In Defense of Vote Buying : How 'Nader Traders' Can Defeat Rent Seeking

This Article examines the merits of vote buying at a more detailed level than has been done previously. Various scenarios are played-out of how an actual election would function if vote buying were permitted. The Article concludes, in line with past scholarship, but for different reasons, that the monetary purchasing of votes should be outlawed because of the rent-seeking effects such purchases will cause. It then applies this analysis to the "Nader Traders" controversy of the 2000 Presidential Election, and concludes that the trading of votes for other votes should be legal. This is because the same rent-seeking effects that arise out of buying votes for money do not arise out of buying votes with other votes