I’ve wondered before why billionaires don’t just pay people to move to help their party win. I bet it wouldn’t even cost that much.
- it would probably cost more than you think per person to get someone to pick up their life and move to a state of your choosing
- it's not clear ahead of time how many people you need to get to move
- it's not even really clear ahead of time which places you want them to move to. How many people would have guessed that moving Democrats to Wisconsin ahead of 2016 would be the most efficient path?
1. How would you verify a moved person voted a particular way?
2. It cuts both ways... there are are billionaires on all points of the political spectrum.
3. If you're a billionaire, why would you even care that much? Politics has an effect on your bottom line perhaps, but there's simply nothing that's inaccessible to a billionaire. To that point, the politics common people are really not that important except when it can impact business.
The Koch Brothers' political network supposedly budgeted $889M for 2016 campaigns [0]. Clearly, some billionaires care quite a bit. Whether they're zealots or expected a positive ROI for their businesses, who knows.
Clinton + Super PACs spent $1,184,100,000 on the 2016 campaign [1]. Divided by 77,747 = $15,230.16 per person. All other problems aside, it seems within the realm of possibility that a PAC of Billionaires could raise enough money to move enough people to sway an election.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
Inversely that could pay for a couple of months of a staffer on the ground going around and trying to convince locals to change their vote. That feels like it could go a bit further than the 1 vote the $15k buys.
And if a group of Mega Billionaires expecting a positive ROI believed they could lock up an election by convincing ~77,747 sympathetic voters to move, how much more money do you imagine they'd be willing to deploy?
A better exercise would be to look at this map [0] and figure out how many people need to be moved to traditional swing states to assure a win for either side.
I am starting with this angle because the coastal elites live on the coasts which are blue, and we are assuming they want blue.
The numbers probably arent that high and if you also imagine that there is some herd immunity to adding more blue ideology people in, then you might get more to flip as well.
I’ve been wondering if blue people moved to those places would see different needs of the people there and begin voting red. They came for their civil rights causes that they have been assuming republicans consciously think about and choose to undermine, but notice something completely different.
I'd love to host some of y'all in California here in Atlanta to help turn our state blue again. Your state doesn't need your votes, but ours desperately does.
We're going to draw the district lines this election that will impact the next ten years. Seriously, please help us undo the gerrymandering and win two Senate seats.
(Atlanta isn't half bad, either!)
Now if you don't actually establish Georgia as your legal residence, that's a whole other animal. But there's nothing stopping someone who rents in LA from ending their lease, moving to Georgia for 6 months, working remotely and voting in the GA election. And what they do with their life after the election is their choice.
Is this a moral gray area? Yea, probably. Is this a legal gray area? No, it's pretty well settled.
https://www.vote.org/voter-registration-rules/
https://www.infoplease.com/us/government/elections/residency...
> Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
While it would be legal to switch your residence to a different state to vote tactically, it is definitely against the law to pay someone to do that (and to be paid to do that, too).
Update: It’s also unclear that enticing someone to move and paying them to do so falls within that definition, because you’re not paying them to vote or withhold a vote. They’re free to vote, or not, as they see fit.
If they can disguise it as something else - "Temporary relocation grant to help small communities" or some other made up name, and then ensuring that everyone involved understands the real reason, but nobody leaks it out. But that seems morally and legally wrong. Otherwise, they could just hand out restaurant coupons or prepaid credit cards to local people asking them to vote a certain way? That's cheaper than paying moving costs, rent, and finding jobs for all those people to come from another part of the country.
The preferences are not as strong I suspect. If someone out there offered tens of thousands in relocation packages, stipends, other assistance, I imagine a lot of people would be joining that party, whatever the party is.
"Go tell this org that you are voting this way and you need help moving and you get $50k to move to Georgia" you don't think the party won't find a lot of "helpers" all of the sudden.
At that point that's not very different than handing out coupons or gift cards locally.
Just like you can wrap up the relocation package in a language that makes it "legal", can wrap up handing out gift cards in a similar language. "We just want you to go out and vote, here is a restaurant card, and a free Uber trip, and a free, an amusement park ride tickets,..." etc but you can reach a lot more "voters"t that way.
[0] https://www.cato.org/blog/dollars-vote-2016-election This analysis gives ad spend as $3-20 per candidate per vote. Assuming only 20% of voters were undecided, the marginal cost can't be more than $100.