Chapter 1 - The Ethics of Electoral Bribing

Summary

Elections predated the advent of modern democracy. Unbeknownst to many scholars, late scholastic authors, such as Francisco Suárez, carefully discussed the moral duties and rights of both of candidates and voters. This chapter brings to the fore this late scholastic engagement with electoral moral dilemmas. I focus on the question: when – if ever – is it morally permissible for the best electoral candidate to offer money to electors? This was a pressing question for the late scholastics because, on one hand, they believed that electors have a moral duty to vote for the best candidate, and consequently that the best candidate has a correlative right to be voted for. On the other hand, attempting to buy votes was deemed to display a demeaning attitude towards office by treating it as commensurate with temporal goods. I analyze the late scholastics’ effort to carve up some moral space so as to allow the best electoral candidates to vindicate their rights by using money without thereby incurring vote buying.