Buying An Election Part II
In the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama spent $573,000,000.00 and received 66,495,305 votes. That comes out to $8.62 a vote.
McCain spent $293,000,000 for 58,123,414 votes, coming in at $5.04 per vote.
If these guys had done no campaigning and had just stood outside the polling stations offering the cash directly to the voters, who would you have voted for ?
And if that had been the extent of their campaigning, would the media have even mentioned a presidential race ? Doubt it. That would, of course result in fewer votes overall, meaning the candidates could have offered us even more money per vote.
Campaign finance reform, indeed.