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Judge Refuses TRO Against California over Website Shutdown
YanceyAI writes "According to Yahoo!, a federal judge rejected the ACLU's lawsuit to force California authorities to allow Web sites aimed at so-called 'Nader-traders.' Read more here." Interesting. I hope the ACLU does pursue the case. On the one hand, the idea of vote-trading is silly, because there's absolutely no way to verify if the other party complied. But this very silliness means there shouldn't be any law against it - it's just speech.
It's because people realize that voting their conscience could cause them to end up with the candidate that most people would least like to see in office. Here's an example:
Say 30% of the people really want to vote Nader, but would rather see Gore elected than Bush. Now say another 30% want to vote Gore, but would rather see Nader elected than Bush. Then say that Bush gets 39% of the remaining 40%. Now, most of the country wants either Gore or Nader to get elected, but because they split their vote, they end up with the candidate that most people definitely didn't want. This is a shortcoming of the plurality voting system.
These websites are just one manifestation of people's realization that the current voting system will often not produce the right results if you just vote your conscience. Especially in 3-way (or more) races. We need to change the election system. We should use approval voting or the Boorda count instead of the plurality vote. We should also reform the electoral college system to reflect the voting of a state. It shouldn't be an all or nothing thing. If the Green party gets 20% of the votes in the state, the Green party should get 20% of the electoral votes.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Put plainly, it's voter fraud. Vote-trading in the current system is nothing more than manipulating the electoral college, and that's illegal. As the site was set up specifically as a venue for such fraud to take place (by its own admission, in fact), the judge was right to stand back and let law enforcement take care of it.
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