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

Yes, it's legal

[sql*kitten]

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.

Re:Yes, it's legal

[quigonn]

Recently, a documentation in Austrian TV showed in a pretty good way that all the stuff that was going on in Florida was well-planned -- certain demographic groups weren't allowed to vote, and those groups were mostly people who were about to elect Gore (if they had been allowed to).

But beside that, the two-party system in the US is very questionable, anyway, since it doesn't have to do a lot with democracy anymore. The only difference compared to "democratic" elections in e.g. Cuba is that there are two parties instead of one, so in the US you can only choose the lesser of two evils, ultra-rightwing and moderately rightwing, that is.

Re:Yes, it's legal

[Malcontent]

"Yes, it's legal, but is it a good idea?"

Why not? Our country relies on the electoral collage and as long as that system is in place there is no moral reason not to use the system to your best advantage. Think of it this way.

If you live in a heavily democratic state (say NY or CA) and you are a republican your vote is wasted, if you live in a heavily republican state (say MT or AZ) and you are a democrat you might as well not even bother to vote.

This way everybody can vote feel like our vote counts. As an added bonus we give increased power to minority parties and that can't be bad.

Really I think this is a creative way for the voters to take back the elections. The candidates don't even campaign in states that are a lock for one party or another anymore.

Re:Yes, it's legal

[dk.r*nger]

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.

Re:Yes, it's legal

[jmauro]

The problem with the rule is not the fact that it exists, but that the state of Florida didn't even do decent diligence in enforcing it. It counties more likely to vote democratic people were denied the right to vote if they shared the same last name as a felon in another state. The organization hired to compile the list seemed to just randomly put down names with out checking even basic things like first, last, and middle names. Or even cross-checking social security numbers. But I guess that's what you get when there is a lot of money to do it and the state hires a group with strong ties to the current state administration.

Re:Yes, it's legal

[87C751]

If the mid west or Alaska felt like the government just didn't represent their needs why wouldn't they try to leave the union and form a government that better met their needs.

What makes you think Alaska isn't trying?

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

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.

Vote Trading

[gnixdep]

Can I get odds?
I'll give you 12 Gore votes for a Nader and a first round fringe candidate.

I wish...

[mikeophile]

The court would uphold wife-swapping as well.

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.

Makes sense to me

[catbutt]

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.)

Vote exchange, and often.

[mikeophile]

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.

9th Circuit Court?

[rworne]

Oh boy.

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:

The 9th Circuit is the most overturned appeals court in the country and is considered by legal scholars to be the most liberal. States under its jurisdiction are Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

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.

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:9th Circuit Court?

[danb35]

the 9th circuit never banned the pledge of alliegence. They just said no-one should be forced to say it

Not even close--that's been firmly established for many years. The grandparent post is pretty near accurate.

To be a bit more precise, the Ninth Circuit held that the Pledge of Allegiance violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and was therefore unconstitutional. As the court wrote:

The Pledge, as currently codified, is an impermissible government endorsement of religion because it sends a message to unbelievers "that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community."

Newdow v. United States Cong., 292 F.3d 597, 608 (9th Cir. 2002), quoting Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 688 (1984) (O'Connor, J, concurring).

In response to the grandparent's point, it's true that in terms of the number of cases the Supreme Court hears, the reversal rate of the Ninth Circuit is very high--as a previous poster pointed out, a few years ago the Court reversed 27 out of 28 cases. However, in terms of the number of cases decided by the Ninth Circuit, the reversal rate is very low--for example, a quick search on LexisNexis indicates that the Ninth Circuit issued over 3,000 decisions during 1997.

Re:No, Bush won

[quigonn]

Yes, I have: http://www.rense.com/general26/thouss.htm

Settle down, people

[Orion_]

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.

Re:Verifiable vote swapping is and should be illeg

[Galvatron]

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.