Vote for sale. A politic answer to the vote buying and coercion.

The papers on vote buying and selling and electoral patronage have focused on the normative character of the process, concentrating on the stakeholders: padrones, intermediaries and clients. This has caused the conceptualization of client/voter as a victim inside the interchange, and of the padrones and intermediaries as those who “take advantage” of the voters vulnerable situation. This vision of the phenomenon does not allow clarifying the causes of those practices; it is intended to condemn and to eradicate before understanding. The current research work aims to respond the question: Why are the citizens willing to fence their votes beyond the socioeconomic condition? The central hypothesis of the paper is that there is an answer to the vote buying and selling phenomenon in Mexico beyond the answers based on the poor and little politically sophisticated voter profile.