Vote Buying

The direct or indirect payment of money, goods, or a favor to a voter in exchange for their vote or for their abstention from voting, a specific and widely documented form of election manipulation distinguished from broader electoral fraud, such as ballot stuffing or vote-count manipulation, in that it targets and compromises an individual voter's own choice rather than the administration or tabulation of the vote. Political scientists and election-monitoring organizations have documented vote buying as especially persistent in contexts with weak ballot secrecy enforcement, clientelist political networks, and high poverty, with documented forms ranging from a small cash payment or a bag of groceries handed out on election day to a longer-term exchange of goods or services for a voting bloc's electoral support.