One of four essays written for Money, Markets, and Morals where I argue that sellling votes may actually be argued against on utilitarian grounds, despite economic arguments in favor of the practice.
Is it always wrong to buy or sell votes? If it is wrong to pay people to vote a certain way, is it also wrong to pay them to vote (however they cast their ballot) or not to vote? Is there a distinction between buying votes and making campaign promises that give voters an economic incentive to vote a certain way? What, if anything, is the difference between selling one’s vote and voting according to one’s economic interest?
By the 1940s, political machines in the United States were on their last legs, in part due to the widespread adoption of the secret ballot and laws prohibiting paying for votes. However, the issue of buying and selling votes has not entirely disappeared —though the modern incarnations of the practice are a far cry from the political machines of the Gilded Era. Supporters of such practices argue that a free market for votes benefits both buyers and sellers of votes—reasoning that neither party would agree to such transactions otherwise. This paper considers and analyzes this utilitarian perspective of voting. In theory, a perfect free market for votes would lead to greater utility than the current voting system where there is no buying and selling of votes. In reality, however, such a system would face a number of barriers that would inhibit achieving Pareto efficiency. Additionally, a market introduces new risks of harming low-income voters. This paper will demonstrate that it is unrealistic to create a system that allows the buying and selling of votes that also prevents the corruption and inefficiencies, à la political machines. As a result, the buying and selling of votes should be rejected on utilitarian terms.
The two voting systems that are considered share the following characteristics: every citizen is allowed one vote and every vote is considered equally. In one system, buying and selling votes is prohibited, while the practice is allowed in the other. There are some compelling reasons for considering the utilitarian perspective when weighing these systems. Utilitarianism provides moral justification for both government and markets. Markets facilitate the distribution of goods in a manner that is often considered to maximize utility. Similarly, governments are also tools for maximizing utility, as characterized by some. Aristotle conceives of government as a tool for facilitating human flourishing. In a different, but also consequentialist conjecture of government, Thomas Jefferson believed that the role of government was to ensure human rights. Thus, unless these voting systems are considered from a utilitarian perspective, the discussion would be incomplete, having ignored the moral arguments motivating government and markets.
With this utilitarian motivation of government, it is not obvious that voting helps to accomplish the goals of government—maximizing its citizens’ utility. Voting does not guarantee that utility is maximized. Government could simply consult experts, using their expertise to weigh the tradeoffs of every decision. This might be better than letting uninformed citizens, who might not even recognize all of the streams of utility they receive from a particular decision make decisions by voting. However, voting protects citizens against two practical concerns. The first concern is the abuse of power by those in charge of making decisions. They may be unable to objectively make the best choices for everyone because of self-interest. The second concern is that those in power are unable to determine what every individual believes to hold utility to them. Citizens have varying preferences. Systems of voting alleviate these practical concerns by allowing citizens to express their own preferences and reduce the reliance on a small group of decision-makers. As a tradeoff, the utilitarian conception of voting makes the assumption that voters are able to assess and vote according to their interests. This may not be a reasonable assumption in reality, but this assumption is manifest in both systems of voting that are considered.
Given the nature of weighing preferences, giving everyone a single binary vote seems a very coarse method of determining how much a person values their vote. People who gain very little utility from a vote are represented the same as people who value their vote highly—they receive more utility from a decision. This means that although a majority of people may favor one decision, the amount of utility gained by making that decision might be less than making the other decision. From a utilitarian perspective, a system of buying and selling votes offers voters a finer spectrum of choice to express their preferences. In theory, this system achieves Pareto equilibrium while the other system will not because of the increase in granularity that voters are offered. However, given that any voting system is already a practical compromise between the ideal and the realistic, one cannot simply consider the theoretical benefits of a system of buying and selling votes.
Economist Anthony Downs offers some causes of concern in such a system of buying and selling votes. In An Economic Theory of Democracy, Downs describes some difficulties that are encountered when some realistic considerations are made. When there are a very large number of people, Downs says, the utility of any one individual vote is very small. In order for individuals to realize the utility of not selling their vote and voting in their own interest, they would need to form large coalitions, where the bloc can collectively bargain to maximize their utility. Cooperation does occur, Downs concedes, and it is not unreasonable to assume that groups of voters will mobilize and work together. But this situation is akin to that of a cartel, in which members of the cartel are incentivized to break from the cartel and sell their vote. Due to the difficulty of maintaining a large cartel, voters will be unable to effectively realize their utility. In Downs’s mind, the largest barrier to such a system is the uncertainty each member faces. If Downs is correct, then if the United States were to implement such a system, low income people would be unable to realize the full utility of their votes because they have the largest incentive to sell their votes. Unable to coordinate effectively thanks to uncertainty and the upfront incentives offered by buyers, the largest group of citizens, those in lower income brackets, would be effectively disenfranchised. This result runs counter to the intention of a system of buying and selling votes. Instead of increasing overall utility, the overall utility may be significantly harmed. Indeed, with the rich and well informed in control of voting, there runs the risk that corruption occurs and those in charge make decisions that do not increase overall utility. This would threaten the system designed to protect against such a threat.
Downs does present some solutions to these problems, such as a government organized method of coordinating the two sides of a vote. He writes this system off as unrealistic and states that uncertainty is too great a challenge to realistically overcome. Perhaps, given with a small system and certain circumstances, a system of buying and selling votes would offer greater control to every voter. As a result, utility is likely to be maximized. At a larger scale, with more people and greater uncertainty, Downs offers a compelling reason to reject buying and selling votes on utilitarian grounds, even if he takes a strictly descriptive perspective on democracy and vote markets. As such, until a solution is produced that eliminates the very real barriers to a utility maximizing system of buying and selling votes, such a system should be rejected from a utilitarian perspective as an unlikely improvement over current systems of voting. As Churchill said of democracy, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Perhaps the same is true of the current system of voting.
Your thesis is that a market in votes would, in practice, be Pareto inefficient and would introduce new risks to certain classes of voters, particularly those with low-incomes. You make your arguments almost exclusively based on utilitarian principles, but show that this ethical system can cover a lot of ground. By itself it can show why many of our intuitions against a market in votes are actually well founded. In addition, it can explain the logic of our current voting system.
Some of the best parts of the paper were actually in the setup. The early parts of the paper especially helped to make this a thorough essay. I appreciated your justification of utilitarianism for matters of politics. You are certainly right to argue that the most persuasive moral justifications of governments and market stem from their usefulness. A treatment of these things would be incomplete without consideration of utility.
Moreover, your explanation for why we have voting at all was helpful. You show that you are thinking like a utilitarian here because it is tempting to want to chuck the system of voting in favor of something seemingly more efficient. However, efficiency cannot be our only concern given the uniqueness of politics. The potential for the abuse of power and the neglect or misrepresentation of individual self-interest indicate that we need constant feedback from citizens so that they can express their preferences and evaluate their leaders. Having elections, instead of being led exclusively by a select few, helps to increase the number of decision-makers and this dispersion of power is generally a good thing.
But the system only works if citizens are able to vote according to their genuine interests. Voting is already a poor way to gauge citizen interests because our choices are inherently limited. Yet we still accept voting because it is some indication of the majority will, even if we know it is an imperfect measurement. But adding a system of vote buying and selling would only increase the imperfection by adding short-term economic considerations that influence decision-making. You cite Downs to explain some of the changes to voting behavior that would occur under this system, including cartelization. You conclude by agreeing with Downs that low-income voters would be among those most harmed in this system. Until these sorts of utilitarian concerns can be overcome, a vote-buying system cannot be endorsed.
I appreciated your reference to Churchhill.