Starbucks accused of "buying votes"

The story

How is that buying votes? It's not like they say if you vote for Obama, or vote for McCain, just so long as you vote?

If anything, I'd say it's a good thing. Stupis Starbucks haters

They're offering to pay you if you voted.

That's buying votes. Apparently it doesn't matter whether you endorse a candidate while buying a vote. It's illegal to buy a vote.

I imagine that if it were legal to buy votes, someone could go out and, for instance, pay poor people to vote, knowing that poor people overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

Im gonna go get my free Starbucks today! Ben & Jerry's is also giving free icecream today

Hmmm...I never thought about it as buying votes...and I don't drink coffee anyway so I wasn't planning to go there...now Ben & Jerry's giving away free ice cream is another story!

Yup apparently Eat n Park is giving away free coffee too and Krispy Kream is giving away free doughnuts.

A non-vote is still a choice, if you think about it. You are choosing to not cast a ballot, whether it be because you do not feel well enough informed, you are just expressing displeasure at the raft of candidates to choose from, or any other reason.

The promise of a coffee if you vote is an attempt to change your vote from 'no-preference' to 'unspecified preference', and hence is a bought vote.

I believe the absolute limit of what you can do to bring out the vote is to remove obstacles that otherwise stood in the way of people voting how they wish. i.e. you could take a coach down to Harlem and say 'anyone that wants to vote, hop on and we'll take you to the polling station', just as long as you didn't offer any incentive beyond transportation to the polling place.

A loophole is to set up stand near a polling place and give free coffee to everyone regardless of whether they voted or not.

I believe that would be legal. Then it's just geographic co-incidence.

Once there for the free coffee, people are more likely to decide, of their own will, that they would like to vote. People already intending to vote are also more likely to stay out in the cold waiting to vote if they have a hot coffee.

Ways and means, ways and means.

wow, today can be a all day food fest, I gotta finf all these locations in my area and make the rounds, lol

One lady was mad at the polling place that I went to because they weren't passing out coffee, and she was out of the coffee she brought from home

I guess all the companies are getting around it by not asking their customers if they did or didn't vote, and not requiring them to prove it.

I guess as long as the person just comes in and says "hey, I voted" whether or not they did, that's ok.

August:

Barack Obama's campaign is currently in full vote-buying mode. A vote for him, he promises, is a vote for a $1,000 check.

Is that buying a vote?

*sighs* Evidence?

well isnt that what Obama has done by inferring a robin hood stance of spreading the wealth around? We want handouts, and he will deliver....gimme, gimme, gimme!

certainly not a dumb move on his part exploiting the poor, and ignorant and lazy! Probrobly the most exercise some of those voters will get all year, going to vote!

Why don't you ask John McCain.

Do I have to ask again? You made the accusation so prove it!