Vote Selling

One afternoon I heard on the news that a Missouri man was charged with attempting to sell his vote for this past presidential election on eBay. Click here for a short account of the story. In class we saw the benefits of log rolling to pass bills in both situations where the total benefits exceeded costs and when the benefits did not exceed the costs, heck, we were even tested on it. How and what can we apply what we know about log rolling to this case? We know that the idea of log rolling is almost universally frowned upon by society. Applied to this case, we see that society looks down on vote selling enough to make it illegal. Laws and morals aside, was not Mr. Hubbard just acting as a rational Homo Economicus? If he were truly indifferent about our next President, clearly he would derive the most utility from voting in the interest of his highest bidder and collecting his money. In the same vein, the highest bidder be deriving more utility by knowing he/she was doing all they could to secure their pick for the next President. This outcome appears to be a Pareto improvement over the situation where Mr. Hubbard cannot sell his vote. Even though I personally do not agree with what Mr. Hubbard was trying to do, we must conclude that what he attempted was economically rational. The idea of vote selling is tenuous moral ground shared with ideas along the lines of selling organs, minus some of the inherent bodily danger. Allowing vote selling would give an upper hand to more well off individuals in securing the candidate they desired. Yet at the same time, the practice of legalized vote selling could allow uninformed, destitute, or indifferent voters an outlet to generating some needed revenue. Our sound economic reasoning here may sound callous and unpatriotic to outsiders. The privilege and honor associated with voting is something that Economics has a hard time measuring.