I vastly prefer buying VOTES rather than buying ELECTIONS. It would make the resolution of multiple buying attempts theoretically simple: you just add both peoples' purchases.
And it would be fun to buy a vast amount of votes for a person you want to smear, and then claim they tried to buy the election. It might be more complex to code, but this seems like the most balanced way. The more votes you buy, the more expensive, and the more likely you win... but also the more likely people are able to "do the math" and catch you.
Frankly, just swapping winners seems really, really lame to me.
MOREOVER, there is a serious thing to consider: this might just kill the referendum system and lead to a return to manual message-based voice voting. Many realms did this frequently before the current referendum system. It could return. We might be fine with that but, as I remember, it was a huge hassle.
In sum: buying individual votes in elections, good. Buying winner-slot, bad. Either way, unintended consequence could be to increase player burdens.
