Selling Your Vote Is a Crime

If you're a politician, you can bribe voters with cash hand-outs, "free" education, "cheap" health care, and any number of other welfare programs at taxpayer expense. But offer to sell your vote as a private citizen and you'll be charged with a felony.

Max Sanders, a 19-year-old college student in Minneapolis who offered to sell his vote to the highest bidder on eBay, was charged under a 1893 Minnesota law that criminalizes the sale and purchase of votes. Sanders now faces the possibility of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Mike Freeman, a Hennepin County attorney with an ironic name, said, "We're not humorless in the county attorney's office and we're not in the horse-and-buggy age, but we decided it's something we just couldn't blow off. Sometimes in this business we need to make statements." The statement in this case: "You don't own your vote." Or, to put it in today's vernacular: "All your vote are belong to us."

What's sad is that those who are still coming down from their July 4th patriotic high cannot grasp the fact that this is a country in which the ruling elite play by a different set of rules. Land of the Free? Give me a break. Freedom in America is defined by hot dogs, beer, and fireworks.