Thursday, August 24, 2006

Buying an election?

As the Boston Globe recently reported, Chris Gabrieli, a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for governor of our state, has already spent about $7.5 million in his campaign thus far. That is a large amount of money.

To put it in some perspective, consider the size of the universe of voters he is trying to reach. According to the Massachusetts secretary of state, the entire number of Democrats who voted in the last primary election for governor, in 2002, was 746,190.

Having spent $7.5 million, Gabrieli's spending per voter works out to about $10 -- provided, of course, that he wins every Democratic vote, which seems unlikely, and provided that he spends no more in the next few weeks, which also seems unlikely.
If this were an auction, we'd have to ask: will people vote for him at $20? How about $50? Anybody go $100?

Oh, but wait: Buying votes is illegal.

Isn't it?

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