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Buy the Vote is a 15 minute blind bidding game where candidates win states by spending the most campaign dollars. Players are presidential candidates running for president with the goal of collecting as many electoral votes as possible. At the end of the game, the player with the most electoral votes becomes the presidential nominee and the player with the second most electoral votes become the running mate; together the presidential nominee and the running mate need 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency!
To campaign for states, players will select states to spend their campaign dollars on behind voting booths, and when ready, all bets are revealed. The player that spends the most campaign dollars on the state wins the state's electoral votes. Once that money is spent, win, tie, or lose; that money is gone. Big advertising networks thank you for your campaign dollars.
The game starts when the 15 minute timer begins, and with every new round, time pressure escalates as more states will be up for grabs. Ties on state cards leaves the state card and creates stacks of state cards for rebid in the next round. Swing states let you steal the last won state from other candidates. And every player gets more money as rounds pass plus bonus money as you win more states.
Think you have what it takes to win the presidency in 15 minutes?
—description from Coozies Games
Back To School: Buy The Vote
- Educational civics content
- Quick 15-minute play
- Easy to teach and learn
- Hidden information adds tension
- Swing state mechanic provides meaningful decisions
- Encourages budgeting and forward planning
- Prototype version may differ from final release
- US geography familiarity helps; may be challenging for non-US players
- Civics-centric focus may limit broad appeal
- Civics education, budgeting, strategic bidding
- United States electoral process, Electoral College
- Educational overview with practical demonstration
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action Timer — A 15-minute timer constrains play; game can end early if the deck is exhausted
- Auction / Bidding — Players allocate money to states to win electoral votes; funds are hidden during bidding
- bidding — Players allocate money to states to win electoral votes; funds are hidden during bidding
- budget_management — Initial funds are limited and replenishment occurs later, forcing budgeting across rounds
- deck_management — States are represented by cards laid on a central area; players bid to claim stacks
- hidden_information — Players conceal their spending decisions until revealed, encouraging inference and bluffing
- Resource Management — Initial funds are limited and replenishment occurs later, forcing budgeting across rounds
- state_value_and_voting — States have fixed electoral votes; accumulating a majority is the objective
- swing_state_bonus — Winning the golden swing state allows a state swap (two-for-one) with another player
- timer — A 15-minute timer constrains play; game can end early if the deck is exhausted
- Voting — States have fixed electoral votes; accumulating a majority is the objective
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is a prototype so it's going to look quite a bit different when the final version is released
- it's a quick game it's easy to teach it's easy to learn
- you start with 10 million dollars
- you only start with 10 and that's got to last you until round four
- those executive functions are super important
- you'll hide what you're doing from the other players