I do not believe that there can be any stronger presumption against a candidate than his eagerness to look for votes.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 271 to 280 (in French)
Undated

The last hundred and sixty pages of the Complete Works are drafts of texts that had not been published and are more or less complete. This first draft aimed at exposing ten electoral fallacies, three of them having been analysed, describing classic examples of mistakes in motivating a vote.  One issue that will be exposed by the Public Choice school of economics in the 20th century can be seen here, viz. that the elected people are not demigods but men indeed, who are subject to all the weaknesses of men and not only to the altruism that they usually advertise.

Among the delusive reasons there can be to grant a vote to a candidate, we can find in different ways the more or less personal bound that these people try to knot with their electorate. If it is unfortunately utopian to think that it would be possible to elect somebody who would not have been a candidate expressing his desire to be elected, it is key to keep in mind today’s quote. The very fact of being a candidate to an election should raise a flag so that the electorate be wary of the politician who is asking for his vote. The flock of psychopaths that can be found within political institutions is the very proof of this.