There is a long history of bribery in US politics – is Donald Trump continuing it?

Source: The Conversation – UK

This week, Donald Trump made American voters an offer that he hopes they can’t refuse. If his Republican Party wins the upcoming midterm elections, every adult citizen will receive a “Trump Dividend” of US$5,000 (£3,700).

Republican poll numbers are sagging as the party heads into November’s midterm elections, and the US president is clearly hoping that some cold hard cash might be the answer. But the offer also immediately led to allegations that he was trying to bribe voters to support his own party.

Is he? The answer is complicated. On one hand, candidates frequently promise that they will make changes to taxation and spending which will financially benefit voters. And Trump promised a dividend to every adult citizen – not just those who voted for him.

On the other hand, Trump’s rhetoric seemed to portray the payout as a reward he would grant the country for voting the right way. He didn’t tie his promise to any particular policy goal other than his own party’s victory. The administration also does not have a realistic plan to pay for it, nor the legal authority to develop one without the approval of Congress.

It could be argued that all of these factors combine to make this look less like a regular campaign promise and more like something we might call a “bribe”.

Booze and the ballot

Bribery has a long history in American politics, and it used to be much more blatant.

In colonial times and then into the early history of the republic, elections were one of the few times that the adult males of a community (nobody else could vote) might gather in one place.

These gatherings often turned into boozy community festivals, which gave enterprising candidates an idea: maybe they could get people drunk and then ask them to vote for them. Cheers!

George Washington himself employed the tactic when he ran for a seat in the colonial legislature of Virginia in 1758. Records show that he provided voters with 35 gallons of wine, 43 gallons of strong beer and cider and an astonishing 95 gallons of alcoholic punch. Although he wrote to his campaign manager that they had probably not served enough, he need not have worried – he cruised (perhaps stumbled?) to victory in a landslide.

Refusing to get in on the act could mean losing out. Running for a seat in the same Virginia assembly in 1777, James Madison declared that the contest ought to reflect “the purity of moral and of republican principles” rather than being an alcohol-fuelled free for all. He ultimately lost the election – to a bartender who had opened the taps for all.

Cash and corruption

It wasn’t just alcohol that candidates plied voters with. They also offered them money.

This transaction was encouraged by the fact that, for much of American history, voting was not the private affair that it is today. For a long time, voters either reported their preferences verbally, or by dropping a brightly coloured ticket representing a particular party into a jar. This took place in public view, allowing vote-buyers to make sure they got return on their investment.

In some places, the practice became institutionalised on a large scale. An investigation in Adams County, Ohio in the 1910s found that in some places the sale of votes was nearly universal. One canny voter had managed to sell his vote to three different candidates in the same election. By the time the investigation was done and the guilty were temporarily barred from voting, some townships had no registered voters left at all.

Over the course of the 19th century, electoral reformers pushed for the introduction of the secret ballot, which today is considered to be a cornerstone of American democracy. But progress was slow. Although most states had made the switch by 1900, the last – South Carolina – only did so in 1950.

Policy for votes?

The secret ballot made it very hard to run reliable vote-buying operations, and so the practice faded away.

But as economic redistribution rose up the political agenda and the United States established a welfare state and a more complex system of taxation, politicians have often accused their opponents of trying to bribe the electorate with irresponsible cash giveaways. For instance, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attributed his loss to Barack Obama to the latter’s promised “gifts” for minority groups.

But promising a change to government pensions or income tax rates is very different to giving voters a gallon of rum or a US$10 bill for voting the right way. Offering policy changes in exchange for votes is the very essence of democratic politics.

Like other tools of democratic politics, it can be corrupted and misused. But whether this is occurring or not is very much in the eye of the beholder, particularly in a country as politically divided as the United States. It would be very difficult to establish legal rules governing such situations.

This means that, once again, Trump has steamrolled into a grey area of democratic politics, and seems intent on exploiting it to the full. Whether he will be successful or not remains to be seen.

Andrew Gawthorpe is a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/11/there-is-a-long-history-of-bribery-in-us-politics-is-donald-trump-continuing-it/