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I debated including that bit for this very reason, there’s a bog standard response that relies on a bunch of assumptions that don’t stand up to much scritiny.
Poor people already vote at much lower rates than members of other classes, and I don’t imagine a single vote would be worth very much at all.
When I was poor, and I my case was rather typical, the thing I lacked more than money was time and energy. Politics requires quite a bit of both. Lots of my poor brethren had the instinct that they didn’t have the time, inclination or knowledge base to make a very informed decision at the ballot box, and so would forgo the whole process. There’s certainly something to that instinct, people want to use their power responsibly.
But even very poor people generally have someone they can trust in their lives, someone who is either more informed or more inclined towards political action.
I honestly think the ability to vote by proxy would rather increase turnout among the poor, especially for local politics. From personal experience when I was poor and living somewhere where I was unfamiliar with the local political scene I would have gladly gave my vote to a trusted friend who is similar politically to me and has my interest at heart.
Now that I’m financially stable and more informed I vote more regularly. And members of my social circle are also more interested in asking about my politics.
And for those people who will likely never be interested in politics for one reason or another, they still have the ability to directly benefit from their voting privileges as a citizen.
What about employers who tell people to sell their vote to their employer or they are fired? Middle class employees won't stand for this, but people with few skills who are qualified for few jobs, .ay have a problem.
What do you about the fact that you being able to buy unused votes dilutes third parties' votes? Aside from forcing the third party to bid against you for the votes just so that he's no worse off than he is today.
Employers already have minimal ability, inclination and interest in dictating how their employees vote or use their private property, why would that suddenly change?
Not only that, it’s often illegal and/or incredibly taboo to do so.
Most people aren’t using using their voting privileges on a consistent basis already, thus artificially inflating the importance of the people who do vote. Once again, disproportionately the middle class and wealthy.
If anything, this would have the opposite effect of lessening disenfranchisement by making it easier to actually use your voting privileges by introducing a proxy mechanism.
It’s not some utopian vision though, some constant of people will never be interested or can’t be bothered to vote, or even transfer their voting power to someone else.
The "minimal ability" is the key phrase here. As long as the ballot is really secret, the employer can't verify that you've voted in a particular manner, so he can't buy your vote.
In a hypothetical where votes could be transferred, the employer could legally do the equivalent of buying your vote by paying you to transfer or threatening you with job loss if you don't transfer.
If someone just doesn't use his vote, it inflates the votes of everyone equally, so third parties are not put at a relative disadvantage. If he transfers the vote to you, on the other hand, it dilutes the vote of third parties.
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