Abstract: The literature on voter turnout focuses on the determinants of the electorate's vote supply. There is growing recognition, however, that the demanders of votes -candidates, political parties and interest groups -have strong incentives to invest resources in mobilizing support on Election Day. We test the hypothesis that corruption rents increase the value of holding public office and, hence, elicit greater demand-side effort in building winning coalitions. Analyzing a panel dataset of public officials convicted of misusing their offices between 1977 and 2005, we find, after controlling for other influential factors, that governmental corruption raises voter turnout rates in gubernatorial elections. JEL Classifications: D72, K4, H
