Definition
Bribery at elections is the offense committed by a person who gives, promises, or offers money or any valuable inducement to a qualified voter, with the corrupt purpose of influencing how that voter will vote, inducing the voter to abstain from voting, or rewarding the voter after the fact for having voted in a particular way or having abstained. The offense runs in both directions temporally: it covers pre-election inducements aimed at shaping conduct and post-election payments made as rewards for conduct already taken.
The offense focuses on the corruptor — the person extending the bribe — though most statutory schemes also reach the elector who knowingly accepts. The word "valuable inducement" is broader than cash; it encompasses anything of value, including employment, gifts, debt forgiveness, or services.
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Common Confusion
Bribery at elections is a subspecies of bribery generally but is analytically distinct from two adjacent offenses researchers frequently conflate with it.
First, general public bribery — directed at a public official to influence an official act — targets the decision-maker in government. Bribery at elections targets a private citizen in the capacity of voter; the voter is not an "officer" in the traditional public corruption sense.
Second, voter intimidation involves coercion through threats or duress. Bribery operates through inducement and reward, not fear. Both corrupt the electoral process, but they proceed through opposite psychological mechanisms and are typically codified separately in federal and state law.
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Why It Matters in Research
**Statutory displacement of common law.** By the time Black's first and second editions were published, bribery at elections was largely a creature of statute rather than common law in most American jurisdictions. Researchers consulting historical sources should expect the dictionary definition to reflect the common law baseline, while actual prosecution standards were governed by election codes that varied significantly by state. Do not treat the Black's formulation as a complete statement of any jurisdiction's operative law.
**Federal versus state tracks.** Federal law reaches bribery in federal elections primarily through 52 U.S.C. § 10307 (formerly 42 U.S.C. § 1973i) and, where public funds are involved, through the general federal bribery statute. State law governs state and local elections. Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century sources will find that federal statutory coverage was narrow; the bulk of electoral bribery prosecution before the Voting Rights era was a state matter.
**The "valuable inducement" problem in historical sources.** Historical dictionaries define the object of the bribe broadly, but courts and statutes have at various times disputed whether small gifts, entertainment, food and drink at polling places (so-called "treating"), or promises of employment suffice. The treating tradition was deeply embedded in colonial and early American electoral culture and was not uniformly criminalized. Researchers working with nineteenth-century materials should be alert to the fact that conduct now clearly within the offense may not have been charged as such.
**Temporal scope.** The definition expressly covers post-election rewards. This is important for researchers analyzing prosecutorial theories: an agreement to pay after voting may be charged as a completed bribe, not merely a solicitation or attempt. Historical sources are consistent on this point, which helps when tracing the contours of the offense across older authorities.
**Corpus connections.** This term connects meaningfully to the broader public corruption literature, the administrative law of election administration, and — through the "valuable inducement" element — to commercial bribery doctrine. Researchers should trace parallel treatment in election law treatises rather than relying solely on the criminal law dictionaries.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The first and second editions of Black's are in near-perfect agreement, differing only in minor punctuation. Both editions define the offense identically in substance: the giving, promising, or offering of money or any valuable inducement to an elector, corruptly, to vote a particular way, abstain, or as a post-vote reward. This stability across editions reflects that the definition was settled doctrine by the late nineteenth century and did not require revision.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: (1) the question of whether the elector-recipient commits a separate offense (the dictionary focuses solely on the corruptor); (2) the "treating" problem and whether hospitality constitutes a valuable inducement; (3) the distinction between state and federal electoral contexts; and (4) the procedural question of who may bring prosecution. Researchers relying on Black's alone will have a solid definitional floor but will need to supplement with election law treatises and statutory materials for any applied research question.
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Jurisdictional Note
Every American state criminalizes bribery at elections, but the precise elements — particularly what constitutes a "valuable inducement," the required corrupt intent standard, and whether the voter-recipient is independently liable — vary by statute. Federal jurisdiction attaches when the bribed election is a federal election or when a federal program nexus exists. Researchers should not assume the common law definition maps cleanly onto any specific state's codified offense.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Bribery and Public Corruption (18 USC 201) [criminal_94]
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Commercial Bribery [criminal_95]
The Law Mind Administrative Law & Government Encyclopedia: Election Administration, Voting Technology, and Post-Election Disputes [admin_157]
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