Things you can do with vote-buying money

I have always found problematic the church's often repeated position on vote-buying which says "accept the money but vote according to your conscience".

One, who will your conscience choose if both the administration and the opposition, even independents, distribute money on the eve of the election? Second, who will your conscience vote for when the candidates being carried the political parties were in the first place chosen mainly on basis of how much they can "contribute" to the campaign? Third, even if politicians who distribute money lose, they don't really think that they lost because the people voted according to their conscience. No, knowing them, they'd think they did not spend enough.

Which is why, in the succeeding election, they will be back with even bigger money to distribute. We therefore as a people need to be more emphatic with our rejection of vote buying. Today, I begin a list of what you can do with vote-buying money in order to deliver our message to politicians and to the major political parties. Try these:

• Paste the money bills and the usual sample ballot which comes with them on a cartolina with huge bold letters saying "HUWAG TULARAN" and post on your gate
  
• Place the money bills with sample ballots of opposing candidates in an envelop with the words "sinong pipiliin ko ngayon?" and drop in the "kolekta" of the morning mass on the day of the election
• When you vote on election day, secretly insert in your official ballot the money bills plus the sample ballot you received, with the name of the person who gave it to you, the time and the circumstance written on the back, and drop in the ballot box
• Scan the money bills and the sample ballot and attach the file to an email and send, with explanation, as a chain letter for continuous forwarding until it reaches the email address of the politician's children
• Upon receiving the money bills with the attached sample ballot, convince the courier to pose for a "ceremonial turnover" picture-taking and send the picture, with writeup, to the community section of your local newspaper
  

More to come. I encourage others to do their own list too and tell me about it by posting a comment here. Of course, I understand it will take guts to do any of the things listed here, but until we'd muster enough courage, we will continue to suffer this unclean election then corrupt government cycle over and over again. What do you think?