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)"

Comments

American Voting

[Synithium]

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.

I don't see how..

[Visceral Monkey]

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.

Vote swapping? It happens everyday in Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Verifiable vote swapping is and should be illegal

[phr2]

Vote swapping in many instances in 2000 was done by trading marked absentee ballots. They did to make sure that the "Nader" vote they were swapping for didn't end up as a Bush vote. But absentee ballot trading is and should be illegal, since it gives another person a direct way to see how a particular ballot was cast. That undermines the secret ballot, which is an essential feature of democracy.

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.

Re:9th Circuit Court?

[wkitchen]

This court is one of the most-overturned circuit courts in the US. They are famous with coming up with some of the most crackpot far-leftist decisions. They recently came to fame by banning the Pledge of Allegiance. To quote from CNN [cnn.com]:

It is the most often overturned because it is the most willing to speak the truth even when the truth is unpopular. A government entity exhibiting religious favoritism _is_ unconstitutional. That the 9th circuit is often overturned is not an indication that it is guilty of "crackpot" decisions, but rather a telling indicator of the wide spread cowardice and corruption in the rest of the judicial system. The 9th circuit exhibited rare courage and integrity by upholding the constitution even when doing so was politically dangerous.

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.

Re:Yes, it's legal

[The_Steel_General]

And I can't remember of any president of any country in Europe after WW II who became president through court decisions.

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.)

1. The initial count is done, Bush is ahead by a miniscule margin.
2. A recount is automatically initiated. Gore gains a number of votes, but is still behind.
3. Gore requests hand recounts in a number of districts -- largely democratic ones, of course.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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