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Can a Postage Stamp Be a Bribe?
When we talk about gifts to politicians, we often talk about gifts of nominal value being okay. Buy a politician a coffee, what’s wrong with that?
But what happens when it’s the other way around? What if the politician buys a coffee for a citizen? One citizen, no problem. A few more at a fundraiser, that’s okay (and it's not buying votes, but rather buying more money). But what about thousands of citizens? When does something of nominal value become something with a corrupt intention?
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According to an article in yesterday’s Orlando Sentinel, Republican Florida legislative candidate Sean Campbell (there's a special election) sent stamps to voters, urging them to use the stamps to mail in absentee ballots. State law reads, “no person shall directly or indirectly give or promise anything of value to another intending thereby to buy that person’s or another’s vote,” but this “does not apply to an item of nominal value which is used as a political advertisement.”
And that’s what the candidate said the stamp was, just part of a political advertisement.
Charities do it all the time (I’m saying that, not the candidate). But for them (or actually the soliciting companies who do the mailings) it’s a strategy, an investment.
Does a strategy and investment to get someone to vote for you cross the line?
A spokesperson for the state Democratic Party provided another analogy: “How is this different from walking door-to-door and giving people two quarters to vote for you? Is that OK?”
It’s not okay, is it? But local Republicans are calling this point of view “absurd.”
Of course, no one can be bought for 41 cents, but it is a use of money (as opposed to ideas) to affect someone’s choice of whom to vote for.
Were the same thing to be done by a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote group, it would be fine. The intent would clearly be to get people to send in absentee ballots. That is not a candidate’s intent. Even when a candidate says, Everyone should vote, that’s what democracy is about, she doesn’t really mean it. She means, Vote for me.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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