama’s connections to Bill Ayers or Tony Rezko. Not that these are necessarily career enders for him, but it’s interesting that Palin (the presumptive VP pick for the GOP) seems to be getting more vetting from the media over a single weekend than Obama (the Presidential nominee from the Democrats) has gotten in his entire campaign.

Dang, this election is getting interesting after all!

1. Don’t get me wrong here. While I may not like the man’s politics, I have a great deal of respect for Biden’s dedication to his family and how he handled that situation. I just find it contradictory to laud Biden’s balance of politics and family while criticising Palin’s. [↩]
2. Keep in mind that I’m a strong advocate of “at-will” employment [↩]