Various studies provide evidence that buying of votes is a widespread instrument of parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. In this paper we examine whether democratic societies which hold votes on educational enhancing redistribution proposals can escape poverty traps if vote buying is possible. We show that if agents can buy or sell votes, then the education of a society is impossible because educational enhancing redistribution will not occur. Hence, society will remain in the poverty trap. We then show that the negative effects of vote buying can be eliminated, for example, by means of a repeated voting constitution in combination with a threshold flexible majority voting rule.