The Cost of a Vote Goes Up
By EDUARDO PORTER
NYT
The votes are in; the money has been counted. We can start assessing the damage to American democracy caused by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations, unions and their lobby groups a free hand to deploy their money to elect the candidates of their choice. Already one thing seems certain: Votes are getting more expensive.
In the midterm elections four years ago, candidates and their friends spent a little over $2.8 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, to garner some 86 million votes. The cost was about $33 per voter. Data from this week’s election is still coming in. But it seems that total spending will hit $4 billion, which would make this year’s voters about $10 more expensive.
Records are being broken. Two years ago, the Republican Sandy Treadwell spent $84 per voter trying to unseat Kirsten Gillibrand, then the representative from New York’s 20th District. That is likely to be eclipsed by the bill for the Tea Partier Sharron Angle and her supporters, who seem to have spent $87 per voter in a losing bid to unseat Senator Harry Reid, who spent some $74 for his voters.
Supporters of free-market elections argue that there is nothing untoward about this money: ads bought by candidates and their friends are meant to inform voters, so they can choose well. If the best-financed candidates often win, the argument goes, it’s because money flocks to the best candidates. And the moneyed can lose: the Republican wrestling mogul Linda McMahon spent $42 million and still lost her bid for a Senate seat from Connecticut.
(More here.)
NYT
The votes are in; the money has been counted. We can start assessing the damage to American democracy caused by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations, unions and their lobby groups a free hand to deploy their money to elect the candidates of their choice. Already one thing seems certain: Votes are getting more expensive.
In the midterm elections four years ago, candidates and their friends spent a little over $2.8 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, to garner some 86 million votes. The cost was about $33 per voter. Data from this week’s election is still coming in. But it seems that total spending will hit $4 billion, which would make this year’s voters about $10 more expensive.
Records are being broken. Two years ago, the Republican Sandy Treadwell spent $84 per voter trying to unseat Kirsten Gillibrand, then the representative from New York’s 20th District. That is likely to be eclipsed by the bill for the Tea Partier Sharron Angle and her supporters, who seem to have spent $87 per voter in a losing bid to unseat Senator Harry Reid, who spent some $74 for his voters.
Supporters of free-market elections argue that there is nothing untoward about this money: ads bought by candidates and their friends are meant to inform voters, so they can choose well. If the best-financed candidates often win, the argument goes, it’s because money flocks to the best candidates. And the moneyed can lose: the Republican wrestling mogul Linda McMahon spent $42 million and still lost her bid for a Senate seat from Connecticut.
(More here.)
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