Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Who Doesn’t Love a Cheap Whore?
What is your vote worth? In a story brought to us Politico, we find that students at NYU have a price point that is pretty damned low.
Only 20 percent said they’d exchange their vote for an iPod touch.
But 66 percent said they’d forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they’d give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.
But they also overwhelmingly lauded the importance of voting.
Ninety percent of the students who said they’d give up their vote for the money also said they consider voting “very important” or “somewhat important”; only 10 percent said it was “not important.”
My vote is part of my legacy--a part that no one will ever see but me, but an important part, still. I can’t honestly say that my vote--my single vote--has ever swayed an election. But I do believe that acting in concert with others who share my beliefs and concerns most certainly has. I won’t leave behind children or the great American email, but I’ll leave my many years of votes. That matters to me.
If you offered me an iPod touch to buy my vote or my silence, you’d probably want to duck fast. I don’t like to be insulted. Offer me a free ride through college and I’d laugh in your face. Offer me a million dollars and I’d wish that I had very different sense of ethics. But I still wouldn’t take your money.
Not everyone values the same things that I do--I understand that--but there is something sad about a group of Americans who say that, yes, voting is important, but, yes, you can buy mine on the cheap. I hope that this is a function of youth and that they will grow away from such foolishness. Given the typical voter turnout in any given election year, though, I know that many voters doesn’t even need to be bought off to keep them from the booth.
Update: Allah has a different view.
Comments & Trackbacks
I find your conclusion economically foolish. What is the real marginal value to you to be able to influence policy by your single vote? Is that marginal value less than or greater than $1 million? Seems like an obvious answer to me.
I don’t and can’t think of it in purely economic terms. Even if I did, though, I think that it would be hard to calculate the marginal value of a vote either individually or as a part of a larger unit. How many bought votes would it take to swing a close election? If there were a way to swing it, I’m sure George Soros would love to know the answer.
Would you take a million dollars for your right to vote? Not to be glib, but what other rights would people be willing to sell off for a million bucks?
It could depend on the year and election. In 1996, I would’ve sold my Bob Dole vote though it probably wouldn’t have been worth much. However, during this next election, I would not sell my anti-Hillary vote for anything. It does make me worry that they’re even conducting this type of poll right now because it sounds like a Clinton strategy.
I wouldn’t sell away my right to vote, but I think anyone who would, should be taken up on it. It could only improve the signal-to-noise ratio of our elections.