vote swapping, so far has been legally allowed. I personally find the practice of voter swapping to undermine a the system to elect a President. For example, if someone in California thinks his vote will do more over here in NY, and I think my vote can do more over there (assuming, of course, we are for different politicians) we can trade votes (based on the faith in the other person to follow through). I do not believe this will be allowed to continue much further, however nothing surprises me these days. It is just the misuse of the rights we were given by those before us, and it shows the election process no respect. This directly takes away from the power of the vote through what should be an illegal tampering process. This is absolutely insane. Any state in which a hundred or less votes decides kerry a winner should be recounted, and these votes should be disqualified. I am outraged by this. It just shows how far some will go to abuse the system in hopes of achieving a candidate who would be (if decided by means of these votes) elected to office through "scamming the system". Outrageous! As far as I am concerned any person who has ever or will ever use this system should lose their voting rights. Just Outrageous!
Vote Swapping - The Other White Meet
by Scary Kerry at 03:52PM (EDT) on October 25, 2004 | Permanent Link
What is vote swapping? No its not the newest reality tv show on fox. No, its not a fun activity where you get to see whether it really is greener on the other side of the marital fence.
Vote swapping is the tactic being advocated and executed by the democrats where they setup a connection between two voters; a Nader or other independent party voter in a swing state trades their vote with a Kerry voter in a solidly blue state. The selling point is that the Nader voter still gets to cast his vote (remotely) for Nader so he (Nader) gets the same NUMBER of votes while also being able to boost the effectiveness of his actual vote for Kerry in a battleground state.
Surely this is a parody article right? Nope. I am sad to say that is actively being promoted. There are several stories that are covering this.
The Washington Post, Sept 25, 2004: WaPo article covers the topic and points people to a website where they can match their votes via the internet. They mention that in 2000 nearly 36,000 vote swaps between Nader and Gore voters were arranged.
The Wichita Eagle, Sept 20, 2004: Short article covering the vote swapping scheme devised exclusively by the democrats.
The Eugene Weekly (A Democratic Newsletter): Considers the vote swapping tactic to be an interesting mechanism to be used in the 2004 elections
Gigalaw.com: Discusses the legality of this practice and the ACLU's efforts to defend the practice in 2000.
And of course I save the worst for last. The current front runner site for vote-swapping is www.v......r.org. If you go to that site they don't even try to hide what they are doing. According to their current counter they have arranged 1439 vote swaps and have 12766 users registered. By the way, this site doesn't pair votes immediately but waits until just before the election to setup all its matches. So there is likely quite a FEW MORE than 1439 votes that will be swapped.
The site faq builds an argument for the legality of "vote pairing", their preferred term to "vote trading", "vote swapping" and "vote bartering". In their answer to the question "Is vote pairing legal?" they respond:
Yes, of course, it is a form of political association and expression protected by the First Amendment. No state even tried to make vote-pairing or 'vote-trading' illegal in 2000 and none of the tens of thousands of people who did it were ever prosecuted for anything.
They go on to talk about six states that attempted to shut down vote paring organizations in 2000 with limited success and of course interference from the ACLU which brought free speech lawsuits.
The question that I am concerned with isn't, "Is it legal?" but, "Is it right?" This practice flies squarely in the face of our electoral system (and by association the Constitution of the United States) where the President is NOT determined by a simple majority of the popular vote but by the count of electoral college votes that are determined by which states each candidate has one. So every vote cast is NOT equal.
Now there is certainly a lot of debate as to the wisdom of the electoral college (I for one see more and more the wisdom of this system). But this vote swapping practice is meant to completely short circuit the Constitution rather than to bring the question into open and fair consideration by the Congress and the states. I would also argue that such a tactic flies directly in the face of states rights and the power imbued to the states.
Therefore this practice flies not only in the face of one major section of the Constitution, i.e. Article II, but of the entire framework of the Constitution and the balance of federal power vs. states powers.
The conclusion is that such practices are despicable and anti-American. Instead of placing any trust in our Constitutional system of government and pursuing change according that system, these profligates are subverting the system and going around it. They are lawbreakers in the spirit of the law as much as any felon and should have their right to vote revoked permanently.
[This message has been edited by futuresobjective (edited November 01, 2004).]
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