Posted on 09/19/2004 7:21:26 PM PDT by Dustoff
Defeat George Bush. Support the critical voice of third parties. Build a progressive majority.
Vote pairing facilitates strategic voting by allowing John Kerry voters in Bush and Kerry strongholds to pledge to vote for Ralph Nader (Independent/Reform Party) or David Cobb (Green Party). In turn, Nader and Cobb voters in swing states pledge to vote for Kerry.
However, it should be fairly easy to defeat...if we can get the word out and have several hundred Bush supporters sign up for the service. They would simply offer to trade their swing state Nader votes (lie). The other benefit of getting the word out would be to scare the Kerry and Nader supporters out of using the service.
I agree, this site needs to be freeped like crazy! We need to start a major offensive on this site, it could mean thousands of votes for nader, and take some of the pressur eoff Bush.
I would guess they will have some way of checking voter rolls for your political affiliation. And, I don't think we should stoop to lying to win an election.
Nothing illegal that I can see. Kind of silly, though.
One note does anyone think that any of thes kerry / nader votes would trust one another enough to go through with this in any volume? DONT THINK SO...
Why not? I once shook hands with a friend (a blood-sworn agreement, virtually) that we would both skip voting locally since we were going to cancel each other's vote anyway by voting for different people. (Both of us voting would have been pointless.) Did we commit a crime? No, but we each saved an hour!
Maybe we should just email them, en masse and tell them outright that we're gonna "sign up" as vote-swappers and then vote for W anyway.
Let them stew in their own paranoia, never knowing whether their voter-swappers are on the level or "W operatives".
It's only illegal to vote twice in two different states and/or to "sell" your vote. Other than than...as far as I know, this looks legal. :) I doubt it will work though.
This is BS.
Nope, can't do that.
When our pairing service launches on September 20, 2004, strategic voters will enter their state and voting preference. They will then be told whether they are voting in a swing state, where the race is close, or a secure state, where wide margins of victory are predicted for either Bush or Kerry.
Yes, It's Legal
VotePair.org is an online voter matching service that pairs supporters of progressive third-party candidates (Nader or Cobb) in swing states with Kerry supporters in secure states to facilitate dialogue and possible strategic voting. Vote pairing is analogous to coalitions and agreements that are pervasive in U.S. government. Members of Congress frequently agree to "trade" their votes on bills in exchange for other members' support of their own legislation, for example.
Assuming it is legal, no problem. FReep this organization between now and when they start matching on September 20th. Sign on as a Nader/Cobb vote for Kerry. The more "swing" voters we get voting for Nader/Cobb instead of Kerry the better.
God bless our troops wherever they may be.
My daughter called today because she was registering to vote (she had moved) in California. She asked the person who was taking her registration what to do about her old registration in another city. This is what she was told:
"Oh! Don't worry about it! Vote here and then go vote there!! That way you get to vote twice!"
She went home and called us right away to ask what to do. With motor voter and other practices in California there are all kinds of duplicate registrations, I am sure of it. I know this because I discovered my mom was still on the roll in a precinct she had not lived in for 20 yrs! And my dad, who died in 1989, was still on the rolls!
I began to wonder about it because I was helping create a computer database of registered voters one year. I came across all sorts of things that appeared abnormal just because of people I knew. California is totally corrupt with regard to the registrations. The opportunity for fraud is huge! I always wondered why so many of my friends and acquaintances were conservative yet the democrats were always winning in the elections. What can we do when the Registrar of Voters fails to protect the validity of the voter rolls?
W/ swing states trending to Bush is it necessary to think in terms of taking pressure off of Bush? I'm not thinking it's a waste of time either. Buuut...I notice this was a first time post for Dustoff. Pardon my paranoia, but I feel like we're being probed for an overreaction, or look how FReepers are messing around with Votepair
Here's my idea from 2000. How can these vote trading sites actually confirm your identity and location? They can't! Make up a name and an email address on a web based email service. Tell someone you are located in a swing state and want to vote for Nader. Then get some sucker from a strong Bush or Kerry state to vote for Nader instead of Kerry. Of course you vote for Bush. That makes one less Kerry vote in the popular vote. Even better, make up several names and get multiple people to switch from Kerry to Nader. If 50,000 Bush voters got ten Kerry voters each to switch to Nader, that would be 500,000 votes taken away from Kerry's popular vote total.
I dunno. Strategic voting is common practice in the US Senate (instead of two Senators agreeing to switch their votes, two Senators both arrange to be absent at the same time, so the votes they would have cast--which would have cancelled out--are not)
Please Pass Emergency Anti-Vote Fraud Measure Immediately!
Vote fraud threatens the very core of our republic, and it directly threatens our sovereignty
Please send the following message to your Congressmen and Senators:
Please pass, on an expedited basis, emergency legislation to require voters to show ID at all polling places on Election Day.
Vote fraud threatens the very core of our republic, and it directly threatens our sovereignty. There is a significant amount of evidence emerging that evinces a wide-spread plot to engage in massive voter fraud. Thus, Congress must take immediate action to counter this potential menace.
Congress has the express power to dictate the time, place, and manner in which federal elections are held. The congressional power to make or alter time, place, or manner of federal elections extends to the regulation of voter registration. Federal regulation of the electoral processes, including the regulation of federal voter registration, is also consistent with the Tenth Amendment and permissible; although states do have broad discretion to enact and implement registration procedures, states may not transgress the Constitution. It follows that state voter registration and Election Day statutes that are inconsistent with federal voter registration and Election Day mandates are preempted.
As per the Federal Court in Byrd v. Brice, the government may require a voter to furnish proof of identity at the polling place on Election Day. Such a measure would go a long way in protecting citizens’ federal voting rights from fraudulent practices.
Please set to work immediately on enacting emergency legislation to require a valid ID at the polling places on Election Day.
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=6486121&content_dir=ua_congressorg&mailid=custom
Help, anyone? I signed up for this pretending to be a Nadar voter in Missouri. I actually don't know squat about him and so am unsure of what to reply to this person. Maybe I should casually back out? I hate being untruthful and don't know why I did this in the first place!! Any suggestions? His letter to me follows:
Dear Sam
Hi, my name is XXX XXXXXXXX, and I was matched up with you through votepair.org. I'm just writing to let you know some of my political beliefs and to tell you a little about myself.
First of all, as you probably already know, I'm a Kerry supporter from Utah. I'm also 22, and a college student studying Environmental Studies at the University of Utah. In case you didn't know, I live in what is probably the most conservative state, (perhaps even more so than Texas) thanks to the dominant religion. I'm no anti-Mormon, but the Republican party has a tight grip on this state, and the only Democrats that ever have a chance at getting elected are those that are just like Republicans. In the last poll, Bush had a lead over Kerry by something like 40 points. So as you can see, voting for Kerry in this state, since we still have that obsolete institution of the electoral college, is pretty much worthless unless you want to give him popular votes.
Actually, the latest City Weekly (SLC's alternative newsweekly) just ran an article on votepair.org, and interviewed some of the founders. Two of them are originally from Utah, and they said that Utah has one of the highest representations of people signing up for this service. I thought that was pretty interesting.
Ideally, I would vote for Kerry. Watching the debates last night, I truly believe that he would make a good president. He's got a really good environmental record, (as rated by the League of Conservation Voters) and that is probably the issue I'm most concerned about in this election. I have to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of Ralph Nader. His anti-corporate crusades are heroic and admirable, and his commitment to the environment is definitely a plus. However, his insistence that there is still "no difference" between Democrats and Republicans definitely annoys me. However, I'm willing to vote for Nader for your vote for Kerry. I don't believe that Kerry is the final answer to where I would like to see us go as a country, but I feel he's a couple steps in the right direction, whereas the "re-election" of Bush (misleading term, since he was never elected in the first place) is two giant leaps backward, followed by falling down and hitting our collective heads on the ground.
Anyway, that's where I stand. I have to head to class right now, but I look forward to hearing from you.
sincerely, XXX
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