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VotePair Begins Pairing Voters
Brent Emerson writes "Today VotePair started matching up safe state Kerry supporters with swing state third party sympathizers to facilitate strategic voting. They matched 1446 such voters. Their goals are to defeat George Bush, support third parties, and start a conversation about electoral reform in the United States. Whether you agree with their politics or not, their ultimate point is clear: a few hundred votes in particular states could determine the outcome of this election."
I'll be your vote swap (I live in a safe state for Bush, Montana) and already planned to vote Libertarian, too.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
There's something better than VotePair out there -- and it doesn't capitulate to the idea of "safe states" and it's not "vote trading.
This alternative allows those of you, from whatever side, fed up with the Republicans or the Democrats, to pick something else -- any third party or independent candidate without "stealing" (if you believe that a politician not earning your vote and your vote going somewhere else is a stolen vote) votes. It leaves the two parties proportionately the same against each other and empowers alternatives.
It's called VotePact. There's a simple site explaining it at www.VotePact.com
Basically: you find an equally fed-up person on the other side (a co-worker, friend, significant other, whatever) and you both promise -- make a pact -- not to vote for the major party you might normally vote for if their candidate didn't suck so much. Then you can both go vote for a third party or independent.
1) Use 100 email addresses.
/Claus
2) Register 100 times at VotePair.
3) Promise 100 times to vote for Nader (or other 3rd party candidate)
4) Get 100 people in swing states voting for Kerry instead of a 3rd party candidate.
5) Break promise made on VotePair and voila!
Finally I CAN make a difference. AND I don't even have to be a US citizen to do so - cool.
In fact I like the VotePair idea in terms of provoking discussion and election reform. Even being a Kerry supporter I don't like the "vote dealing" and the "exploit" mentioned above though. It's undemocratic and the goal doesn't justify the means. I just wish Sinclair Broadcasting had the same attitude.
Yeah - I know step 3 above should have been "Profit"...
The thing I find most interesting about this project is the way it really brings to light the shortcomings of our electoral system. The current winner-take-all system, while it might serve other purposes, really helps to keep the two big parties in power and all others out of the sandbox.
Our two-party system really isn't serving the country at all. It's not that they're almost the same (argue as you will about that one), but that the turnover of even a couple of seats in the House and/or Senate can potentially have a drastic effect what policy comes out of Congress, especially with everybody voting along partisan lines as they do.
I worry that it also just generally screws up the electoral process. The two-party system has created a painfully artificial dichotomy. Anybody who doesn't strongly agree with one or the other party gets lumped into this huge group labeled, "Independent." We have people who agree with bits and pieces of each party's ideas and people who strongly disagree with both parties getting lumped into the same group because our mental framework for understanding the space of political ideas is unfit to describe reality.
So yeah, here's to vote trading, and let's hope the practise starts some conversation that ultimately renders it useless. =D
What if I promise to vote for Bush will someone vote for Bardnik for me! Oh I see, this option isn't available because the site doesn't really believe in helping the third parties, just helping Kerry win.
How do paired voters know they haven't been cheated by their opposite? That would create not the extra meaningful votes for one's candidate, but double the vote for their opponent. It's quite a dilemma. Gaming these rickety election systems offers substantial loss when it backfires.
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make install -not war