Vote Buying

We examine the consequences of vote buying, as if this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two parties competing in a binary election may purchase votes via up front binding payments and/or payments (platforms) that are contingent upon the outcome of the election. If voters care only about outcomes and not directly about how they vote, then the party with the largest budget wins at a negligible cost. If up front payments are ruled out and only platforms are allowed, then the winning party depends not only on the relative size of the budgets, but also on the excess support of the party with the a priori majority, where the excess support is measured in terms of the total utility of supporting voters who are in excess of the majority needed to win. If voters care directly about how they vote (as a legislator would), then the determination of the winning party depends on a weighted comparison of the two parties’ budgets plus half of the total utility of their supporting voters. We also investigate the endogenous raising of budgets, as well as vote buying in the face of uncertainty. ∗Dekel is at the Department of Economics, Tel Aviv University, and the Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA, email: [email protected] Jackson is at the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA, http://www.hss.caltech.edu/∼jacksonm/Jackson.html, email: [email protected] , and Wolinsky is at the Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA, email: [email protected] . Financial support under NSF grants SES-9986190 and SES-0316493 are gratefully acknowledged, as is ...