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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)"
Yes, it's legal, but is it a good idea? There is a loophole in representative democracy which leaves it open to manipulation by this type of vote-shuffling - in a population of 5^n, 3^n can outvote everyone else if they're well placed. I would say that this is far, far worse for democracy than the recent irregularities in Florida, because this is now institutionalized.
What's to keep an enterprising Bush supporter from logging on and promising to vote for the Democrat in exchange for someone else voting for Nader, and then voting for Bush anyway?
When it comes down to an honor system with no consequences, the results may not be as intended.
In 2000, it was Gore's election to lose, regardless of the Nader factor.
Very true. The democrats and republicans have established a plethora of legislation designed (quite well!) to make it extremely difficult for any other party to compete with them.
The Libertarian Party has it the hardest, since the Green and Reform parties (to my knowledge) will happily use federal matching funds to rape the taxpayer to pay for their campaigns, whereas the LP will not.
Although a better solution would be for voters to rank their choices...
Depends on what you do with second and third rankings.
Suppose for example that 34% of the populace ranks Bush 1st, while Nader and Gore get 33% each. Now it might be true that nader and Gore get a larger share of the 2nd votes, while Bush gets a larger share of the 3rd votes, but depending on how you weigh the 2nd votes, Bush might still win.
To save you the time of trying to dream up a voting system that really would reveal the public's preference amongst multiple candidates I will just tell you now that an impossibility theorem has already been proven. You can find a nice explanation of it here:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/arrow.htm
This is about an obvious quid pro quo. It is not shutting down a "Vote for Gore" or a "Vote for Nader" site. This isn't about free speech. What is the difference between this site and a site matching people willing to vote for Nader with people willing to pay 50 bucks to people who vote for Nader? The fact that the "recieved" part isn't monitary changes nothing.
If it does not violate the letter of the law it at least violates the spirit of what representative government is about.
Brian Ellenberger
The Electoral College wasn't designed to enforce two-party goverment, but that's what it does today. Because the plurality winner in a state's popular vote takes all the state's electoral votes, only the top two candidates have a reasonable chance of winning. Anyone who votes for a third party instead of one of the two major parties is really just increasing the odds that his least favorite major party will win. (This is the "A vote for Nader is a wasted vote" mantra we heard from the Deomcrats two years ago.) So the current structure of the Electoral College simply helps the two major parties maintain their stranglehold on the government, and hence on political debate.
This ruling may help to weaken the Electoral College a bit by allowing minor-party supporters to concentrate their votes in states where they won't be hurting their preferred major-party candidate.
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
How many Greens do you know to say they are mostly uninformed? Or anti-technology? It's more about how the technology is used. How many lives does irradiation (of food, that's what I assume you are talking about) save? Inconclusive. The NYTimes last week did make mention of a study done in Europe that suggests that irradiating certain fats converts them to carcinogenic compounds. However, most things that are irradiated are vegetables and fruits, things low in fat, so, like I said, inconclusive. What's wrong with flash-pasteurization, anyway? Granted, nuclear power makes for cleaner air than burning fossil fuel, but where ya gonna stick the spent uranium? Can we keep it at your house for a while? Thanks! A better solution is growing corn or other biomass, and fermenting in to methanol and ethanol. Burning that you get almost entirely CO2 and H2O: clean. Back in the day, cars (Ford Model T?) used to have a lever: you can set it to gas or alcohol, gas for the city, alcohol for out in the country, where gasoline sales couldn't compete with alcohol fuel made by farmers. Right now, your car can run on 10% alcohol and 90% gas, and with an adjustment to the timing of the engine can run on alcohol only. A lassaiz-faire market? This country has never had one, nor is there such a thing in this day and age. The Fed has tight control over the expansion and contraction of the economy, furthermore, we have necessary anti-trust regulation in place, as well as tariffs on imported goods. For better or for worse, doing away with any of these at this point would be disasterous to the economy. So you can forget lassaiz-faire, which bwt != a "free" market. A market which thru lassaiz-faire came to be dominated by a monopoly is not "free" nor does it benefit the consumer. The Green model of the economy is actually truly capitalist, it treats natural resources as capital. Consider, for example, a forest. Forest makes more forest, just by sitting there. This is not only analogous to, but the very reason why, money makes more money just by sitting there, say, in a bank. Now if a company is using up all of its capital as fast as it can, would you call it successful? No, you'd call them morons. But under the current way of accounting, if you are using up natural resources faster than anyone, it looks like you are doing great, but you are really not. You haven't mentioned the Green stance on social welfare, perhaps you have an issue with that, too. Let me appeal to your enlightened self-interest (this will be a terribly gross oversimplification, forgive me). How do you feel about a scenario where a person has a choice between robbing you for food, or starving to death. Let's disregard for a minute how that person got to that point, that is a complicated question (in some cases, some people are just unskilled inept anti-social fuckups, and thats all). Now you have a choice between having that person trying to rob you, giving that person some money for food, or not dealing with this unpleasant person altogether, and instead giving some money to some third party that will pass it on to the person in question. Of the three, the latter is by far the most popular, and that's essentially one of the things we do when we pay taxes once a year. Hhmmph. What a horrible way to put it, but yeah, support social welfare programs, they indirectly benefit you. And vote Green. But even if you don't, you must agree that the satndard Parliamentary system is superiour to out two-party bullshit.
Can *you* prove that *you* don't have weapons of mass destruction?
Yes, I have: http://www.rense.com/general26/thouss.htm
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Which is why I think this sort of thing should be illegal... because, quite simply, you have no way of ensuring that the other guy on the other side votes for who he said he'd vote for. And you can't -make- it that way without impinging on your own right to vote for a candidate anonymously.
You're absolutely right. And while we're at it, let's ban political contributions (because you can't be sure that your canidate won't do a 180 on every issue once he's in office) and political parties (because you can't be sure that everone will follow the party line.)
The fact is, people are fundamentally honest. And as long as everyone is aware of the facts, and the agreements are nonbinding, there's nothing unethical, amoral or illegal about it.
Why should it have a name on it? Normal ballots don't have names, they just only give one ballot to each registered voter who comes in. All you have to do is record the number of registered voters who came in, and make sure the number of receipts matches up. Or print two receipts, one with a name, and one with the vote. Put them in different boxes, and make sure the two boxes end up with the same number of receipts.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Utah already has a law requiring kids to say the pledge of allegiance, but it is somewhat less draconian in that it does not require parental permission for students to exercise their right to not participate.
- I like/dislike corporate donations to the following political party
- I like/dislike preserving the environment
- I have liked/disliked the following legislation
- etc...
You use this site to direct you to products that are from companies that fit the agenda you have described, on a sliding scale. If you're looking for an mp3 player and they're available from ten manufacturers at various price points, you end up seeing those price points AND alongside them you see the prices as moderated by your agenda. Instead of picking the cheapest mp3 player based soley on price, you pick the cheapest one via the moderated prices shown. You don't pay the moderated price; you simply CHOOSE based on the moderated price, then pay the actual price. Whether you actually buy through the website is tangential, the point of the website is to give you the information needed to choose from whom to purchase in such a way that you advance your agenda.In the list above, the "I like xyz legislation" concept could be linked to a corporation by examining the sponsors of the legislation and then examining their corporate donors.
You can adjust your profile and the weighting factors you associate with your agenda items. You can dissect any given moderated price, diving into hyperlinks to read what foundation there is for the price moderation presented.
Crucial to this site is the notion that it doesn't exist to advance any particular agenda... it exists to allow consumers to express their agendas through their pocketbooks.
Also, this doesn't allow a single company to grab (for example) all pro-environment consumers by being the only company to promulgate a pro-environment agenda, and then gouge those consumers any price they think they can sneak in... instead, the moderated price of their item still has to compete with the moderated prices of other items, even those from anti-environmental companies, thereby allowing the competition to include the dynamics of the actual prices and the DEGREE to which a company has been deemed to align itself with a given consumer's agenda. The consumer decides how important each aspect of their agenda is.
Some of the information needed by the website org to usefully categorize a given company are publicly available, such as outright donations to members of congress. But in addition to that, more fine-grained disclosure of information can be incentivized by allowing website browsers to penalize companies that have not provided a standard suite of information as requested by a company. And a consumer has the option to extrapolate information from an owning corporation to its subsidiaries, which can fill in a few blanks as needed.
Paramount is that it is the consumer that is making the choices and expressing themselves monetarily. I believe that consumers could be attracted to this concept in large numbers, and that companies would take notice and be motivated by the direct financial consequences of their actions.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.