They aren't calling it "vote swapping"
this time around, having prudently decided that "vote
pairing" will be more palatable for the squeamish
who cling to the myth that one-man-one-vote applies to
our presidential elections.
The practice, unthinkable prior to the
ubiquitous Internet, seeks to match supporters of Democratic
Sen. John Kerry who live in states where the outcome is
all but preordained - think Texas and Massachusetts -
with backers of Green Party candidate David Cobb and Nihilist
Party candidate Ralph Nader who live in hotly contested
states such as Florida and Ohio. The informal arrangement
between these Web buddies will be simple: The Cobb or
Nader supporter agrees to vote for Kerry where that vote
might matter in exchange for the Kerry supporter agreeing
to vote for Cobb or Nader where doing so definitely won't.
Most important is that the agreement advances their mutual
goal of denying President Bush a second term.
They'll also be thumbing their noses at
the Electoral College, which should have been thumbed
out of existence long before the sad spectacle that was
swearing in a president who lost the election by a half-million
votes.
You might recall that during the waning
days of the 2000 campaign, a smattering of these "pairing"
sites popped up across the 'Net, including NaderTrader.org,
WinWincampaign.org, Voteexchange2000.com, voteexchange.org
and votetrader.org. The sites attracted a few days' worth
of media debate, the wrath of Republican elections officials,
and about 36,000 individuals who expressed their willingness
to vote tactically through a gentleman's agreement. (What
they actually did in the booth is anybody's guess, of
course.)
Well, the political matchmakers are at
it again, only this time they have pooled their resources
into a single site - www.votepair.org
- that went live last week. They've had four years to
plot strategy - tactical, technical, legal and marketing
- and, according to the organizers I spoke with, they
are hunkered down for a raucous battle against those who
object to the pairing practice and/or support the president.
First things first: Could Web-based vote-pairing
on behalf of Kerry actually swing the election in his
favor where it fell short for Al Gore?
Absolutely. After all the flying legal
briefs had settled in 2000, Florida's 27 electoral votes
were assigned to Bush on the basis of about 500 ballots,
give or take a hanging chad; New Mexico's five electoral
votes went to Gore by a similarly slim margin. Organizers
of VotePair say 1,400 Floridians participated in the swapping
sites four years ago. Had 2,000 done so, President Gore
might be running for re-election. Given the head start
on this year's pairing effort vs. four years ago - and
the immense nationwide interest in this race - it's hard
to imagine there won't be a far greater number of pairing
participants this time around.
Web site security is a concern, of course,
and organizers are understandably reluctant to discuss
their defenses in detail . . . they insist they have it
covered.
As for non-technical monkeying with the
movement? These are not likely to be effective. Yes, Bush
backers could fraudulently register on the site as either
Kerry partisans or Nader/Cobb supporters, but doing so
will accomplish nothing of consequence (see VotePair's
FAQ page for a full explanation).
Legal challenges are all but certain,
too, says Mark Randazza, a First Amendment lawyer in Florida
who's advising VotePair. Those mounted four years ago
managed to scare off a few of the political matchmakers,
but the challenges established no legal precedents for
the simple reason that the practice is perfectly legal.
Expect more huffing and puffing from Republican election
officials, but bluster alone won't get the organizers
to back down this time.
"There are enough attorneys like
myself who are spoiling for a fight on this issue,"
Randazza says.
And a fight they will get.
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