A modest proposal for bribing voters

last updated 8 January 2015

Steven Pearlstein

The Washington Post

“Who says government can’t get anything right?” asked Steven Pearlstein. Just two years ago, in the landmark Citizens United case, the Supreme Court finally liberated casino magnates, hedge-fund managers, and other powerless billionaires to exercise their constitutional right to free speech, and pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Super PAC attack ads. If the court’s conservative majority had not lifted those limits, “just think of how many voices, how many opinions, how many great ideas would never have reached the voters in the Republican presidential primary.” But why stop there? As a logical next step, the court should allow citizens to sell their votes to the highest bidder. “Bribing voters is an honored tradition in this country,” and it’s not banned by the Constitution. For an investment of a mere $10 billion, wealthy corporations and individuals could simply pay people to vote for a designated candidate in key swing states, saving oppressed job creators everywhere from the horrors of democracy and regulation by the rabble. Super PACs are just the start. By legalizing bribery, we can finally bring “the magic of the free market to the electoral process.”