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.

Read the story.

Update: Allah has a different view.