Ok, I can’t make up my mind on this one. Evidently there is a group of people who are split between Nader and Gore. From what I can tell, they want GW to lose, they want Nader to get his 5%, and they want to have a clear consciense when GW wins.
From what I can tell, they will feel guilty if they vote for Gore, Bush wins and Nader doesn’t get 5%.
They will also feel guilty if they Vote for Nader, Bush wins and they get the blame.
So someone over there came up with (what I thought) was a pretty cool solution around the guilt problem. They set up a forum to trade votes for Gore and Nader between states. A Nader voter in a swing state would “exchange” their vote with a Gore voter in a safe (or hopelessly lost?) state. Both would be able to proceed guilt free, regardless of the outcome of the election.
Here are the three site I know about that are promoting this:
Time to SINK Nader Trader
These guys are pissed off that vote swapping is going on. The big problem seems to be that it is an end run around the Electoral College. I guess if it really caught on, a case could be made for potential Vote fraud.
Their idea is to flood the exchange with fake registrations in an attempt to compromise any confidence a vote trader could have.
Part of me thinks that it is cool that people found a way to privately address their voting issues. This part of me thinks that they should leave the Vote traders alone.
The other part of me sees a big problem with a any kind of vote gathering/trading/directing system on the web. People are pretty gullible, and it would suck to have someone influence an election because people falsely thought they were making a safe and even exchange.
So what do you guys think? Is private web based Vote Trading a good idea or a bad one? Is it right to flood the site in an effort to kill the idea?
Vote trading is essentially an end run around the Electoral College. The real question is, not whether vote trading should be “allowed”, but whether we should still have the Electoral College system in the first place!
The original idea behind the EC was a compromise between two groups. One wanted the president to be chosen by a popular vote of the people. The other wanted the president to be chosen by Congress, since ordinary common people are too stupid and fickle to make huge decisions like who should be the president, right? So instead of voting for the president directly, you’re actually voting for the electors. The electors then gather in their respective state capitals in December and in theory, they only decide then who they’re going to put into the Oval Office.
In practice the presidential electors are chosen through the political parties. Each party in each state nominates a slate of presidential electors for that state. This means that you’re not voting for Gore or Bush per se, but you’re voting for one party’s slate over another’s. The result is a winner-take-all system where one party wins all or none of a state’s electoral votes. The choosing of electors by slates makes it extremely difficult for a third party to challenge the major parties unless it has strength in a number of states. This is unlike the parlaimentary systems in Europe where if party X wins Y% of the vote, then it wins Y% of an influence over the day-to-day actions of the government during the following term. Here, it doesn’t matter if you get 49% of the vote. You might as well get zero.
Has the electoral college outlived its usefulness? Yes, it sure has. Will it ever be replaced with a popular vote? No, because it is serving the interests of those in power. It gives an advantage to groups concentrated in cities in states with large numbers of electoral votes. It effectively stifles third parties and strongly favors the status quo.
I can’t imagine anyone who votes for Nader would want Bush to win- Nader and Bush are ideologically on opposite sides of Gore. Yet, the way the electoral system is set up, a vote meant to bolster Nader will have the effect, unintended by the person who has cast it, of helping Bush. This is no accident. The Constitution is heavily biased toward a two-party system. The Bush people know this- they aren’t as stupid as their candidate- and some GOP groups are even planning ads for Nader in Northwestern swing states. If this isn’t cynical manipulation then I don’t know what is!
As for vote trading being “voter fraud”, I don’t see how it would count. As long as your motivation for your vote is political in nature, it’s nobody’s business.
When elections come around I usually vote based on which candidate scares me the most, and that would be Bush because he is a country club airhead who has had the world handed to him on a stick. His only qualification seems to be his daddy and his charm.
In the '96 election, I had the choice of voting in Wisconsin or Kansas. I chose Wisconsin for one reason. I had no idea who I was going to vote for, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Dole would win Kansas. If I had voted there against Dole, my vote wouldn’t have counted. In Wisconsin, it did.
This is why, among other reasons, I hate the electoral college.
As far as trading votes, I have no problem with it. This is a free country. This is a democracy. People can vote for whomever they wish for whatever reason they wish. As long as they’re registered, they can put on a blindfold and flip levers at random with their dick to make a choice. It’s their right to do so. Just be sure to bring a few alcohol swabs for afterwards.
The way I see voter fraud coming into play would be more along the lines of one person who supports candidate A setting up a site to trade votes with supporters from candisate B. Then, sends out fake trades from the A voter to the B voter.
(did I get that right?)
The effect would be a bunch of B voters changing their vote, but no A voters changing their vote. I guess you could even take this a step further, and have the whole thing run by a supporter of candidate C, and his express purpose is to drain votes from candidate B.
When I think about it, something like this just reeks of opportunity for voter fraud. Just think of the real life sites. There are people registering right now with the sole intention of screwing up the system. I don’t see anyway of them making the current system fraud proof before the election. Those vote trading systems are completely worthless now. You would have ZERO assurance that you were even voting with someone who was telling the truth.
Oh, perhaps on some issues. The political spectrum isn’t 2-d.
But, imagine if Nader gets 5% of the vote and gets federal matching funds. The democrats would have that much harder a time with losing votes to the greens in 2004.
Thus, any Republican in his or her right mind should vote for Nader if they are living in a state that is locked up for Gore.
It seems to me that a group of people trading votes are strategizing and nothing more, a bit larger in scope than the water cooler. But, as a voter, I would feel obliged to report them if Jack didn’t vote on Jack’s ballot for those running in Jack’s town/district/state.
I’ve heard of people selling votes to a party or candidate. Nothing new. But when you get right down to it, if you are the buyer, how can you be so sure you’re getting what you paid for? (unless something fraudulent is going on).
I just thought of this, (immediately after looking at the vote swap site that was shut down).
Exactly what’s the fundemental difference between selling your vote (exchanging it for cash) and exchanging it for the service of someone else (exchanging it for a likewise vote on his/her end)?
California and I could be missing something, (I’ve had a difficult time using the states online archives of law and codes, but I don’t have reason to believe that the Secretary of State is mistaken) but if the former is a felony, wouldn’t the latter be also.
Or is it the case where sex for money is wrong, but sex for companionship and protection is perfectly OK.
I love how the Democrats and Republicans give us such shitty choices, then threaten us when we try and work around the system to make sure one guy doesnt get elected while we give votes to a third party.
Voting is intended to be a very personal and yet public responsibility. That’s why many are resisting working toward Internet voting - because they like the idea of keeping it a more solemn, societal responsibility, where people get out to the polls and vote their conscience.
The whole idea is supposed to be you vote for whatever candidate you feel would be best in the office. For that reason, while I think the vote-swapping idea is definitely clever, I’m opposed to it.
The argument to Nader voters that a vote for him is a vote for Bush in some states, and that they shouldn’t vote for him because he can’t possibly win, are both nonsense. It’s a vote for Nader. That’s who the voter chooses. I’m glad to see many Nader supporters calling this urgent appeal from the Democrats for the bunk that it is; and shame on the Democrats for urging people not to vote their conscience.
(To clarify, the Democrats have not supported the vote-swapping programs, as far as I know. But they have many times appealed to Nader voters to change their vote, using the Nader vote = Bush vote logic.)
And what’s to stop these people from voting for the candidate they really support, once the voting booth curtain is drawn? That they gave their word to a stranger in Oregon they’ve never seen via the 'Net?
How would this scenario be any different under any other system? Candidate A is in a tight race with Candidate B, and Candidate C is taking enough voters away from B to prevent him from winning, but is having virtually no effect on voters for A. How would that be any different without an electoral college, or with a stronger multi-party system?
And I still submit that if people support Nader and like his ideas better than Gore’s or Bush’s, that’s who they should vote for. “Your vote doesn’t count; let us tell you who you should pick” is a pretty dangerous road for us to go down, IMO.
