How Much Is Your Vote Worth To You?
By Urban Thought on November 28, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
NYU students are putting their votes up for sale. How much do you ask? Some will sell it for the price of an iPod Touch. For the rest of them they’ll either take 1 million dollars or a free ride at NYU.
If you don’t believe me read the article below. If you find that scary imagine what I’d sell my vote for.
Most say their vote has a price
By: Lily Quateman
Posted: 11/14/07
Two-thirds say they’ll do it for a year’s tuition. And for a few, even an iPod touch will do.
That’s what NYU students said they’d take in exchange for their right to vote in the next presidential election, a recent survey by an NYU journalism class found.
Only 20 percent said they’d exchange their vote for an iPod touch. But 66 percent said they’d forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they’d give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.
But, they also overwhelmingly lauded the importance of voting. Ninety percent of the students who said they’d give up their vote for the money also said they consider voting “very important” or “somewhat important”; only 10 percent said it was “not important.” Also, 70.5 percent said they believe that one vote can make a difference – including 70 percent of the students who said they’d give up their vote for free tuition.
The class – “Foundations of Journalism,” taught by journalism department chairwoman Brooke Kroeger – polled more than 3,000 undergraduates between Oct. 24 and 26 to assess student attitudes toward voting.
“The part that I find amazing is that so many folks think one vote can make a difference,” Dalton Conley, sociology department chairman, said. He added, “If we take them at their word, then perhaps they really think votes matter, and that’s why someone might pay a year’s tuition to buy theirs.”
Sixty percent of the students who said they’d give up their vote for tuition also described their families’ income as upper middle or high.
Their reasons for giving up their vote varied.
“At the moment, no candidate who truly represents my political beliefs has a chance of winning a presidential election,” one male junior studying film and television at the Tisch School of the Arts wrote on the survey.
“It is very easy to convince myself that my vote is not essential,” wrote a female CAS sophomore. “After all, I’m from New York, which will always be a Blue State.”
Other students wrote that they were disgusted by the thought.
“I would be reversing history – a lot of people fought so that every citizen could be enfranchised,” said a female in her second year at the Stern School of Business.
One CAS junior went even further, writing that “anyone who’d sell his lifelong right to vote should be deported.”
Lily Quateman is a contributing writer and is in the “Foundations of Journalism” class that conducted the survey. E-mail her at news@nyunews.com.
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Observations
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As someone who works at a large state university, I am not surprised at all, but saddened as always.
This can’t be legal. It’s kind of cheesy if you ask me. There’s not enough money out there that would make me vote for a Repulican.
EOTR: It is sad. It shows the value people put in the voting system. Just another reflection of the times we live in.
Ricardo: Yeah, wouldn’t find me voting for a Republican either. I know my vote counts only when there are a thousand others along with it. And my one vote will not be given to that party.
I think it also depends on how heavily a state leans (blue/red). If you know that your particular vote would have virtualy no impact on the ellection, why not? I live in CT and I know that the odds on my state voting in a Republican for president are fairly low. I expect my state to go Democrat no matter what so why not get an iPod touch in exchange for my worthless vote?
If I was in a heavily contested state (Ohio/Florida) than that is a different story and my vote would not be for sale.