craigmcn

To be clear, I read this article and thought it was great. The comments are pretty good, too. There were a few comments saying that on some level our vote is always for sale. And I agree. Generally, we vote for the candidate or party who will give us what we want, so how is that not “selling” our vote?

I’m not saying that we should have the option of selling our vote. The right to vote is not a luxury that everyone in the world gets and this frivolous treatment is somewhat disrespectful. However, I think the situation illustrates the point that even though we have “free and fair” elections, we’re not necessarily given much of a choice. Depending on the consitituency, there may not be a candidate for the party of your choice (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/202565), or the candidate for your preferred party may not be the best person for the job. There are all kinds of reasons that our vote is wasted, because the choice we want to make is simply the lesser of two evils.

I think of the two-party system in the United States where the choice of who to vote for comes down to the toss of a coin. Is literally selling my vote to the highest bidder any worse?