Buying Votes in Elections

Generally, in many elections, parties give money to the voters to vote for their party. Those whoever is giving money do not have any of knowing whether that person voted for their party or not. Still, they give money. Most of the voters who take money (atleast the uneducated voters) are sincere in their voting.

If there is a person, and if he gets money from three parties, then he would vote for one of those three parties with his own discretion. All the three parties know this. Still, all of them give money. The reason is, if they give money, then they may get vote or they may not. But, if they don't give money, then they will surely won't get the vote.

Let's suppose that person has a family, and his family consists of 3 voters including him. If all the three parties give equal money to all of them, each party would get one vote each from his family. If the parties give unequal amounts of money, then they get proportionate votes based on the money received by the entire family. If his family consists of 4 voters and the three parties give equal amount of money, then the three parties get minimum one vote each, and the fourth vote goes to one of them depending on other factors. Most of the uneducated voters are sincere in this case.

Recently I came to know of a different way to buy votes. The candidate announced that, he would be giving Rs.5000 per family. The family has to give their ration card to him, and he would note down the no.of voters in their family and gives Rs.5000 to them. If he gets more no.of votes than the no.of voters to whom he gave money, then he would return the ration cards of all the voters. If he does not, then he would tear all the ration cards. Since, no Middle class family or poor family afford to lose ration card, he won eventhough he contested as an independent from a constituency which is in outskirts of a city.