Supporters of presidential candidate Ralph Nader believe they have found a way to help Vice President Al Gore win the general election, while helping Nader earnfive percent of the popular vote in order to receive federal campaign financing for the Green Party in the future.
Several Web sites, including the recently shut down Voteswap2000.com, set up a system where voters can take part in “voter pairing.”
The system targets voters in “swing states,” or states that are so close in the polls that either Gore or Texas Gov. George W. Bush could win the electoral votes. With pairing, Gore supporters who live in states where Bush is predicted to win will vote for Nader. In return, Nader supporters living in swing states will vote for Gore.
Nader support is strong in a number of swing states, including Oregon and Washington. But because he has no chance of winning the popular vote in these states, his supporters are faced with a dilemma: They can either vote for Nader, attempting to help him gain the 5 percent, or they can vote for Gore, in hopes of stopping Bush from winning the presidency.
Nader spokeswoman Stacy Malkan said her campaign wasn’t interested in giving votes to Vice President Al Gore.
“Some people are encouraging tactical voting, but our campaign is encouraging people in every state to vote for Ralph Nader,” Malkan said.
The Web sites voteswap2000.com, nadertrader.org, voteexchange.com and winwincampaign.org either discuss how to set up a voter exchange or actually pair up voters through e-mail. Voteswap2000.com and voteexchange.com are two sights that pair voters up, something that is illegal in California and Oregon.
As of Oct. 30, California Secretary of State Bill Jones notified VoteSwap2000.com it was in violation of California state law, which prohibits entering into a contract where something of monetary value is given in exchange for a vote. VoteSwap2000.com then turned off its software in order to comply with the state’s law.
“Anytime a voter agrees to vote a particular way and enters into a verbal contract with someone else, they are in violation of the statute,” said Paddy McGuire, chief of staff in the Secretary of State’s office.
McGuire said some voter trading sites are OK, because they include discussions and suggestions rather than actually pairing voters up.
Nadertrader.org is considered a discussion site and is legal in Oregon. Scott Aaronson, a computer science student at the University of California, Berkeley, has been running a link off of the nadertrader.com site in support of voter exchange Web sites.
“Nadertrading is an excellent idea,” Aaronson said. ” It’s voting in a way that doesn’t change someone’s beliefs.”
The Oregon Secretary of State’s Office has written to other sites that are providing voter pairing, such as voteexchange.com, asking them to stop running the site.
“One difficulty with Internet commerce is so many sites are based in states that are out of our jurisdiction,” McGuire said. “There’s not a lot that can be done to stop them.”