In the political arena, it is common for political parties to buy votes. Behind this phenomenon, there are many complex intertwining interests and strategic considerations. Controversy and exploration coexist, and it is indeed worthy of our in-depth study and analysis.

In many countries and regions, political parties often provide special benefits to voters in order to win their support.

In some developing countries, during local elections, political parties often promise tangible benefits to voters, such as providing daily necessities or improving living conditions and other obvious benefits, in exchange for voters' support.

This approach can indeed mobilize the support of some voters to a certain extent.

Some voters who live a difficult life find these immediate benefits very attractive.

This seemingly simple exchange of interests actually hides complex battles and many uncertain factors.

At the same time, this means of buying votes doesn't always go smoothly.

The vote is secret, and even if voters enjoy the convenience given by political parties, they are still free to change their minds.

This is like in a sale, where one party pays a deposit first, but the other party may not act as agreed. This uncertainty brings difficulties to political parties' strategies to buy votes in elections.

Researchers have found that some political parties and their political machinery try to circumvent the secret ballot requirement.

They use deep knowledge of voters' social networks to try to infer individual votes.

In the information age, political parties use tools such as big data to collect information on voters’ social connections, shopping habits and other fields to determine their voting intentions.

In some election activities in the United States, campaign organizations will analyze voters' information on social platforms, location and other data, trying to discover signs of voters' political stance.

This practice runs counter to the purpose of anonymous voting to protect voter privacy, and also raises questions about the integrity of the democratic system.

This behavior of political parties has a clear goal and aims to control the flow of votes as accurately as possible. They hope that after providing benefits to voters, they will receive corresponding votes in return.

This kind of behavior walks a fine line between morality and law, and if exposed to the public, it will surely provoke serious turmoil in trust.

This strategy adopted by political parties gradually evolved into "reverse accountability".

Political parties try to influence the voting choices of those who intend to vote for other parties through scare tactics.

In reality, such rumors have appeared in grassroots elections in some places.

During an election in a small village, some voters reported that they had received informal reminders from a political party. The reminder is that if they do not support the political party, they may encounter unfair situations in the future when enjoying policy preferences or the allocation of public resources.

This approach to accountability goes in the opposite direction, greatly affecting voters' right to choose, and at the same time undermining the basic principles of fairness and impartiality that elections should follow.

This system affects the psychology of voters, causing them to feel fearful and hesitant when voting. They may ultimately go against their original intentions and elect candidates they do not want.

The rights of voters who adhere to the concept of democratic elections have been seriously damaged.

Political parties have clear preferences in choosing their target voters.

Empirical research in Argentina shows that political parties are more likely to reward poor passive opponents.

Political parties will ensure maximum support by increasing regulation and penetrating the collective electorate.

In poor communities, political workers actively carry out various activities to help poor voters overcome life difficulties and promote poverty alleviation knowledge.

They not only assist voters financially, but also influence them psychologically, striving to attract voters to their support camp.

However, this does not mean that every voter will vote in accordance with the party's expectations. The political stance of voters is actually very complex and changeable.

Even if political parties devote many resources to the fight, some voters still cling to their political beliefs.

An unresolved problem in the machine politics literature is how to get machines to ensure that voters do not renege on their commitment to vote after being rewarded.

The formal literature mentions that the machine targets core voters, but the reality is that its target is not those staunch supporters, but those voters whose future voting intentions are not yet clear.

It's like being in a gambling game. You originally thought you had a winning chip, but as soon as you start operating, you find that the situation is changeable and full of uncertainty.

In the current electoral system, political parties have to solve a difficult problem, which is how to effectively supervise voters and ensure that voting agreements can be implemented.

Voters' psychology and actions are not easy to fully control. They are influenced by many environmental factors and personal concepts. Despite their efforts to influence and manage political parties, they cannot completely prevent voters from violating the agreement.

Based on the existing research literature on machine politics and distribution politics, this article introduces the issue of commitment into the repeated game scenario between machines and voters, effectively solving the commitment problem encountered by machine politics.

By surveying Argentinian voters, we apply regression analysis to test hypotheses and provide new insights into the phenomenon of machine vote buying in politics.

In the empirical study, we encountered conflicting data, such as rewarding those with “very bad” views more heavily, in contrast to previous findings that machines did not reward hardline opposition to voters’ views. .

This phenomenon shows that there is always a distance between theory and practice, and also warns researchers that they need to continue to dig deeper.

What do you think about the impact of vote-buying by political parties on the democratic system?