Influencing others' voting: unethical?

[Second_in_pie]

@ niftz: that's interesting, I wouldn't have thought that asking your friends to vote for your candidate could encourage them to vote independently. But I guess that they could become interested in their "choice" and maybe do some research and discover more about how democracy and the political system works. Perhaps it's something that I should try...

But I think to sum things up, I don't see a difference between someone choosing to vote for the conservatives or choosing to vote for whoever you asked them to. They're both choices, and it's their vote.

 

[kEiThZ]

Isn't this what party canvassers do all the time? How is it unethical to convince someone to vote for your guy/gal? Unless you are filling in the ballot for them, I think they it's perfectly ethical and legal to sing praises about your candidate to them in the hopes of getting them to vote accordingly. Or are you feeling guilty that your friends and loved ones might be gullible and easily susceptible to your charms?

 

[kEiThZ]

There is nothing unethical and certainly nothing illegal about asking friends to support your preferred positions and candidates. Its the bedrock of political activism, and without it we wouldn't have democracy.

Well put.

 

[afransen]

^ I'm not sure it's so clear-cut. Asking someone to vote for a particular candidate as a personal favour to you is implied consideration, which is wrong if not illegal. How about an employer asking employees to vote for a particular candidate, as a favour to the company?

 

[kEiThZ]

^ I'm not sure it's so clear-cut. Asking someone to vote for a particular candidate as a personal favour to you is implied consideration, which is wrong if not illegal. How about an employer asking employees to vote for a particular candidate, as a favour to the company?

But how does the employer know who you voted for? In our system, once you are in the booth, you can do whatever you want in the privacy of that booth. Now if somebody was holding a gun to your head while you filled out an absentee ballot, we'd have issues.

 

[afransen]

I don't think the unverifiability of the exchange makes an exchange of a vote for a favour ethical.

 

[Brandon716]

^ I'm not sure it's so clear-cut. Asking someone to vote for a particular candidate as a personal favour to you is implied consideration, which is wrong if not illegal. How about an employer asking employees to vote for a particular candidate, as a favour to the company?

The context of the situation was one individual talking to another individual, not a corporate entity giving marching orders to its employees to vote a certain way... That's certainly out of bounds.

 

[GenerationW]

The context of the situation was one individual talking to another individual, not a corporate entity giving marching orders to its employees to vote a certain way... That's certainly out of bounds.

Do you feel the same about a union giving marching orders to its membership to vote NDP (or Liberal, or Democratic in the U.S.)?