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Circuit Court Okays Vote Swapping Site
scubacuda writes "C|net reports that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court has ruled in favor of Alan Porter's website, Voteexchange2000.com, a site enabling Gore and Nader voters to swap their Gore votes in states where Bush was likely to win anyway for the Green party candidate Nader. In response to the court's decision, Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU's Southern California office, said, "We're pleased that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election." (For a look at some of the legal issues behind "vote swapping," visit Gigalaw)"
Didnt Bush get less votes or is my memory wrong. Your electoral college lets the guy with the second moset votes win so sabotageing it cant be that bad if the most popular person doesent win. It would have been just as correct by that thinking.
Is hugely influenced by the amount of money a political party has. This is why it's so insanely difficult for an additional party to make any gains. Dems and Repubs have cornered the national government, and that is very sad. The only thing this does is make for damn sure that the same vanilla issues come up again and again, because the agendas of the big parties coincide with the agendas of business. Other parties, Green, Reform, Libertarian have hugely varied political goals that most Americans never learn about.
It's a pretty lame attempt to undermine the voting system which this country has had since it was founded.
Funny, I find a voting system that can elect someone who loses the popular vote to be pretty lame. And I mean that statement in both senses.
Bush won anyway. Looks like their attempt to sabotage the electoral college failed.
No, Gore won. In popular, and in the final Florida vote count across the state. Bush STOLE the presidency, fair & square.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I spend a good deal of time before each election working cautiously to review information that is as non-partisan as possible in order to determine which candidates are the best, and it disturbs me when the so-called democrats and liberals stage sideshows like this to distract the American public from the task at hand. Issues like our right to bear arms and the economy are tossed to the wayside as we focus on things like stains on dresses and odd campaign contributions.
I know that my next visit to the polls will be a much more conservative one, and I hope yours will be too. We need to put the focus on what's important.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
It's just using the system to the most, by playing by it's own rules.
The true flaw in the electoral college system in use in the US, is that it allows votes not to count. In Denmark, and I think a lot of other countries too, votes that is not a part of the majority, is put into a second pool, from which so-called "additional mandates" are distributed.
That being said - any system has flaws. When you've picked one, you have to stick with it. You can't go whining about how it should be, because it isn't. Bush is president, in spite of having a majority against him, because the system allows it to be so.
you can honestly think it would be possible to stop people from speaking with each other and deciding to vote for a specific person. It's another case of the internet empowering people with the ability to communicate more efficiently which upsets the status-quo and the people who rely on it. Another example of why the current Electoral College scheme is no longer viable in this country; we've outgrown it.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Congress absolutely runs on the quid-pro-quo of vote swapping: "I'll vote for your invasive, environmentally unsound, pork barrel project if you'll vote for mine". You think all those egocentric, power-mad, greedy lawyers in Congress actually read the bills that they vote on? Nope, they swap votes or follow the party line, often without having a clue what they're voting for or against. So much easier than having to think... and potentially so much more profitable.
"Other parties, Green, Reform, Libertarian have hugely varied political goals that most Americans never learn about."
Actually, America learns about these fringe extremists and rejects them. There is no cover up, no silencing.
"because the agendas of the big parties coincide with the agendas of business."
Business has nothing to do with it, another wacky conspiracy theory.
Even if you think vote trading is a bad bad thang
because it undermines the system in place, it's for
that exact same reason it's a good thing. One way
or another, it shakes up the system a bit. It calls
more attention to campaign finance reform, and
raises questions about the current electorial
college system. I think the overall effect this will
have on the awareness aspect of things will outweigh
any perceived negatives. Perhaps we could have a few
more political parties receiving national level
campaign finance in the future. It's kinda
un-american to have two heavily dug in parties
receiving all that cash, with little chance in
hell of any other party getting to promote their
candidates. I'd imagine there would be plenty of
reform on many levels if we had 4 or 5 strong
political parties competing for your votes.
Competition == choice == good.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
How do you know that the person you would allegedly swap with would actually vote the way you agreed upon?? There is no way to guarantee that they will vote the "right" way. I personally think it would be foolish to swap your vote, you might as well give it away.
Anyone else?
To elaborate: the secret ballot--not letting another person watch you vote--has to be mandatory to be fully effective. It's not enough to give you the option of voting secretly in a voting booth with the curtain drawn. Allowing another person into the booth with you to watch you vote has to be prohibited. Otherwise you can be coerced into voting a certain way and "voluntarily" inviting a verifier (your boss, your abusive spouse, the local Mafia don, etc) to make sure you followed your orders. Of course your boss can ask you how you secretly voted, but without direct verification, you can lie to him. That's correct, an intentional and desirable characteristic of the secret balloting system is it makes a way for you to lie your way out of a bad situation. But that means "vote swapping" with total strangers on the basis of mere pledges is a pretty dumb idea. You don't and can't have any way to know how they really voted.
Type "receipt-free voting" to see how designers of computerized cryptographic voting protocols try to deal with this problem. It's a hard theoretical problem, quite difficult to do securely and keep all the nice attributes of paper ballots.
A system like this could potentially mitigate the huge distortions of a plurality system.
Although a better solution would be for voters to rank their choices, then use one of several formulas to tabulate it. Then Nader voters could have voted both honestly and strategically -- i.e. 1. Nader, 2. Gore, 3. Bush -- which would have expressed their true preference for Nader while not hurting Gore (vs. simply voting for Gore).
I hope that the need for vote-swapping systems helps to call attention to the flaws of a plurality voting. These flaws do immense damage, by causing political parties to exist, which polarizes (and paralyzes) our government.
(Parties form because under a plurality system because candidates gain massive advantages by concentrating votes by eliminating similar candidates before the election takes place. Ranking-style voting completely eliminates this effect.)
...would having 10 different options be better? I used to think having simply two parties was the worse thing for us. But now I wonder just how watered down politics and decisions would be if we had a plethora of parties? Could _anything_ be passed then?
I agree that money influences the options we choose from. The amount of money pumped into different candidates can certainly with enough sample points, lead to a prediction of a winner. But I don't consider it a rule. We've seen candidates with more money than entire parties lose to another candidate. If you're a profound, magnanimous, _charismatic_ leader you'll get your support (and thus money) to beat the other guy.
Watch CSPAN or CSPAN2. You'd be surprised what caliber of elected officals (especially in the house) run our country. These officals were by no means wealthy. They came from a district that put them there based not on money, but viral like "grass root" marketing. And their ineptness scares me.
Money nor party affiliation makes a candidate bad or good. We've elected moroons to office regardless to either of those variable.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
And I can't remember of any president of any country in Europe after WW II who became president through court decisions. The US americans always had a very strange view of democracy, but to their excuse one has to mention the historical reasons. But in the time of TV, radio, telephones and internet, the current system is not suitable anymore. A more democratic system should be established, but isn't, and will (most likely) never be, because both big parties like it best.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
extremely unlikely...
Electoral candidates are picked by the winning party...it's sort of a gift for years of party loyalty.
If they did, they'd end their political career...end of story - Very very unlikely.
RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Uhm, isn't that discrimination? Criminals are citizens, too, with the same rights and duties as other citizens (at least one may think).
If that were true, would the state restrict their movements and activities for a proscribed period?
Criminals, in the United States, are those who have forfeited specific civil rights for a period prescribed by law. These civil rights include the ability to live and move where they choose, as well as other odds and ends (they can be forced into servitude, for instance).
The rights forfeited do not include the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and various litigation over the years has ironed out ad hoc rules as to what that entails.
Many states have decided that one of the rights which felons forfeit is the franchise, and that permanently.
Saying that this is 'discrimination' is meaningless. States also inflict voting discrimination on non-citizens, the deceased (except Illinois), and those under the age of 21.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Wrong. It was a TIE. The number of votes one candidate got was WAY WAY below the margin of error, especially for a punch-card system. Unfortunately, the current election system had no way to deal with ties. So the result of the election was essentially random.
A 'tie' is where two people get exactly the same number of votes. Voting systems aren't interested in statistical margins of error. They're interested in numbers of votes. If one candidate received more votes than another, it wasn't a tie. If it's difficult to determine which one received more, that means you need to count more carefully, not that you need to come up with an algorithm to guess who ought to win.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
I agree that our current system enforces political parties (causing them to exist by giving massive advantages to those who collaborate to remove "similar" candidates before the actual election), but I don't think the electoral college is the reason. The reason is simply the plurality system, where you are not able to fully express your full preference (for instance, saying that you prefer Nader, but would prefer Gore to Bush). Notice that even in state and local elections parties exist, in the absence of the electoral college. (although in places where there are runoff elections when any candidate gets less than 50% of the vote, political parties do not have as much influence)
That's not to say that the electoral college is bad. Some people say it gives advantages to small states (making people's votes in a small population state count more than the vote of a person in a large state), but the more dramatic effect is to make people's votes in a balanced state (i.e "swing state": one with nearly the same number of voters for each candidate) count much more than the vote of someone in a state that is tipped one way or the other.
The electoral college system is dumb. Legalized vote swapping is dumber. Two wrongs don't make a right.
-a
Congress broke the law when it added the words "under God" to the pledge of allegiance. It also broke the law when it added "In God we trust" to US currency. And various government agencies break the law on a daily basis by posting the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and other government buildings, and by compelling students in publicly funded schools to recite the already illegal pledge. The current presidential administration and Congress is bent on soiling the constitution yet again through their new "faith based initiatives".
Unfortunately, precious few public officials are willing to tell the truth about any of this. The 9th circuit is to be commended for doing so.
What a coincidence: We haven't had any in the United States, either.
There are all sorts of problems I had with the vote in 2000, from the tactics of both Democrats and Republicans to the Supreme Court's decision. But looking back at it, it's pretty obvious that the Supreme Court didn't change the outcome one bit.
The timeline was something like this:
(For brevity, I'll just say Bush and Gore, for which you can read "Bush's people" and "Gore's minions" or any other grouping that you wish.)
- The initial count is done, Bush is ahead by a miniscule margin.
- A recount is automatically initiated. Gore gains a number of votes, but is still behind.
- Gore requests hand recounts in a number of districts -- largely democratic ones, of course.
- A number of different legal maneuvers are made, to stop or continue those recounts -- e.g. Bush sues in federal court to have them stopped, Gore sues in Florida's state court to continue.
- After going back and forth between Bush, Gore, the Florida courts, and the Florida politicians for over a month, the Supreme Court steps into the fray.
- The Supreme Court rules that, given the time that has passed, it's too late to set up a fair and unbiased counting system, so the votes as counted stand.
There were all sorts of problems with their ruling -- especially since it's up to Congress to decide If there is uncertainty or irregularities in electoral voting -- but it made absolutely no difference in the outcome.Absolutely no difference.
Examination of all the Florida ballots showed that if the Supreme Court had ruled for Gore, he would still have lost. The votes he wanted re-counted didn't add enough to his column to give him the state. The only way it would have mattered was if he had requested a statewide recount that included all undercounts AND overcounts.
I think that IF every vote had been counted properly -- if every person's vote was clear, readable, and recorded -- Gore would have won. I would have preferred that the Rehnquist Court hadn't sullied their good name with a decision that made them look partisan and opportunistic. And I really would have liked a scenario that allowed both Bush and Gore to lose. But if you think that Bush was only elected due to the whims of the Supremes, you should take another look at What Really Happened.
TSG
... I'd like to beat persoanlly for being a larger hypocrite than usual. everyone knows that every single thing our reps vote on gets traded like Pokemon cards--"I'll vote for your gun/abortion/whatever bill if you vote for a new dam/highway/whatever in my home state."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I mostly agree. However like everything, the mandatory seceret ballot must have exceptions. An election judge, is often needed to help elderly/blind/handicapped, and that position much exist or some otherwise perfectly good voters cannot get their vote counted. These judges must never alter someone's vote, no matter how stupid, nor tell anyone how someone else voted.
You are right though, vote swapping should be legal, but verification that the vote was properly swaped must be illegal.
I don't like "receipt-free voting". A better solution is a paper receipt that MUST be deposited before you leave. The paper may or may not use OCR/bard codes to recored your vote, but it must have a verifiable name on it. If anyone accuses the computer system of fraud, just count the paper receipts by hand and you can verify that the comptuer works (or that someone is cheating as the case may be).
I really would not hold any decision they make of any value at least until it has had a chance to go through the appeals system.
Do you realize that what you just said is laughable? They are the appeals system. The only court above them is the Supreme Court.
And as far as being overturned goes, your statistics are worthless. How many of their decisions has the Supreme Court upheld? And how do you think the Supreme Court chooses which cases to hear? Not ones for which they entirely agree with the lower court's decisions, I'll wager.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Yep, that's exactly right. I did my master's work on electronic voting. I came away unconvinced that any purely electronic scheme ever will be adequate.
One reply in this thread commented that there should be receipts, but they must be deposited before the voter leaves the voting area. Such an arrangement is actually a very good idea, but is still receipt-free -- after the voter leaves, there is no proof that a particular vote was cast. (It's a good idea because it leaves physical tokens that can be used to perform recounts, or count verification.)
Another reply said that it was silly to try to take away the ability for one to tell another how a vote was cast. That has nothing to do with receipts. The point here is that one should not be able to *prove* how a vote was cast.
Yet another reply pointed out the need in some cases for an election administrator to aid disabled voters. That's a good point, but note that neither the voter nor the election administrator should be able to *prove* that the vote was cast a particular way.