Having to BUY a vote explicitly removes any consideration of it being any form of democracy. Democracy requires suffrage as a right, not a commodity.

> Democracy requires suffrage as a right, not a commodity

There are plenty of "democracies" where suffrage depends on one having the appropriate citizenship.

Full disclosure: I have permanent residency - and pay my taxes - in a country where I'm neither allowed to stand for election nor allowed to vote...

Indeed, Democracy originated in an environment where suffrage was highly limited.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/democracy-...

I did say "dysfunctional".

But yeah, historically voting rights in many places were tied to land ownership. (And also genital arrangement)

lol,this is basically dialog from the original Robocop movie

No, they're plutocracies, in the most literal sense. The involvement of votes doesn't factor into it. The "public" in "republic" refers to the public at large. A private corporation, being privately held, is necessarily not republican in any sense.