Free Republic

Four years ago today, I wrote a piece for Slate called "Nader's Traders: How To Save Al Gore's Bacon by Trading Votes on the Internet." The article suggested Internet "vote-pairing" coalitions between Nader sympathizers in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin and Gore sympathizers in safe Republican states like Texas, Alabama, Utah, and Mississippi. After meeting each other on Internet vote-pair sites, the Nader sympathizers would announce their decision to vote for Gore, the Gore sympathizers for Nader, in a nationwide grass-roots effort to advance multiple common objectives. Gore would win the popular votes he needed in swing...

Pssst! Want your vote to count? In Ohio? Or Florida? You can now arrange to trade votes with a voter in another state, under a plan created by activists who don't want Ralph Nader to siphon off votes from John Kerry in vital swing states. Today, a group called VotePair.org will start hooking up Kerry voters in "safe" Democratic or Republican states with third-party voters in hotly contested states. The goal: to get would-be third-party voters to vote for Kerry in swing states, in exchange for Kerry voters' voting for Nader or Green Party candidate David Cobb in secure states....

Just a quick heads up before the Fox Mobile picks me up to take me to the studio. I'm scheduled to be on the Fox News Channel today between 4:15 and 4:30 p.m. EDT.The topic is vote swapping in this year's presidential election. I'm against it, as is Jim and all but one of the FReepers I've spoken to about this since Fox invited me on the show.The group organizing it this year is Vote Pair.The segment should be about five minutes long.In 2000, a FReeper suggested conservatives do the same thing but it didn't pan out.However, the legal beagle...

For weeks, I have been working on a relative who intends to vote for the Constitution Party candidate. Last night, after an exhausting evening of Great Lakes Dortmunder beer and a few fine cigars, I was able to convince my relative, let's call him Sean, to vote for Bush if I could find a Texas Bush supporter willing to trade votes and vote for Peroutka. The trade idea did not occur to us until well past midnight and for a while Sean was holding for a 2 for 1 trade. I am not sure how such a trade is engineered,...

This is an editorial that appeared in our local paper today advocating vote pairing and telling people how to do it. If you havn't heard of it, vote pairing is a web site which pairs up Kerry voters from safe Kerry states with Nader voters from swing states. They promise to switch votes and possibly cause a win for Kerry in an otherwise swing state. Unfortunately this kind of unethical behavior is not strictly illegal. Nevermind that it is an attempt to undermine our electoral system and the very concept of one-person, one-vote. Anyway, I have a proposal. I'm going...

Kerry backers offer Nader backers a vote trade September 22, 2004 BY DAWSON BELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's supporters have a vote-trading plan to prevent third-party independent candidate Ralph Nader from being a spoiler in states where the outcome of the presidential race is close. The concept, first tried in 2000, is to get supporters of Nader to vote for Kerry in battleground states in exchange for votes by Kerry supporters for Nader in states where the outcome -- and the critical electoral vote -- is not expected to be close. A coalition of groups...

How It Works First, strategic voters enter their state and voting preference. They are then 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. Voters who register with VotePair will be paired with another participant via email. In this way, a swing state voter whose first choice is Nader or Cobb and a secure state voter whose first choice is Kerry can communicate with each other about strategic voting in the upcoming election. Pairing will facilitate dialogue and provide...

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.