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Markets in everything, India electoral fact of the day edition
According to the study...almost one in two voters in Karnataka, where assembly elections were held in May, had taken money for voting or not voting.However, the share of voters is higher among the voters in the so-called below the poverty line, or BPL, category: 73% in Karnataka while the national average is 37%.
“The bribe money varies from state to state. It may be Rs100-150 (a voter) in some states and it can go up to Rs1,000 in some constituencies,” said Rao, adding that the CMS study refers to only cash bribes, not the value of liquor or other material inducements being doled out during election campaigns.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 22, 2008 at 02:09 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
I'm not surprised as political parties in India apparently auction 'seats' to Parliament to the highest bidder.Once in power the ministries are similarly auctioned based on the value of potential bribes.Sounds terrible but great training for future lobbyists!
Posted by: Sumant Rawat at Sep 22, 2008 3:09:29 PM
Poor methodology... There are an awful lot of hard numbers in the article for what comes down to guess work...
Anyhow, I don't think this would work in the U.S. at a federal level, though perhaps at a local level. A few questions: How do they validate who a voter pulled the lever for? Where does the money come from? Is this necessarily a bad thing...? Are there so few differences in the candidates that the voters would be indifferent enough to take a couple bucks to vote for one over the other?
If the indifferent voters only vote because they are paid, the actual voter participation rate without bribes would be much lower.
Posted by: stanfo at Sep 22, 2008 4:24:59 PM
Don't know whether it's possible using Indian ballots, but a common way of enforcing enforcing the contract is to hand the voter a marked ballot outside the polling place, and then pay them when they return with a blank ballot.
Posted by: Cyrus at Sep 22, 2008 4:41:27 PM
Just about everyone in the United States sells his vote. The entire political system is based on the idea that everyone should steal from everyone else!
Posted by: John Locke at Sep 22, 2008 5:07:41 PM
I was over there (India) in the summer of 2007, and our tour guide pointed out that politicians drive around in vans handing envelopes of money to people in the Mumbai slums during election time. I asked "so bribery is legal?" and he was aghast. "No no no! It is not bribery! They simply offer some money and the person can choose to take it or not!" He saw it as a form of welfare that just happened to occur in the hours before an election.
To stanfo: I don't think many of these people, who cannot read, really care or know about the policy differences between one politician and another. For many of them, 100 rupees is an enormous sum for completing what may be to them a meaningless or totally not-understood task (voting).
Posted by: Erik Knechtel at Sep 23, 2008 12:19:04 PM
And how is that different from Jayalalitha, Karunanidhi, NTR and the like promising rice at Rs. 2/kg, free colour TVs, free saris?
Posted by: VoteForSale at Sep 23, 2008 8:55:03 PM
