The Criminal Accountability of Vote Buying

• Main Authors: Yi-Chang Chang, 張益昌
• Other Authors: 周漾沂
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56gz29

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 法律學研究所 === 105 === Vote buying was identified as a punitive behavior in our criminal law system for a long time. The argument about how to determine the behavior of vote buying and the number of act has continued for many years, but the superordinate concept of those technical issues, the legal interest of vote buying, is still a question. First, this thesis will review the history, methods and the result of vote buying. Next, this thesis will further discuss the issue of legal interest in three ways: equality, efficiency, and inalienability. Unfortunately, all the three arguments fail to establish the criminal accountability of vote buying. That is to say we need to seek a higher concept of the legal interest theory to clarify the accountability of vote buying. Based on the legal interest theory this thesis takes, the punishment of vote buying cannot meet the standard of general validity. On the other side, to solve further questions of the legal interest, we also need to realize the relationship between the democratic system and the purpose of nation. The purpose of nation is to solve the problems which result from the individual limitation and to establish protective mechanism to maximum the personal freedom. The further question is what type of the democratic system can coordinate the ideal state mission; in the view of this thesis, the democratic system is just a means of accomplishing the state mission. Therefore, the concept of democracy cannot conflict with the state concept; to protect democracy is not a reasonable reason to limit people’s right and freedom. Namely, since there is no reason to establish the accountability of vote buying, this criminal punishment should be abolished. Finally, this thesis tries to point out the possible narrowed interpretive directions: only in the referendum on constitutional amendment, the vote buying need to be prohibited.