How much is your vote worth?

2010-09-20 ballot box for saleIf your vote was for sale, how much would you charge? Would that price change according to the issues at hand in each election cycle? Would you charge more if you were unhappy with a candidate’s platform, or would you even care about their platform so long as they were willing to pay up?

In America, we don’t sell our votes (not outright, anyway). And yet some candidates have spent so much money to win their primary races and elections that the Washington Post even has a handy chart to tell us who spent what on how many votes.

The winning spender? “Former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon (R) spent $454 of her own money on each vote she got in her Connecticut primary win last month, making her campaign the most expensive per-vote in the country during a primary season rife with self-funders.”

So far this year, about two dozen candidates for the House, Senate, or governorships, have ponied up $1 million or more on a primary—but only seven of those candidates actually won their parties’ nominations so far. In fact, only two of the top 10 spenders have successfully scored nominations, despite their seemingly never-ending pockets.

The record expenditure, according to self-funding expert Jennifer Steen at Arizona State University, is about $900 per vote, which is how much Massachusetts businessman Chris Gabrieli (D) forked over in his 1998 House campaign. He came in sixth.

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About Nikki Willoughby

Nikki Willoughby is social media manager at Common Cause. She oversees community action and serves as editor of the CommonBlog. Find her on Twitter @Nikki4CC or email her at nikki@commoncause.org.

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