Vote Swapping Ruled Legal

cayenne8 writes "During the 2000 election, some sites were set up for people across the nation to agree to swap votes, among them voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com. They were established mainly to benefit the third-party candidate Ralph Nader without throwing local elections to George Bush. The state of California threatened to prosecute these sites under criminal statues, and many of them shut down. On Monday the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the vote-swap sites were legal (ruling here, PDF). The court held that '...the websites' vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutionally protected' and California's spurious threats violated the First Amendment. The 9th Circuit also said the threats violated the US Constitution's Commerce Clause.'"

Comments

Seems reasonable...

[nebaz]

If politicians can shape districts to 'coordinate' votes, why shouldn't the people be able to do the same?

Re:Seems reasonable...

[Wordsmith]

And the current system promotes the interests of individuals in low-population areas over the interests of individuals in high-population areas. One vote doesn't equal one vote, which is a problem.

Re:Just Democrats

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The same software could also solve the Libertarian/Republican crisis as well as the Green/Democrat crisis, so I see no point in arguing that it's one sided.

Doesn't matter

[Shagg]

Diebold is already swapping everybody's vote for cash from the highest bidder.

vote swapping wouldn't work anyway

[deander2]

there is no way vote swapping would work anyway. voting is private, and you can't prove how you voted even if you wanted to.

note that this is intentional. (and it's the reason all those voter-receipt-check-that-your-vote-was-counted ideas don't show you HOW you voted) imagine your boss at work saying "everyone bring in your voter receipt wednesday if you want to get a pay check friday!" (or your union leader, who might say "if you want your wife to not have any 'accidents'.")

Reverse Gerrymandering

[immcintosh]

To those who are complaining about this: please spare me the bullshit. Gerrymandering has been around a long time, and until we get rid of THAT nonsense, there's no reason I can think of, legal or moral, that its reasonable counter shouldn't be employed by the people being gerrymandered against.

Lie with statistics?

[SashaMan]

Umm, actually, you're completely wrong. Is this "lie with statistics" day? The PDF you show lists percentages of cases reviewed by the supreme court that are overturned, i.e:

number of decisions overturned / number of decisions reviewed = 75% for 9th district

However, the supreme court only reviews cases that are controversial and/or of judicial importance in the first place. The 9th circuit had a whopping 24 cases reviewed by the SC and 18 decisions were overturned - most of the other courts had only 1-4 cases reviewed.

The important metric is really:
number of cases overturned by supreme court / number of cases decided by circuit court

Your source document does not show this data.

Re:Just Democrats

[xappax]

If I vote Libertarian, what odds will you give me that my vote will throw the election to the Democrats?

If your vote contributes to throwing the election to Democrats, that's the only way it'll be effective.

Think about it. The Libertarian candidate isn't going to win no matter what, but the Republicans might. If the Republicans can still win and gain power without your vote, then why should they care about Libertarian issues, or your opinions?

If you vote Libertarian and the Republicans lose because people like you didn't vote for them, it forces them to take notice. They lost the election because certain people were so disaffected by the party that they deliberately withheld their votes by supporting the Libertarians instead.

In short, the only way you can get mainstream parties to listen to you isn't by helping them win, it's by making them lose, and doing so in a way that clearly demonstrates the direction you want them to take.

As someone who campaigned for Nader in 2000...

[greenguy]

Let me say that most of the Greens I've talked to are not in favor of vote-swapping, for several reasons.

1. As you say, it's not enforceable. You might trust your cousin in another state to trade with you, but that doesn't scale, certainly not via an anonymous website.

2. It defeats the purpose of voting: to cast your ballot for what you believe in. There's an argument that vote-swapping could bring you closer to what you want in the long run, but picture trying to swap votes in different races with different people in assorted districts in your state -- the calculations get out of hand very quickly.

3. This is a distraction from the structural flaws in our voting system, such as prohibitive ballot-access laws, first-past-the-post, and the Electoral College.