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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.
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
Can I get odds?
I'll give you 12 Gore votes for a Nader and a first round fringe candidate.
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.
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.
"No, Gore won. In popular, and in the final Florida vote count across the state. Bush STOLE the presidency, fair & square."
Gore won California, but he did not win the nation. The nationwide popular vote NEVER has mattered. Bush also won Florida... many times. He win recount after recount, even with Gore throwing out absentee ballots of the military.
Bush stole nothing. All he did was win enough states to get enough electoral votes. That is not theft. It is, in fact, the same process by which Clinton won twice.
If Gore had won, he'd be in the white house. But he lost the electoral college, same way Bush I did against Clinton.... same way Ford did against Carter.....
Saying Gore Won is like saying Dukakis won. Might work in a Harry Turtledove novel, but it is not real history.
The court would uphold wife-swapping as well.
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.
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.
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.)
Let's see...
A few thousand bogus email addresses, check.
Form letter requesting vote swap, check.
A simple script to automate it all, check.
Wow, one person can make a difference.
I think that this is exactly why the practice was ruled permissible.
Your vote cannot be sold (that is actually illegal) or exchanged for anything that has economic value (equivalent to sale) so legally it has no economic value. Hence if you swap a vote for a vote then you are swaping one thing with no economic value for another thing with no economic value, which in turn means that the exchange does not count as a sale of any sort.
For the same reason an agreement to swap votes cannot count as a contract. If a vote has no economic value then it cannot count as consideration, and without consideration there is no contract.
So vote swaping is permissible precisely because it is entirely unenforceable. If the act were anything more than empty talk then it would be illegal.
...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
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
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:
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.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
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.
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.
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.
Members of the public, on the other hand, are accountable to nobody but themselves. So they can and should have a secret ballot with nobody checking up on them. If that neutralizes vote swapping, that's a good thing. People should vote for what they actually want, not what someone else traded them for.
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.
... 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.
This is essentially voter fraud. Not because it changes the number of the votes -it doesn't- but because it changes the placement of the votes. A regional election, which is what "the election" really is, no longer accurately represents the wishes of that region. That perverts the entire electoral process, and undermines the entire concept of representative democracy.
Free speech? Perhaps, but free speech does not shield you from the law, it only states that such speech cannot be banned. This is the real issue behind shouting "Fire!" in a theater: it is your right, but if you incite a panic, the fact that you had the right to say it won't shield you from the consequences of your actions. This should have been treated the same way; political speech is fine, but it shouldn't save people from the consequences of defrauding the electoral process.
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.
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).
The 9th Circuit did not "okay the vote swapping site." They did not rule that California was wrong in shutting the site down, and they did not rule that such sites are legal under the US Constitution.
All they did in this ruling was hold that the district court abused its discretion when it dismissed the lawsuit under Railroad Commission v. Pullman, a fairly obscure case allowing federal courts to abstain from hearing a case when issues of state law would moot the federal issues. They held, in essence, that abstaining from hearing a case under Pullman is generally inappropriate when the case involves First Amendment issues, because the federal courts have a strong interest in protecting First Amendment rights.
They said nothing at all about the merits of the case; they only said that because the case is brought under the First Amendment, it should be allowed to go forward in federal court.
Hence the quote (right there on the front page, you don't even have to read the article!), "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." (Emphasis added)
So calm down, this case is far from decided yet. And regardless of whatever the Supreme Court's record in overturning the 9th Circuit may be (that's another rant entirely, but suffice it to say that the statistics are somewhat misleading in this case), I'd be very surprised if the Court even heard an appeal from this decision, let alone overturned it. Not only is it a fairly minor procedural issue, unlikely to attract the attention of a Court that decides less than 100 cases a year, but the decision is entirely in accord with all the relevant Supreme Court precedent.
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
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.
- 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.