Against Vote Markets

According to a recent paper by Christopher Freiman (Forthcoming) the prohibition on the buying and selling of votes ought to be lifted. We will argue that Freiman’s defence of that position is unsuccessful. Freiman presents defeasible reasons in favour of the legalization of vote markets (pp. 2-8). He then considers two arguments – the Equality Argument and the Republican Argument – which, if either were correct, would undermine those defeasible reasons. By rejecting these arguments, Freiman takes himself to have shown that the reasons in favour of vote markets remain undefeated, and so the case for vote markets is stronger than has been assumed. We will focus on Freiman’s response to the Equality Argument, showing that this response is flawed and that, therefore, Freiman’s defence of vote markets is not successful.