A way to help Ralph Nader without helping George Bush

Oct 31 01:40 UTC 2000

Like a number of Grexers, I have decided that I want to support Ralph Nader 
in this election.  Also like a number of Grexers, I would prefer Al Gore to 
George Bush.  I suspect there's a goodly overlap in these two groups.

Now, I wasn't bright enough to think of a way to help Nader without hurting 
Gore, so I've been struggling with my conscience for some time now, trying 
to decide what to do, especially since the election is so close.  A number 
of Grex Nader supporters and Grex Gore supporters have made good arguments 
for their candidates, which makes the choice of who to vote for harder.

Fortunately, other people have thought of a way to both support Nader and 
help Gore.  Several people have had the same idea, and I've fallen in with a 
couple of them: Matthew Countryman, who is a professor of History at the 
University of Michigan, and Nimish Ganatra, an Ann Arbor lawyer.

Their idea is based on exploiting the electoral college system.  Right now, 
the race between Gore and Bush in Michigan is nearly dead even, with Nader 
polling between 2 and 4 percent.  In other states, however, the story is 
different.  In New York, for instance, Gore is ahead by approximately 20 
percentage points, which means the race is basically decided there.

Their idea is to hook up Michiganders planning to vote for Nader with New 
Yorkers planning to vote for Gore, and have them swap votes.  The 
Michigander agrees to vote for Gore if the New Yorker votes for Nader.

The results are:

1. Nader gets just as many votes nationally as before, which is what counts 
for him.  His goal is to get 5%, so the Green Party will get matching funds 
in 2004.

2. Gore's chances in Michigan are improved and his inevitable victory in New 
York is not threatened.

In other words, this is a win-win situation for both parties.

response 2 of 65:

Oct 31 01:41 UTC 2000

THE OBVIOUS CRITICISMS

The obvious criticism of the plan is that it requires trust to make it work.  
Since we (thankfully) have a secret ballot in this country, no one can know 
for sure how someone else voted.  So you need to have a certain amount of 
trust in your match to feel confident that he or she will vote as promised.  
But remember, this is a win-win situation for everyone, so there's no great 
incentive to double-cross.  (If I were swapping with a stranger, though, I'd 
want to talk with them on the phone for half an hour or so to find out some 
things about them, just so I feel we have some basis for trust.  Swapping 
phone numbers will allow that.)

There is the matter of spoofing, of course.  We want to be sure that one 
person doesn't prentend to be multiple voters willing to swap, in the 
interest of having a bigger impact.  That is the main reason for collecting 
phone numbers.  While some people do have several phone numbers, not many 
have lots and lots.  The people making matches will make sure that no two 
people have the same phone number, so anyone wanting to spoof the site could 
only do it for the number of phones he has.  Hopefully that's small enough 
that it's not worth anyone's while.

Furthermore, the worst that could happen if a Nader voter spoofer the site 
would be that Nader would get more votes in New York, which won't affect 
the outcome of the election.  There seems to be no incentive for a Bush 
supporter to spoof the site.  A Gore supporter could, conceivably, try to 
get a lot of Nader voters to change to Gore by pretending to be multiple 
Gore voters in New York.  Hopefully collecting phone numbers will be enough 
to deter anyone from trying that.

response 4 of 65:

Oct 31 01:42 UTC 2000

I should mention that Prof. Countryman and Mr. Ganatra are not the first 
ones to have this idea; there are two other sites out there dedicated to the 
same end, "voteswap2000.com" and "nadertrader.org".  Our site is limited to 
Michigan and New York (in the name of not biting off more than we can chew), 
while the others are national.  We ask for phone numbers in the name of 
avoiding spoofing, but they don't seem to.  If you're interested but aren't 
in Michigan or New York, I encourage you to check out those sites.

response 6 of 65:

Oct 31 01:48 UTC 2000

  The *more* obvious (to me, at least) criticism of this plan is that
  participants agree to vote a certain way in the election in exchange
  for a consideration (in this case, someone else's promise to vote
  according to the agreement.)

  This sounds unethical to me (in that it is intended to unfairly exploit
  the electoral college system to the detriment of a third faction not party
  to these agreements) and also illegal (in that offering one's vote in
  exchange for any sort of consideration, monetary or not, is almost
  certainly illegal.)

  If you think I'm just being a weenie and harping on a technicality, 
  consider that if this scheme *does* actually influence the election
  it would almost certainly be grounds for a valid challenge to the
  election results.  Privately, I think it's very unlikely that it'll
  really affect anything, but why engage in an ethically questionable
  behavior which could backfire badly?

response 8 of 65:

Oct 31 03:38 UTC 2000

  I'm not sure that I agree with the DoJ spokesperson quoted above,
  though I will defer to those with greater knowledge of election law.
  
  Even if my legal objection is invalid, however, I still think that
  the proposal is ethically questionable.  It seems to me that the
  scheme encourages Nader voters to provide Gore with something he 
  might not otherwise attain (election) in exchange for something that
  the Nader probably would not attain (sufficient popular support to
  qualify for federal money, etc..)  

  Yes, it's a "win-win" situation for the Nader and Gore campaigns
  (if it works) but they're not the only players in this game..

response 10 of 65:

Oct 31 06:11 UTC 2000

#2: "The obvious criticism of the plan is that it requires trust to make 
it work.  Since we (thankfully) have a secret ballot in this country, no 
one can know for sure how someone else voted."

An organization I was once loosely affiliated with at school had in 
their rules the phrase "all votes shall be conducted by secret ballet."  
I just felt the need to share that.  Sorry, by all means carry on...

response 12 of 65:

Oct 31 06:43 UTC 2000

This is not more unethical than any group getting together to support
one candidate or another. Both objectives of this plan are also ethical.

response 14 of 65:

Oct 31 07:10 UTC 2000

Asking is not unethical. Using force would be. 

response 16 of 65:

Oct 31 14:53 UTC 2000

AS I said before, there is nothing to stop us republicans from going to the
same site, agreeing to exchange votes, adn still voting for Bush.  Now 

response 18 of 65:

Oct 31 17:03 UTC 2000

Nothing except a sense of fair play, coming from a party that has strong
morality in its platform.

response 20 of 65:

Oct 31 17:33 UTC 2000

Good point Flem.  Ethics in the political arena have been nothing more than
in inconvenience for decades.  Any argument for or against a political
practice based on ethics is either calculated to snag the gullible or based
on blind idealism, in neither case actually relevant to the current standards
of practice in national politics (that being "whatever we're reasonably sure
we can get away with is ok").

Another point:  there is nothing subversive -- acharged word if ever there
was one -- about this idea.  It is being presented in the open, it has been
researched to determine its legality, and its stated goals are fully legal
and legitimate.

And as for bru, I think you missed something.  How many republicans spoofing
this process would it take to make any difference?  The more spoofers, the
more of either Gore votes in Michigan (bad for republicans) or Nader votes
in New York (irrelevant for republicans, up to 10% of NY electorate...).

response 22 of 65:

Oct 31 18:54 UTC 2000

You only have 5 email addresses?  <snicker>  ;)

response 24 of 65:

Oct 31 20:19 UTC 2000

This is no more unethical than someone standing outside polling places 
and offering to give $10 to each person who says he was going to vote 
for one candidate, but will change his vote to another.  There's no 
coercion involved for that, either.  It's a simple exchange.

This is unethical, and I expect it's illegal, because it's an attempt to 
subvert the election process.  It's an attempt to push Nader and the 
Green Party into the "publicly funded" bracket.  No one's hurt... except 
that millions of dollars will go to the Green Party, that wouldn't have 
if there was an honest election.

I'm pretty amazed there are people here who "don't get" the ethical 
issue.  I was going to post the Ann Arbor News on-line article, but I 
expected I'd just be tweaking the noses of the liberals on-line.  I 
didn't guess it would be accepted here so approvingly.

You'd feel the same way if it was Pat Buchanon siphoning votes from 
George Bush, right, and the same deal was offered?  (Sure you 
would.)  (I'm sure the Ann Arbor News would report it in the same 
balanced, approving way, with a headline like the one they're using for 
this story: "Vote exchange idea for progressives.")

Here's the Ann Arbor News on-line article:
http://aa.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/news/stories/20001031aa1anad353.frm