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eBay The Vote
Internet Voting writes "Voters in Argentina's upcoming presidential election have found an interesting solution to their political apathy: eBay. 'New and unused' votes are being posted from $0.30 to $95. Electoral authorities say they're powerless to stop it. 'Argentine electoral authorities say they can do little to stop the practice because it falls into a legal vacuum. One of the voters, Martin Minue, a doctor from the northern province of Rioja, told a newspaper it was his way to protest against useless politicians. Mr Minue, 33, told the Clarin paper he felt powerless to change the country's situation. The doctor, who works in the city of Chilecito, posted his vote on an auction website with a price tag of 20 pesos (US$6).'"
Before anyone gets too excited about the prospect, it is illegal to buy or sell votes in the United States. If you do it, eBay will pull your auction and you will likely be charged by your local authorities to the tune of thousands of dollars in fines, possibly even jail time.
The funny thing is that the most insidious vote-buying in the country isn't politicians (or other citizens) buying citizens' votes, it's corporations buying politicians' votes. If they outlawed THAT, then we might start making some progress.
This year's spending by candidates in the Presidential election is going to be something like 2 billion dollars. For that kind of money, the political parties could just give everyone in the USA $10, and quit wasting everyone's time with stupid commercials. Those people who are politically active don't need to see them, and those people who are not don't give a poo, so, why bother?
This is my sig.
In the US we know our vote is worth far less than $0.30. Must be that runaway Argentine inflation.
"I wish to God these calculations would have been made by steam." -Charles Babbage
One of the voters, Martin Minue, a doctor from the northern province of Rioja, told a newspaper it was his way to protest against useless politicians.
I've always felt that a better way would be to add a "none of the above" option to the ballot. Right now, either you like Candidate A or Candidate B, and if you don't like either one, you might as well stay home, or vote the lesser of evils. If you could actually record your sentiments, we might get better candidates.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
So, how much to buy all the votes? I sure "President of Argentina" would look good on the ol' resume. Might be a good investment.
More Twoson than Cupertino
In a democracy, you have the right to vote and the right to be heard. You also have the right to democratically select a dictatorship. If the citizens want to be bought voluntarily and sell their freedom, a democracy should let them do that. If not, it's not a true democracy.
This deligitimizes the democratic process, it breaks the mystic belief of people "participating" in the political process.
This belief is dangerous because people gamble with it, they figure they can gain an advantage against the others by pushing their own views on the political scene. In the end, only the political class wins and everyone is fooled into perpuating a system that strive at their own expense by they believing they can game it. In a country like Argentina, where presidents are often openly kleptocrats, it is easy to shake the belief... some countries have more subtle leaders and the myth is harder to shake.
\u262D = \u5350
That doctor could take a few lessons from Congress. $6 is WAY too little to let your vote go for.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
We Americans used to lead the world in having free markets and market driven economies. Now these third world countries are getting ahead of us. We need to work extra hard to catch up!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
during elections, it is joked that 200 peso notes become scarce because they are all being used for paying for votes
my own point of view is that a government is no better than its citizens. so a lot of people will point at how helpessness to elicit change brings them to the point of selling votes (or not voting), but this is a poor scapegoat of their own failure in ethics. learned helplessness is not so much helplessness as perpetuated upon you, but the perpetuation of helplessness in your own condition by your own actions
just because you feel powerless does not actually mean you are. if you are in a country with a vote, you count. end of story. anything you believe contrary to that fact is your own self-perpetuated myth of victimhood, to let yourself off the hook, when really your actions (selling your vote or not voting) makes you more culpable than anyone else.
of course, when you say this to some people, you immediately run into a strong negative reaction. see boring and typical responses to my comment below: how dare you blame me for my helplessness!, blame [insert your favorite bogeyman]!
blaming people who don't vote or sell their vote for the sorry state of the world runs counter to the myths such people tell themselves that are so vital to explaining away their own personal responsibility. there are plenty of people in this world who do bad things and who blame their won victims or the devil or society, or any other random bogeymen when they ar ein fact the ones who have committed the crime. it is exactly the same with not voting/ selling your vote
people who don't vote, and people who sell their vote, are more responsible for the sorry state of the world than any elected official ever could be. if you don't vote, or you sell your vote, you are the source of evil and corruption and suffering in this world, no one else
to those in argentina, and the philippines, and elsewhere, who don't vote or sell their vote and have a problem with something in this world: look in the mirror. you're the source of it. those who do bad things in this world COUNT ON YOU NOT VOTING/ SELLING YOUR VOTE. your whining inaction and self-learned helplessness and no sense of personal responsibility is perhaps the number one hurdle to progress in this world on almost every issue you can think of
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that comes to mind isn't whether or not to sell your vote for $95, its how many time can you sell it for $95
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
But what's even more sad is that on a personal level, selling your vote actually makes sense. The probably of YOUR vote actually being the swing vote in a national election is practically 0, so *your* doing it, alone, will not make any difference on the election but *will* put a couple bucks in your pocket. Sort of a variation on tragedy of the commons. I wish we in the US could return to when authority was more decentralized, when the "states" were worthy of the title and counties (not countries but counties) actually had some authority. Now it's pretty much one President governing 300,000,000 people, with Congress occasionally doing something which may or may not be vetoed.
I would just like to point out that this kind of thing is why a democracy cannot allow a record of which citizen voted for what to exist (like voting receipts, where a name is tied to voting for a candidate, or a public table of name->vote).
Since (in the US) there's currently no way to verify a voter voted a certain way, Ebaying of votes can't hard democracy because someone can "sell" their vote and still anonymously vote any way they like.
Note this is not the same thing as disallowing a paper trail. You do want a paper trail of votes and voters separately, just not a paper trail of who voted what.
Actually, vote is compulsive (in the 18-70 age range, beyond that is optative).
We use an envelope to vote. You can vote blank by just not putting any paper inside the envelope before giving it away.
You can also get your vote void by putting more than one paper (of a given category), or putting any unrelated thing in the envelope.
So I sell my vote on eBay. You buy it, I get your money. Then I don't vote, or vote however I want. What do you do about it? You can't even prove that I didn't "deliver".
This scenario is one of the most elementary scams avoided by the anonymous secret ballots available for centuries. Any fool who buys these unprovable votes should just send me a fat PayPal load right now.
Whichever anonymous twit over at the BBC News / Americas who wrote that article ignored that basic fact of this story.
--
make install -not war
I used to believe that my vote mattered and that there were "issues" being decided. But I eventually got smart and figured out it's all BS and it really doesn't matter how you vote. Politics are more or less an illusion created to distract us while we are more or less put into servitude by the elite. You're in essence given two polarizing choices and you pick a side. Suddenly the world is black and white. Right and wrong and nothing in between.
People site and listen and watch their party blare propaganda to them and they get angry and fed up with the other side who is evil of course. Meanwhile, both sides are laughing all the way to the bank as they receive payoffs from special interests funding their propaganda machine.
I stopped voting awhile ago and don't plan on going back. I wish I could sell my vote for market value.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I just RTFA'd and I still don't get it. Even if I wanted to sell my vote how would I prove that I voted the way they wanted me to? We don't get a receipt showing exactly how we voted for exactly this reason plus if we did we could be extorted to vote a certain way since proof is then available.
As an entrepreneur it would seem logical to me to buy up these votes, and then sell the large blocks - where they could be more effective Mike
meh
And in view of Slashdot's 10th Aniversary, let me invite all Argentinians to read politics.slashdot.org..
As the tagline goes: Politics for Nerds. Your vote matters.
So, you say you're going to sell me your vote for $10. I pay you $10 and tell you to vote for X. Election day comes, you vote for Y. I ask you, did you vote for X? You say yes. I'm an idiot. When you have a secret ballot, who is stupid enough to purchase a vote. I'd love to sell mine, though, since I could still vote for whomever I wanted.
see, the funny thing with your point of view is that your typical lowest common denominator cynicism might sound intelligent and wise, but it's not in the least. real intelligence and wisdom considers ALL of the problems associated with governing a country. real intelligence and wisdom asks us to pick the best system of a bunch of imperfect systems available to us. no system is perfect (which is the starting point for your criticism of democracy), but no system is superior to democracy. this is real intelligence and wisdom
you? you start off conveniently forgetting the small issue of the need to pick one (imperfect) governmental style. propaganda, like blowhard cynics like yourself, is another form of speech that traffics in half-truths: things that sound smart and wise... except for the point about forgetting a massively important concept in the formation of your opinions: you need a government (unless your next step is to champion anarchy... pffft, enjoy somalia friend)
the idea of your lack of belief in democracy is that there is some governmental system superior to it. so please, point it out to me, we have plenty of options avaiable to us: theocracy, as in iran? technocracy, as in china? authoertarianism, as in russia? despotism, as in north korea?
oh great swami who has shown us why democracy sucks: please, by all means, show us the superior system. you tell me friend, you're the "smart" cynical one
according to you, democracy perpetuates rule by some self-appointed aristocratic minority whose agenda runs counter to the mases who elect them. this concept of course, is complete and utter bullshit. but of course EVERY OTHER system before us EXPLICITLY AUTHORIZES the existence of a self-anointed minority to rule a country. fancy that, oh great genius
you're a typical empty nihilistic asshole. happy to corrupt the belief in anything, but not offering belief in anything superior. the world, and history, is full of people like you. very loud, very superior sounding, and very empty
"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill
http://beyondtheblog.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/the-problem-with-democracy/
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... All your votes are belong to us!
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
How does the buyer of the vote verify that it was actually cast as paid for?
All this points to is the failing of democracy. Whether it stems from voter apathy, or lack in democracy itself, all I can hope is this doesn't spread.
I know there are lots of people in the US who would gladly sell off their vote because it doesn't matter. I won't name the state I live in, but the person who I am likely to vote for is not in the majority, therefore, my vote really doesn't count in the end.
Which is why I am all for getting rid of the electoral college.
Can we have an electoral elemetary school? That might work better.....
'New and unused' votes are being posted from $0.30 to $95.
So what's the going rate for second hand or slightly used votes? After all recycling helps the environment.
I think this idea could be acceptable in most countries (whether legal or not) due to the total apathy of the way democracy is going. Nobody wants to vote the people in that are up for voting, so what is best?
No vote? Or sell your vote?
Being in the UK, it doesn't matter who I vote for - the person that supposedly gets voted in will not represent me in Government, so I may as well sell my vote and get money for it (which under Blairs Government already happened in Birmingham).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4406575.stm
I can just imagine the taxes that could get initiated in order to (legally) increase the personal coffers of future politicians. As for the consequences of running a deficit, I whole-heartedly agree—in theory. In practice, however, which politicians would you penalize? All members of Congress and the President? Once you start dividing it up into specific bills and votes it gets a whole lot more complicated.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If I'm seriously opposed to / offended by all listed candidates for an office, I have written in ``None of the above'' --- the elections folks hate it, 'cause they have to file paperwork on every name voted for (including non-names like this), but it does my conscience good.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's an interesting protest. I was in Buenos Aires until a couple days ago and I saw some people "selling" their votes on the street. While this is interesting, I am not sure how constructive it is.
Most attempts to "fix politics" "from the outside" result in bloodshed and in even more broken political systems. Politics can only be fixed from the inside.
Maybe the doctor could try to run on the next elections.
How hard it is in Argentina?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I wish we in the US could return to when authority was more decentralized, when the "states" were worthy of the title and counties (not countries but counties) actually had some authority. Now it's pretty much one President governing 300,000,000 people, with Congress occasionally doing something which may or may not be vetoed.
Do you ever suggest people read Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"? I suggest it some, it's a good read on how people in the USA used to govern and take care of themselves instead depending on big government.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Buying and selling a vote before the election might be illegal, but after the you voted there's all sorts of perks. For example, Candidates hold election night parties for their supporters.
Now if there were only some way to prove how you voted then this market could really take off. And that's the problem with most of the cryptographic and paper tape voting systems. With nearly every one of these systems yet invented if one were to snap a camera phone picture of the screen or tape at the right moment then one can prove how they voted.
For example, With the sequoia paper tape system, you preview of your impending votes are displayed on the paper tape (about 1 foot high cash register receipt.) If press the CAST vote button then it writes a bar code below this list marking it as a valid vote. If you press CHANGE vote, then it marks the precceeding preview list as being void and you can start over.
A cell phone picture taken after the bar code is written, but before the list scrolls slowly off screen would be proof of vote. You could then look online for offers of say concert tickets, cash etc, in return for that photo. The people buying it could be off shore where not only would it not be illegal for them, but heck it might be some foreign government itself doing the buying.
The same problem is true of many crytographic voting schemes. For example many of the zero-knowledge two-part or three-part voting systems where you keep one part as a receipt and the other is retained that you can check on later, suffer from the same problem that a cell phone camera can allow a proof of vote after the fact even though the bare receipt by itself cannot.
Hand marked paper ballots do not suffer from this issue as one can easily fake photos of ballots by marking and then discarding them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That is about the difference between the two main candidates. All of the others are the no-name brands. Until Americans actually start trying to find a candidate they actually LIKE instead of the one they "dislike more," America is going to be in a forever cyclictic shit hole. Perhaps that day there will be a third big name beverage is soda...nah. George Washington was right when he said to be careful of political parties.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
"Yeah, let's lose the electoral college and disenfrachise everyone not in a big city."
Why do people in low population states get more weight in the government?
"but I would like Presidential candidates to at least pretend to have an interest in rural and suburban America While campaigning."
Fixed it for you. Like it matters.
"but just going with a straight popular vote won't work."
If by "won't work" you mean "Won't give unfair weight smaller population states" then yes.
It is NOT a proper way to have a democracy..or more accurately, a republic. In fact it can cause a republic or democracy to collapse.
Straight popular vote is the only way to fairly weight the public vote. It is also needed to help create more parties.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
is sell time to listen to someone trying to get you to vote a certain way.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As long as we're not allowing citizens to vote by mail, we're safe.
Ah but the US does allow voting by mail, it's called Absentee ballots. It is the only way those in the military as well as others can vote.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Replying to myself. There's another good example of legal vote "buying" in the US and this was the "Nader Trading" that went on. People were trading their vote for nader in one state in return for a vote for another candidate in another state. (the goal was to boost nader's numbers while avoiding the spoiler effect in tight races). Some states did shut down websites doing voteswapping but others did not (oregon for example) . There's a very well research discussion of the legality issue here
Additionally there's the question of how much is a vote worth? You might be thinking well not much so no one is going to pay for votes. But if you look at the amount of campaign cash spent in places like florida where the elections were close you can compute that votes in such races are worth thousands of dollars given the millions spent for swings of less than a thousand votes. Thus offering 10 to 100 per vote might be quite economical if you could assure that ateleast 10% of the votes you purchased were "new" votes in the sense that someone either changed their vote or a person who voted who was not planning to vote.
The latter category of voter motivation is probably the larger one and most easy to assure. For example this is exactly what get-out-the-vote drives that provide van services and coffee to get people in undervoting neighborhoods target. One could target such demographics for example by offering non-monetary rewards that appeal to certain demographics. e.g. A limited edition U2 T-shirt. Or Concert tickets to Wayne Newton. An american flag. A signed copy of the president of Venezuela's works. Extra Gas-ration cards for the family you left back in burma.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Mark my words, it's only a matter of time before the fall.
I actually doubt that would happen very often. Politicians who raise taxes tend to get voted out of office. They'd have to walk a fine line between explaining tax increases to their constituents to taking a hit for spending too much money.
I think the approach that would be much more common is that government spending would be cut. It's a lot easier to tell people that you're canceling the "Bridge to Nowhere" project than it is that they're going to have to turn over more of their hard-earned pay to Uncle Sam.
There ought to be a fine line right now between explaining to people that you're going to charge up the national credit card and starting some new expensive government program, but it's just become a lot easier to hand over our country to foreign investors (you know, places like China...) to pay for our hedonistic excess than it is to say, "I'm sorry, but that's just too expensive."
Right now, politicians are rewarded handsomely for spending massive amounts of our money. Unless that changes, they're going to continue to do so until this country is bankrupt and some other country takes us over in a hostile economic coup. The funniest part of it is that a lot of people think that the biggest threat to our national security is terrorists.
Yes, he should feel powerless. It's not like he could do something constructive, like run for office himself.
It's so much easier to whine and cry about how nobody else is doing anything!
And not only over eBay; political parties have been procuring votes for years with tools like, for example, the Plan Trabajar. A few people attempting to sell their vote through the net is a minor concern next to this reality, IMHO. The sad note is that this kind of stuff has been common on most South American countries for years now, mine (Argentina) included.
To add insult to injury, there's the generalized feeling that these elections are all about voting the "least worst" candidate - Cristina Kirchner (wife of the current president) is leading the polls, for example, and we're talking about a candidate who hasn't made a single statement of her government plans since the campaigns stated and has little to no support from mid and mid-upper social classes. We have two ex Ministers of economy with little political backup, a leftie candidate who appears to be running second place in the polls and a couple assorted candidates with dubious pasts and connections to figures with corruption charges. Of all these the one i'm thinking to give my vote to is Lavagna, and this is only becase he is the only candidate who appeared in local media with concrete proposals and a government plan instead of political rhetoric.
It could be worse though, but with a rising inflation in the country (it's said to be arround 20%, but the government keeps publishing artificially lowered figures, combined with artificial measures to reduce good prices and control the peso-dolar ratio) these elections are more important than most people are giving them credit for. With that in mind, i find a crying shame that some people are willing to sell their votes, even if it's to make some kind of statement.
Then again, there has been some (good) stirring in the political map lately - Santa Fe (a province) had, for example, elected a socialist governor (first time in Argentinas' history) with over 50% of the polls and a rather good image from his period as a mayor of Rosario, one of the largest cities in Argentina.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Come on!!! I just can't believe u people take this seriously. It's just a prank, like that TV Ad where a guy sells a kiss on ebay (mercadolibre.com is southamerica's ebay) We know every vote matters. Please remember, this is just a prank. And I can tell you I haven't seen any news of this, even in the newspaper from TFA.
T!
Paying someone cash up front is totally wrong, but feeding people thinly-veiled kick-backs after the election with tax-payer dollars perfectly acceptable? Seriously, they are both vote-buying scams of the highest order. The difference is that buying votes with pre-election funds means spending privately owned money, while buying votes with post-election funds means you get to rob Peter to pay Paul via "appropriations." Remember, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury." - Alexander Tytler
Hilarious.
Wow. Where to start?
First, you clearly can't make up your mind about whether a marginal tax rate is or is not equal to an average tax rate. You suggest the OP is foolish for saying that he's paying 33% of his income in taxes, but then you attempt to invalidate the Fair Tax by suggesting that the wealthy are going to pay less of an AVERAGE tax rate than they are right now. You're conflating the current income tax's MARGINAL rates with the Fair Tax's FLAT RATE.
Next, you gloss over the fact that the Fair Tax's rate applies to dollars SPENT, not dollars EARNED. [I'll give you three guesses as to which is the larger base, given the current scheme of deductions/evasions.] Finally, you ignore the fact that many wealthy people pay capital gains tax rates [10-15%] on significant portions of their incomes rather than ordinary income rates, further reducing their AVERAGE tax rates.
Your rhetoric seems little more than a typical attempt to stir up class warfare through straw men and deliberate falsehoods. Either that, or you truly don't get it. In either event, you might want to cut back your rants a bit until you better understand the subject.
The penalty for the sale or purchase of a vote in Australia can be a $5000 fine and up to two years in jail.
Public infrastructure is falling down around our ears while Dumb and Dumber buy our votes with tax cuts. Which is the greater crime?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
"The government should just keep our money to itself."
Or maybe they should just let us keep it in the first place?
God damn, the convoluted crap you idiots come up with to defend your entitlements, it terrifies me that you actually get to vote when you're so ignorant and oblivious.
Maybe you should change your name to "RealStupid".
Oops, I replied to the wrong quote, sorry.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I think it's intended to shut down any possibility of logical thought. Certainly it works that way on some people.