Would You Sell Your Vote?

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Published date	01 September 2021
Date	01 September 2021
Author	Jordan Gans-Morse,Simeon Nichter
DOI	10.1177/1532673X211013565
Subject Matter	Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211013565

American Politics Research

2021, Vol. 49(5) 452 –463

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211013565

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Article

Many observers harbor concerns that democracy in the

United States is under siege. Prominent scholars draw dis-

turbing comparisons between recent developments in the

U.S.—such as heightened political polarization, the success

of extremist candidates, and weakened civil liberties—and

warning signs that preceded democratic collapse in Hungary,

Turkey, Venezuela, and beyond (Kaufman & Haggard, 2019;

Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). Other recent studies demonstrate

that a considerable share of US voters would support vio-

lence to achieve political ends (Bartels, 2020), sacrifice dem-

ocratic principles to support candidates aligned with their

ideological and policy preferences (Carey et al., 2020;

Graham & Svolik, 2020), or favor authoritarian political sys-

tems (Foa & Mounk, 2016). Meanwhile, surveys of political

scientists reveal a pervasive belief that key components of

democratic quality—electoral and civil rights, the account-

ability of government officials, and civil discourse across

ideological divides—are declining in America (Carey et al.,

2019).

Given such signals that US democracy is under duress,

the present article investigates an understudied question: To

what extent are contemporary Americans willing to sell their

votes? In the historic U.S., observers estimated that many

voters would do so; for example, in 1890 the New York Times

found “a general concurrence in the estimate that at least

20 per cent of the citizens of [a Maine] town would as soon

sell their votes as their wood, or their potatoes, or their fish”

during a congressional election.1 But this line of inquiry is

now unfamiliar, in large part because the heyday of machine

politics in America passed many decades ago and only ves-

tiges of vote buying continue.2 Whereas important experi-

mental work suggests that Americans who receive significant,

nonpartisan financial incentives are more likely to turn out

(Panagopoulos, 2013), the extant literature sheds little light

on whether cash could influence US citizens’ vote choices as

well as electoral participation.

Notwithstanding the rarity of clientelism in the contem-

porary U.S., evidence suggests that it is worthwhile to

investigate Americans’ willingness to sell their votes.

During the 2000 presidential elections, California, Illinois,

Massachusetts, and Nebraska undertook legal actions to

shut down voteauction.com, a website that enabled citizens

to offer their votes for sale with the following slogan:

“Cutting out the middleman and bringing the big money of

presidential politics directly to you.”3 The notion of selling

one’s vote apparently resonated with many Americans, as

more than 15,000 voters quickly registered. In the words of

one participant: “Selling my vote I think is a very obvious

political statement. . . . It’s saying that if the buying and

selling of votes is going on even now between closed doors,

through the lobbyists, let’s make it a little more obvious.”4

1013565APRXXX10.1177/1532673X211013565American Politics ResearchGans-Morse and Nichter

research-article2021

1Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

2University of California San Diego, La Jolla, USA