Vote Buying

credits to : https://www.independent.ng/vote-buying-biggest-threat-to-nigerias-democracy-says-group/

In Philippines it is an electoral democracy which describes a democratic government based on a system that enables all the citizens to select one candidate from a list of competitions for political office , but corruption and transparency continue to undermine democratic development. Elections have histerically been marred by fraud , intimidation , and political violence. That can leads to illegal and unlawful process of vote buying. It is caused by poor country like ours that impossible to have a power because our politicians know our vulnerability to pressure and our hardships in life.  Once a politician entered the politics, it is a common knowledge of taking risks of what they have in there life. Popularity must have the aspect of a politician and also money in order to ha win the election. Because being popular attracts the attention of the people in the society. Money is used and distributed to the people that has a below average lifestyle. This tell that vote buying become institutionalized in our political system. COMELEC has already set guidelines and rules regarding the expenditures of the candidates for each voter, more often that not , they exceed much more than the set amount.

The phenomenon of vote buying is an electoral malpractice subverts the integrity of the electoral process which means the society democratically translates human rights to political participation. Political people would argue that competition between candidates should drive the outcome towards efficiency. Unfortunately, the real world is more complicated. Because of the developing in the world particularly, the democratic process has many weakness example is the commonly cited contributory factors of poverty, illiteracy ignorance and the sustenance of phenomenon of vote buying. The impact that vote buying has on electoral outcomes weakening the effective of there campaign. Which the respondents report a decreased perception that money offered candidates affected voting decisions.

 Vote buying is the pre-electoral provision of gifts of goods or money, aimed at persuading recipients to vote in a particular way, to turn out to vote, or not to vote at all. According to Hickens (2006) vote buying involves the individual, immediate, and private exchange of goods, services, or cash for electoral support, usually in violation of legal norms. The political culture in some country practices where politicians and political parties or supports involve to engage in all sorts of electoral malpractices. But there are more fundamental problems on the part of both the electorates and political parties practicing the political cynicism which means the voters supports the use of the money to buy and sell votes. Therefore, vote-buying become common to evaluate and to shed light on the impact of selling campaigns. In other words, a vote seller is someone who pays or promises to pay money or any value to a voter or group of voters in exchange of their votes for or against any candidates during elections.

Vote-buying and vote-selling obstruct the democratic process, yet they remain pervasive in many developing democracies. In response, governments, international donors, and NGOs worldwide have directed significant attention and resources towards curbing vote-buying and vote-selling. Some strategies have aimed to stop politicians from offering money in exchange for votes, but this approach has often failed due to poor implementation and weak enforcement. Therefore, it has become common to focus anti-vote-buying efforts on voters themselves. This often involves asking voters to make promises or sign pledges to not accept money from politicians or their agents prior to elections. Another approach encourages voters to take the money being offered, but still “vote their conscience.” This evaluation aims to shed light on the impact of these two types of anti-vote-selling campaigns.

It shows that once a thing was done consecutively and consistently, it is hard to avoid that kind of culture. Vote buying can ruin the democracy of a country, this can be done because of poverty, illiteracy ignorance and the sustenance of phenomenon. Government, international donors and NGO’s worldwide seeks the attention of the phenomenon and they try to give solution but due to due to poor implementation and weak enforcement it did not worked out. Different kinds of solutions are needed to avoid this kind of culture. It is evident, as the vote seller releases a large amount of money, the more votes will it have. What is transparent on the circumstances happening in the society, not only poverty makes the reason of vote buying to be more efficient but also this was considered as a kind of business for the politicians. Even we have a lot of corrupt politicians there are people that stands for the right and believes that honesty is worth it than money.