How about, no matter what you feel on the issue of selling or buying a vote you stop and think about the last two decades of our wonderful country, and the corruption and ‘vote buying/selling’ process that has been out there in the open for all of us to see for so long.

How about you stop and think about how our freedoms have been slowly taken away from us over the last decade. Freedom of expression/speech ring a bell with anyone?

In my opinion, he was doing nothing more than the protestors do outside voting centers. He was simply making a bold statement about his feelings on what our country has become. Nobody bid on his vote, so no crime was commited period. He did not sell his vote, and even if he had but not accepted the money or refunded it then again, no crime was committed.

I will also be posting my vote, not that I would sell it or even give it away as there really is no point in that anyhow. Our votes have not counted for some time now, that is a fact that all of us must face eventually. I will be doing it as a protest as well, and to hopefully get a message out there.

The simply truth is that as much as all of us love this country, and I myself have very proudly served this country in the US Navy, our country is not what it used to be or what it is was meant to be.

If you do not like the comments and expressions made by others, for those of you that said you would not be returning to this blog. Then my advice to you is to go to another country, one that has no freedom of expression at all, while we have lost allot of ours at least we can still freely discuss issues such as this.

It is time for a change in this country, but blogging is not the way to make that change happen. We must demand that our government follow the core values that we have worked so hard to have. And we must start to stand up for a change, stop being driven by fear and MAKE our vote count!

Wow.

“Just to be clear to Doug and others who are being intentionally dense, the ridiculous part of this story is the fact that we are spending government resources to prosecute him. kids do stupid things, like try to sell their vote on ebay. this is being prosecuted to get media attention to a few individuals.”

We pay law enforcement to prosecute people who break laws - not decide which ones are too ridiculous to enforce. As for getting media attention…you don’t complain when they capture a murderer and drop a press release do you? You are a hypocrite!

Let’s say 2% of the electorate decided that they would sell their votes in 2008 and either McCain, Obama, Barr, or Nader bought them? Wouldn’t that be enough to throw the election in one direction or another? I doubt this is what the framers had in mind.

You know what, I am glad you don’t vote… let’s keep it that way.

The reason why I don’t vote is because it takes time for me to go vote. Why don’t they pay people to go vote so there will be more people voting!!! The fact that people have to pay gas, go to the poll, etc. costs money. And the candidates on the ballot all suck, and you expect people to spend time and money to vote?!?

I believe in just compensation for people’s effort and time. There’s no free lunch from me.

And people who say it’s a civic duty to vote. No it is not. People vote because they care who’s going to be president, I don’t care who’s going to be president. The only time when I care is when people who in power trash the Constitution. I will use my 2nd amendment to protect the Constitution.

That is all.

If I give away my vote for a sandwich because I’m hungry, does that count as selling it? Or is it more like bartering?

Any one with common sense could assume this was a bad idea, saying the kid didn’t know the law is an excuse would be ridiculous. Ignorance of law is not considered an excuse, and I certainly have no sympathy in the case when it’s an obviously wrong and stupid idea.

Not really. Our educational system is doing an absolutely wonderful job of keeping the masses uneducated and uninformed, thus ensuring that those in power will remain in power - because the people simply don’t know any better.

I’ll agree that he shouldn’t have sold his vote, but to be honest, it is his vote to sell. However, you also have to watch out for those really obscure laws that nobody knows about anymore (and hardly ever prosecutes). A case like this can and should be fought to obliterate the law as it is out of date by 100 years.

I’ll also agree, this is a waste of government resources and the prosecutors are either very bored, media hungry, or just plain inadequate for their current positions.

In short, I hate it when people in high places try to make examples of people to prove their own points. It would be nice if one these people just came out and stated their views instead of trying to ruin somebody’s life.

I can’t believe so of you, even the author, support the selling of votes?

Is the government going too far on one little joke? Definitely. Unless you stop to consider that significant numbers of people can’t tell the difference between a “joke” and a bad idea and would sell their vote without hesitation to prove a point… or make some money. It’s smarter (and wastes a LOT less resources) to nip it in the bud rather than waiting to control it till the average Joe decides a couple of beers is worth more than his vote. Since when has freedom protected itself?

Still want to sell your vote? Help yourself and move to a country where you can; I for one have seen carefree jokers’ votes carefully manipulated by the shrewdly calculating power hungry for years and years, and I’m sticking with our “dumb” system.