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Minn. teen charged with offering his vote on eBay | KOMO News – Seattle, Washington | Offbeat– — Here is the problem I’m having here. This old law is a dead-letter law that hasn’t been enforced for 80 years. You cannot vote for someone else so this whole thing is a ridiculous prank. In a normal society if the authorities didn’t think this was funny, they’d tell the kid to take down the post and not do this again. Instead he has an office full of dickheads who are going to waste the taxpayers money and charge a teenager with a felony based on some 1893 law. Are they going to enforce those old anti-kissing laws too? We should identify these scandalous public officials and demand their resignation or vote them out of office or both. The state of Minnesota should be outraged.
A college student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this falls presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn’t see the humor.
University of Minnesota student Max P. Sanders, 19, was charged with a felony Thursday in Hennepin County District Court after allegedly asking for a minimum of $10 in exchange for voting for the bidders preferred candidate.
“Good luck” Sanders wrote under the eBay handle zepdrummer612. “Youre sic country depends on You”
Sanders was charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting under an 1893 state law that makes it a crime to offer to buy or sell a vote.
According to a criminal complaint, the Minnesota secretary of states office learned about the offering on the Web site and told prosecutors. Investigators sent a subpoena to eBay and got information that led to Sanders.
Oh, and aren’t there more important crimes to prosecute in Minnesota? Like murders? Or perhaps this is a cover-up for the fact that the a-hole Secretary of State in Minnesota is being investigated himself. Oh, and there is this scandal. Who elected this guy?
Found by Ed Campbell and Aric Mackey.
I’ve mentioned this before. I think that all laws other than perhaps felonies should have expiration dates of no more than say 20 years. Every 20 years, the current legislation would have to decide whether to re-up the law. It would have the side benefit of having the legislation spend less time making new laws while the re-evaluate the legitimacy of existing laws.
This guy wasn’t elected. He was appointed by the vice president wannabe Gov. Tim Pawlenty. His track record of appointments should throw cold water on his VP aspirations. His list also includes appointing Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau as the head of the MN Department of Transportation (35W bridge collapse).
How is what the student did any different than what large corporations, lobbyist and PAC’s do? Except that his single vote has little to no impact on the future of our nation compared to the millions of votes that PAC’s and lobbyist “buy” and how they change politics to support their singular cause.
Why then isn’t Minnesota and every state in the union going after those buyers of votes?
This make me say “WTF?!?!?!?”
I’m not going to defend that young man nor am I going to defend the people trying to put him in jail. Vote buying used to be big business.
I think they had gone modern and just fake the votes thus leaving out the voter twice. Not true everywhere but it has been known to occur rather often.
haha, this is hilarious. What happened to the good ole days when the police would round up people from cathouses and drive them by the voting station before making their way to the station house. The felony should be voting on Windows CE machines.
So any crime short of murder shouldn’t be prosecuted?
Yea, but making it a FELONY!!! With a jail term of 5 years in prison.
Asinin is all I can come up with to describe this entire situation.
I thought the punishment was supposed to fit the crime in this country. I appear to be sadly mistaken.
Don
In democracy the people are supposed to be worth more than the process, the process simply being the method-du-jour of figuring out what the people want.
Ahh..poor Mikey..can’t think of any felonies other than murder. Talk about reducing to the absurd. Of course..this goes along with the view from the right that all crimes (meaning..things they don’t like other people to do) should be grounds for the death penalty.
I don’t think I’d even limit it to non-felony expiration’s. I think all laws should be revisited every 20 years. I’d also make sure they couldn’t all be bundled together in one lump renewal package. One at a time please, with the votes on the record. That would at least go a little way towards keeping our public “servants” honest..and more importantly..busy..and out of trouble thinking up new silly laws.
Uh yeah, voting is the most sacred duty a citizen has.
BTW: the 35W bridge collapse would have happened no matter who was Secretary of Transportation.
Votes are bought and sold every day in Washington.
#11, read the original post again. It was Dvorak who said murder.