[ExI] elections again

[spike]

Pardon my overposting today.  As a moderator I should spank myself bigtime,
however I notice that there is a lot of excellent high-quality meme-age
flying about today, and no one is flaming, thanks.

I watch the Iowa Electronic Markets, the real money version of IFX Ideas
Futures:

http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/markets/

A lot of it these days is political stuff.  While looking at the trends, it
suddenly occurred to me that this provides a perfectly legal (even if
neither ethical nor moral) way of buying votes.  

Imagine a close political contest between Hosenose and Butthead.  Imagine a
rich person prefers Hosenose, but has already donated to the limit.  She
checks Iowa Electronic Markets, and sees that Hosenoses are selling for 47
cents a share and Buttheads are selling for 53.  She could buy a million
shares of Hosenose for 470k, and give them away to random poor people, say a
hundred shares each to ten thousand people in a critical state.  Then of
course if Hosenose wins, those gifts are worth a hundred dollars, otherwise
nada.  Surely this would encourage Hosenose votes.

spike