This paper posits a formal explanation for why electoral candidates in certain low-income countries distribute resources prior to the election despite there being no guarantee that voters will respond to the transfers by voting in their favour. A multitude of empirical research shows that despite the existence of ballot secrecy laws, “money for votes” or distribution of electoral handouts is a strategy utilised in many developing polities despite the lack of contract enforcement. In order to reconcile this fact with the “commitment problem” of the contingent exchange implied in electoral clientelism, I show that pre-election transfers may be a signaling mechanism to indicate candidate strength in order to capture the vote, and that “vote” buying is a weakly dominant strategy for candidates. I use a formal model to show that vote monitoring may be a less effective electoral strategy for candidates in environments where perceived electoral viability is more important than ideological differences.