Mayor Bloomberg spent $92.60 per vote in the last NY mayoral election, barely winning. I have been advised that NM Senator Rod Adair’s opponent spent $111.03 in the last election in an effort to unseat Mr. Adair (who ended up winning by 7 points). These dollar amounts got me thinking about the relative value of the votes being “purchased” through campaign spending and the prices paid to “purchase” them.

Let’s simplify the issue: What if it was legal (and possible) to sell votes on ebay? Let’s say anyone could sell his or her vote, for any given election contest. It is up for auction. The candidate or anyone else could buy it. What do you think the market rate would settle at? It would depend on the particular contest, but I doubt it would ever exceed $100 in any election, assuming good liquidity. Note that the marginal value of a vote to a candidate should go to zero once one candidate has purchased or otherwise controls 50% +1 votes (assuming perfect information as to who the purchaser(s) are or who will benefit from the purchased votes when they are cast). I predict that the market would be flooded by low issue content voters, keeping prices down.  In Senator Adair’s case, it is likely his opponents would have outbid his supporters, and NM would have lost one of its best Legislators.  In an ebay election, it is also likely that Senator Adair’s opponents would have spent less to unseat him than they did in their losing effort.

It’s nice to think that ebay elections would help people realize the true value of their votes and encourage them to hang on to them. Doubt it, but any improved understanding of true value might drive up prices. Or, in NM, might at least lead to a greater outrage at the ease at which these infininitely valuable things are counterfeited.

The overall societal value of 50% + 1 votes, over all elections, is arguably infinite, since our country can unfortunately be destroyed by its leaders (imagine the old Soviet Union being able to buy US votes in my hypothetical). The value of one vote is a fraction of infinity (still infinite). On the other hand, I have no doubt that a market price could be determined for any vote in any election contest (and even for whole ballots!) Kind of a paradox, existing because under the democratic model, the individual normally does not benefit from his or her single vote except by the diffuse but important benefit of being a member of the group that bestows power.

In the US, votes are the raw material of power and those favored with their power will easily and inevitably convert some of their infinite value into wealth. Often, power for themselves now means wealth for their friends now and wealth for the powerful later.

This is a case where a governmental prohibition is a good thing (i.e. prohibiting buying and selling votes). People need to be protected from selling one of their most precious rights.  The benefit of the secret ballot becomes more apparent as well — harder to enforce a “vote buying contract” when the final product (ballot) is visible only to the voter.  Another reason “card check” is a bad idea (opens the door to enforceable vote contracts, and verifiable compliance with vote extortion).

The point of all this is the following question: If campaign spending is now exceeding what the market price of a vote would be, does that have implications for our democracy? Is this a back-door vote market? Or is campaign spending completely unrelated to the natural market price of a vote?

Surely it is related, millions in campaign expenditures yield billions in government expenditures. This post is not intended to discount the ideological considerations of voters in casting their votes, just to leave them out of the equation for discussion purposes.

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