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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)"
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.
Can I get odds?
I'll give you 12 Gore votes for a Nader and a first round fringe candidate.
"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.
War is necrophilia.
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.
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.
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.
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
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
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