In a democratic system, every eligible person is free to vote. But free-to-vote doesn't mean that voting is for free, and it doesn't have any cost at all. Nobody pays to vote, but voting has costs. People vote for the candidates whom they prefer and who will bring good prospects for them. Candidates come under a banner or a particular party.
For example, person X from the Democratic Party can be one candidate. But the problem is that to vote for X, voters need to know about X and his future plans that he will materialise if he gets elected. To get familiar with X, one has to search for information about X such as his political career. Now who is to provide this information to voters? For a single voter collecting all of this information is often impossible and will entail much cost. Historically, candidates go to the door of voters to tell them about their political agenda. This is popularly known as the presidential campaign. Spreading information about political agenda entails cost such as one for arranging the presidential campaigns. The question is: Who is to pay for such campaigns? Should candidates pay for the campaigns? Obviously, candidates can't bear the total cost of spreading information through campaigns. Moreover, politics is hardly recognised as a profession but rather as a passion. Therefore, it is impossible for candidates to bear such costs. Someone else must come forward.
The conventional approach is the sponsorship. The wealthy class and the corporate entities mostly sponsor the presidential campaigns in the USA. The presidential campaigns are organised in this way. The question is: How much efficient and acceptable is this method? Should we rely on a particular sect - the wealthy class - for bearing the costs of spreading information?
DEMOCRACY AS OLIGARCHY: One can ask: If there were no cost of spreading information, would there be any possibility for the oligarchic rule? This is quite a misleading way to start, because in a democratic system there is no escape from the information-spreading costs; spreading information requires costs. Rather the relevant question to ask is: If information spreading costs are borne by a particular class, such as the wealthy class, then is there any possibility that social and political decisions will be governed by this particular class? In other words, would decisions reflect this particular class of people's view more than that of people in general? Yes, there is a perfect possibility. Candidates incur costs for spreading information and can't bear such costs solely on their own. At the same time, there is no mechanism to collect the necessary money for candidates. So, the US society is historically relying on the wealthy class and corporate entities to support presidential campaigns. But this group of people and institutions don't provide anything for free.
Who will be willing to bear such a huge cost for the presidential election without any purpose? We have to look for philanthropists in the capitalist society and will hardly come out successful in the search for them. In the USA, the wealthy class and the corporate bodies support the presidential campaigns keeping in mind a hidden agenda. The hidden agenda is the implicit agreement. These groups of people and institutions provide monetary support to presidential campaigns out of their social, political, and economic interests. But when they provide support, they don't enter into any explicit written agreement with the candidates. Rather, a bond and connection is built up. The meaning of this bond and connection is that candidates will work to further their interests and will fulfil their hidden demands when they come to power. Therefore, the victory for a particular candidate, who has been supported by the election campaigns of these groups, means victory not only for the candidate but also for the supporting people and institutions. The reason is that under the binding of the implicit agreement he is more likely to represent the interests of the particular group of people than those of people in general. Democracy turns into oligarchy in this way.
In a democratic system, there is an information-spreading cost but voters in general don't share this cost. The candidates don't have the ability of bearing the total information-spreading cost. Conventionally, people from a particular class, especially from the wealthy section and business organisations and corporate entities, bear the costs of spreading information. But their support comes through the implicit agreement of furthering their interests. This agreement binds the elected candidates. They either willingly or under compulsion succumb to the desire and interests of these people. Social, political, and economic decisions in this kind of democracy will be dominated by the desires and will of the wealthy people and other patrons. In other words, society in this kind of democratic system is ruled and governed by the desires and interests of a particular group of people and social choices are most often imposed on the general people.
VOTING AND PRICING:Â We have said that free-to-vote doesn't mean voting is for free. Voting has a cost, and it is the information-spreading cost. Before people vote for a particular person, they need to know about the person and his political, social, and economic perspectives and views. If nobody bears the information-spreading cost, then candidates must spend to spread information. But this is not possible because candidates left on their own can't bear such huge costs. Therefore, someone else must bear the cost. The question is who should bear it? We have seen that if such costs are totally borne by elites in a society, then the society is likely to be governed by oligarchic rule. In the oligarchic regime, democracy becomes a free lunch for voters since they are exempted from sharing any cost of spreading information. They vote freely and don't have to pay anything to vote. In fact, the free lunch is not a free lunch at all. The free lunch comes at a high cost and the cost is the reflection of desires and interests of elites in social choices and the exclusion of interests and desires of the masses.
Those who think that voting is for free should at least be aware of the fact that this could happen only if there were no information-spreading costs. As long as there is the information-spreading cost, we can't consider that voting is for free. Rather social convention has made it free, not the voting itself. So, what is the solution? The solution is that voters should bear the information-spreading costs for candidates: voters should pay to vote.
IMPLICATIONS: Voting has costs, and voters should pay for them. In doing so, they will end up better off because such a mechanism, if introduced, will help in curbing the influence of elites both in social and political decisions and in economic policies. If voters don't pay for the information-spreading costs and elites bear those, then the problem of oligarchic dominance emerges: since elites bear this cost out of their ulterior motives, it creates the problem of implicit contract between candidates and the elites. The conventional free voting system is inefficient. It doesn't yield the solution from optimal search. By 'optimal search', we mean voters don't have any strong incentive to search for information about candidates and about their potential agenda. Instead, candidates go to the door of voters to spread information. This means higher information-spreading costs.
If voters pay a price for voting, the price would encourage them to search for more information about the candidates and their agenda. As their search increases, the information-spreading costs for candidates decrease because part of the publicity cost is offset by the higher search for information by voters. Pricing of voting can also help reduce corruption in a society. The political leaders collect the money for carrying out publicity costs for election, adopting unfair means or engaging in corruption. This is what happens in our country. This is also a problem when somebody else carries the publicity costs for them. The implicit contract between elites and candidates makes the candidates succumb to the desires and dominance of these elites. They are forced to comply with the policies and rules that further the interests of elites, and thus get involved in corruption. One of the crucial implications of putting a price on voting is that such a mechanism can reduce the degree of the manipulation of votes in the time of elections.
During election time, celebrities and popular public figures get involved in the publicity for particular political parties. These public figures significantly affect the outcome of elections. They create the crowd-effect since people follow them and want to associate with them.
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