Many scholars view vote buying as a simple economic transaction: parties and candidates distribute material benefits to individual citizens in exchange for support at the ballot box. Drawing upon a variety of comparative experiences, this paper argues, however, that the commercial aspirations of vote buyers often run into objective as well as intersubjective barriers. On the objective side, seller compliance is uncertain as vote buying does not take place within a “normal” market protected by social and legal norms. On the intersubjective side, electoral practices that outside observers describe as “vote buying” may carry very different meanings in different cultural contexts. To assess empirical claims as well as normative judgments about vote buying, the paper concludes, we need to be aware of the potential gap between our idealized, commercial model of vote buying and the way it actually works in the world.