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D I S P A T C H E S | campaign 2000
Trading Places
10.30.00 | In the past week, the simple act of voting for president got a lot more complicated. Last Monday, Jeff Cardille, a graduate student at University of Wisconsin in Madison, confronted an issue that has divided liberals across the country: “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.” He sent an e-mail to friends urging those leaning toward Ralph Nader in states too close to call to ‘trade” their votes with Al Gore supporters living in states where Gore doesn’t stand a chance. The theory is Gore could gain the support he needs in key areas, and Nader would still receive the 5 percent necessary for federal money in 2004. Cardille also launched NaderTrader.org to fully explain the idea. The following day, Slate published a piece by American University law professor Jamin Raskin that discussed how Nader and Gore could both get what they want if there was a way in which voters sympathetic to both candidates could pair together. “The key is a variation on a voting device used in the Senate called ‘pairing,’ whereby senators on opposite sides of issues match up their votes if they are going to be away from Washington,” he wrote. Web sites, he suggested, could match sympathetic Nader voters living in swing states with Gore supporters in states leaning toward George W. Bush. By Friday, at least four Web sites were doing just that. VoteSwap2000.com, Votexchange2000.com and VoteExchange.com collect e-mail addresses and match users with potential traders in another state. Winchell.com/NaderTrader performs essentially the same function, but only asks for a user’s name and state. (Another site, VoteExchange.org, launched earlier in the month but is now directing users to VoteSwap2000.com. It still has an active message board.) Welcome to Campaign 2000, Internet style. Mark Siegel, a political consultant and former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, said the drive behind vote swapping was an indication of “internal turmoil” among Nader supporters. “If they weren’t feeling guilty about [costing Gore the election], they’d get as many votes as they possibly could for the requisite percentage for 2004. Then when Bush starts to appoint Neanderthals to the Supreme Court, they’re going to catch hell, as well they should.” “There’s no question about where my vote is going and I can’t imagine trading my vote under any circumstances,” Siegel added. “It’s like [trading a body] organ.” Advocates say it’s not guilt but a desire for the best of both worlds that is prompting them to consider trading their votes, and the Web sites enable them to make a statement without worrying that their vote will have an undesired effect on the election. “I think our users should be people who want both,” said Jim Cody, 41, one of the co-creators of VoteSwap2000.com. “There are a lot of Nader voters who don’t like Gore. We don’t advocate them using this site.” As of Monday night, approximately 5,000 voters had been matched at VoteSwap2000.com, according to Cody. The creators of Votexchange2000.com, where visitors can arrange to trade votes for any third party candidate on the ballot, said in an e-mail received Monday night that “a few thousand people” had registered and more than half had been matched. Steve Yoder, a 37-year-old freelance technical writer in Washington, D.C. who launched VoteExchange.org, reported that 230 matches were made. None of the Web sites is affiliated with any of the political campaigns. Tom Adkins, assistant press secretary for Nader, said the campaign does not support the idea of trading votes. “We’re campaigning for every vote in all 50 states. We are not encouraging people to engage in tactical voting. We are encouraging people to vote their consciences and vote their hopes and not their fears in this election.” The Gore campaign did not return phone calls seeking comment. While political scientists have analyzed the effect of strategic voting in countries with a multi-party system, little study has been done in the United States. Most analysts contend the Gore-Nader trading sites are unlikely to play a significant role because trading is done on such a small scale and is impossible to verify.
“Unless people can get into the illegal business of mailing absentee ballots, I don’t think too many voters are so na’ve and trusting that they will vote for candidate X if someone else votes for candidate Y,” said Jonathan Nagler, an associate political science professor at New York University who has studied strategic voting in Britain and in California. It’s no surprise that Nader voters, many of whom are highly educated, are trying to develop alternative voting structures, Nagler said, but he doubted the recent strategizing efforts would have any effect. “Voters are not willing to waste their vote by voting for third party candidates,” Nagler said. “For people who prefer Nader to Gore or to Bush, they’re in a tough spot.” Still, it raises questions about the ways in which the public is maneuvering to play a larger role in the election and the future of the Internet as a political tool. Allan J. Lichtman, professor and chairman of the history department at American University and author of The Keys to the White House (Lexington Books, 2000), said the argument that third parties are spoilers has been made in past elections, but he has never seen such an organized response. “It’s a pernicious vote theory - that you’re going to elect the guy you really don’t want. But this notion that you do sophisticated voting based on the state you’re in - I’ve never heard of it,” Lichtman said. “The Internet enables these people to get their message out in a way that might have been stilled previously.” Cody, the co-creator of VoteSwap2000.com, is a freelance Web designer in California. He said that after reading Raskin’s article in Slate, he and a friend realized that together they had the design and technical ability to create a site that matched voters. “I am always looking for things that the Internet can do that haven’t been done before, and there was something that appealed to me greatly about it,” he said. In an interview, Raskin, who is careful to point out that he simply proposed a dialogue among voters and isn’t endorsing any of the sites, said he was overwhelmed by the response to his article. He received more than 100 e-mails last week, many from people who said they had been thinking of the same thing.
“I’m astonished by the power of the Internet to get an idea out like that,” he said. “It clearly was an idea whose time had come. It may be that this is the first tentative exploration of the Internet as a meaningful tool for citizen dialogue intervening in a campaign.” While the Justice Department has said that the sites are legal because the agreements are amongst private parties and do not involve the exchange of money, some critics still questioned the ethical and moral implications. Raskin, a self-described life-long Democrat who represented Ross Perot in his fight to participate in the presidential debates in 1996 and advised the Nader campaign on the same issue this election, said the electorate should embrace the idea that voting is a mixture of expressive and strategic considerations. He also dismissed critics who say voting should remain a private concern. “I think it’s perfectly OK for people to talk with one another as to how they’re going to vote, and what makes sense for the common good,” Raskin said. “I think the Internet can recapture some of the public dialogue that we’ve lost in the last several decades that should be an important ingredient in campaigns. ” It’s an expression by voters that they don’t want to be passive spectators of a campaign orchestrated by pollsters, pundits and political elites. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s a threatening development to the would-be bosses of the political system.” Siegel said even the best organized vote swap movement - one in which long lists of potential trading partners were produced that matched voters in all the right states - would still be subject to something far less absolute: trust. Since no one would be held accountable for his or her vote, the swap is only as good as a virtual handshake. Conspiracy theories are part of the game. Messages posted on VoteExchange.org warned users that Nader supporters were falsely promising to exchange their votes. Vinh Pham, a 24-year-old computer professional in California who developed VoteExchange.com, said the site was weeding out fake e-mail addresses to reduce the number of bogus users. But no foolproof method exists. Most of the sites provide each person with a potential partner’s e-mail address. The matched pair is then encouraged to communicate with each other to confirm that the swap will take place. “That’s our main way of trying to make sure that everybody is legitimate and trying to use this for the purpose it was intended,” said Cody. Voters using the sites can also “opt out” of the trade if they change their minds or are uncomfortable with their assigned trading partner. NaderTrader.org encourages vote swapping between trusted family and friends. Cardille, 33, who lives with four other graduate students in Madison, said one of his housemates sparked the idea after mentioning that her boyfriend in Massachusetts, a safe Gore state, had agreed to vote for Nader if she voted for Gore in Wisconsin, a swing state (for the latest breakdown, click on "States of Play" on the ABC political news site). The idea spread quickly via e-mail and gained local and national press coverage. “It’s nice for people to know it’s truly something that a small scale idea can have big-scale results,” he said. Cardille found a friend in Austin, Texas who agreed to cast her ballot for Nader while he votes for Gore. Raskin said the Internet dialogue has involved people across the country with different political perspectives, and could lead to a new, progressive bi-partisanship between Greens and Democrats. “Clearly there are a lot of progressive voters who view themselves on the edges of the Green parties who are searching for a new political relationship,” he said. “There are great Web sites out there speaking to constituents in different states.” Christine Cupaiuolo is editor of PopPolitics.com Discuss this article or start your own discussion on politics Related Sites
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