Comment by Brendinooo

5 hours ago

Apparently not.

>In Brown v. Hartlage (1982), a Supreme Court case where a Kentucky county commissioner promised to reduce his salary if elected, the Court unanimously drew a line between policy promises and vote buying. “A candidate’s promise to confer some ultimate benefit on the voter, qua taxpayer, citizen, or member of the general public, does not lie beyond the pale of First Amendment protection,” Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote. Given that precedent, Trump is almost certainly within the bounds of the law (you might remember Elon Musk wasn’t charged for handing out $1 million checks to people during a campaign rally in Wisconsin in exchange for “taking the time to vote.”).

https://www.readtangle.com/trump-dividend-midterm-promise/

3 comments

Brendinooo

Reply
Arodex  3 hours ago

This is an asinine decision that essentially makes vote buying totally legal. We see this trick with the recent Supreme Court decisions that essentially make racial gerrymandering legal again by just making the crime impossible to prove by accepting any other justification at face value.

  • Brendinooo  2 hours ago

    I mean, if you really believe that, then no politician would ever be able say something like "I'll work to get you free health care".

    • Ntrails  2 hours ago

      Yeah. I'm not sure how a strict reading doesn't end up with obvious policies ending up making all of the policies below "vote buying":

          - Cancel student loans
    - Reduce federal tax rates
    - Increase unemployment/pension/etc payouts

      There is always a state of "this policy upside is contingent on voting for me" - though in Trumps case he is making it contingent Not on his own electoral outcome in some sense. Just messy.