MONEY & THE VOTE

Have you ever sold your vote? To Whom? For How Much?

In the run-up to the 1984 election, I went along with my daughter, then a private school student, as she completed an assignment to door-to-door canvass for the Mondale/Ferraro candidacy.  We worked neighborhoods in the Palos Verdes/Rolling Hills section of Los Angeles, and participated in election calls from offices there.  We called only those voters who voted Democrat in the 1980 election.  The negative responses we received were fierce! 

In a discussion with a wealthy oil executive who was also volunteering, I was told that there existed a "price tag" for every political office in the United States.  Turns out he was right.  But I remained puzzled as to how the votes in elections were "bought".  I knew that most voters were not aware of the belief that money determined election outcomes.  Most of the volunteers were not rich, although they were also not poor.  Since then, we've all learned that "money is the mothers-milk of politics" in the United States.

If all this is true, isn't it high time we get a strict accounting of every penney paid, to whom, how it is spent, who gets rich, and what is the origin of every cent.  But, we don't do much of any of this.  We just resign oursevles to the status quo.

Where is the liberty, democracy, or freedom in all of this?  It's clear to see where the market is in this process.  Somehow, we've silently and passively "privatized" democracy and it has become the sole purview of the very rich. 

Citizens United, handiwork of our Supreme Court, comes to mind in this matter, but that wasn't around in 1984.  It appears that this ruling only amped up a process that was already in existence.

It's claimed that all of this money goes to television and other media, and they cite the Kennedy/Nixon contest of 1960 as the beginning of the phenomenon.  That presidential race is also cited for the stark change in the function of political parties in the United States.

There was the "Bear in the Woods" commercial that Reagan ran in that election.  That election was also the first presidential election with a woman on the ticket.  Reagan, using Lee Atwater, skillfully ran a media campaign that had both anti-woman and anti-black themes.  Remember the "Welfare Queen"?  

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