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Does the thought that an elected official - mayor, city council person, judge, governor, senator, president, dog catcher - is taking bribes bother you? You know, the knawing thought that the person you may have voted for, the person elected via a system that you trust and may have even risked your life for ('freedom ain't free') may be on the take. Does that bother you?
It certainly bothers me.
To me, democracy is all about the little guy having a chance at the good life just like the big guy ('life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness').
In short, democracy should be, well, democratic for everyone, both rich and poor. Right?
Does it matter if the bribe was offered before or after the person was successfully elected?
This is what we mean: looking at the Federal Election Commission's Summary Reports Search Results for the 2007-2008 fiscal cycle, numbers start to jump out.
'Which numbers?' you ask.
ALL of the numbers and LOTS of them, I reply.
According to Wikipedia's tabulations of the same data we referenced above, "a total of 148 candidates for all parties raised a collective total of $1,644,712,232 and spent $1,601,104,696 for the primary and general campaigns combined through November 24, 2008."
That's right folks, $1.6 BILLION dollars was raised just to get one man elected. Those figures do not include the administrative costs to stage the election; those are just the dollars raised to have people be persuaded, tricked, scared, cajoled, pressured into voting for one candidate over so many others.
A billion and a half dollars may not represent a percentage point of the trillion dollars deficit but shoot if would not help SOMETHING.
*Pardon the fiscal/economic/financial ignorance folks....
Here's another thing to chew on (and then choke).
The wiki figures also broke down the amount spent on the campaign trail by each candidate, compared it with the number of votes received and figured out the average cost per vote. Take a look:
Candidate
Amount spent
votes received
Average spent per vote
Barack Obama
$513,557,218
69,498,215
$7.39
John McCain
$346,666,422
59,948,240
$5.78
Ralph Nader
$4,187,628
738,720
$5.67
Bob Barr
$1,345,202
523,713
$2.57
Cynthia McKinney
$238,968
161,680
$1.48
So, according to those figures, the math is simple: the more one spends to get votes, the more votes he/she will get.
I guess at this rate, Mr. Smith will never really get to Washington ... because freedom really ain't free.
