In Swing States, Voters Swap Ballots

Democrats in Massachusetts can now trade their votes with third-party supporters in battleground states, thanks to a website run by a Harvard alum.

VotePair.org provides an online forum aimed at winning electoral votes for presidential candidate John F. Kerry without impacting the plural vote for progressives such as Independent candidate Ralph Nader, Green party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik.

After registering on the website, each third-party voter is paired with a voter from a “secure” state, where one presidential candidate is clearly in the lead. The pair can communicate via e-mail and pledge to exchange their votes.

American University Professor of Constitutional Law Jamin Raskin ’83 proposed and implemented online vote pairing during the 2000 presidential election. He said about 36,000 people traded votes using the website.

Though only about 16,000 people are currently signed up with VotePair for the November election, including 600 from Massachusetts, Raskin believes that the system can still affect the outcome of the election.

“[Vote pairing] reflects the determination of voters to act with the same strategic consciousness as political parties and have a serious chance to make a difference in swing states,” said Raskin, who now works as the legal adviser for the 2004 VotePair campaign.

But some students such as Institute of Politics President Ilan T. Graff ’05 said he worries that a program such as VotePair may stifle democracy.

“I think that it’s a little troubling because it subsumes the interests of systems of democracy to the progressive partisan interest of getting John Kerry elected,” Graff said.

VotePair, he said, forces third-party voters to choose Kerry as “the lesser of two evils,” nudging out other alternatives.

But Executive Director for the National Voting Rights Institute Stuart Comstock-Gay said that VotePair gives voices to third-party voters, who are otherwise neglected by the electoral college.

“It’s a great mechanism to look at voting differently and a creative way to make democracy work at its fullest,” Comstock-Gay said.

People are often discouraged from voting because they think their third- party choice doesn’t matter, Comstock-Gay said.

Harvard College Democrats President Andy J. Frank ’05 said that trading votes could reduce the Democrats’ concern that third-party candidates detract from Kerry’s totals.

“If people are hell-bent on voting for Nader, they might as well not ruin the country by electing George W. Bush again,” Frank said.

But Socialist Alternative Club Treasurer Hank R. Gonzalez ’06 said that VotePair benefits Democratic voters more than it does third-party voters. “People need to be willing to choose an alternative no matter where they are,” Gonzalez said.

California candidate for Senate Bill Jones tried to shut down the site in 2000, claiming it was “a form of vote-buying and selling,” according to VotePair.org.

However, Raskin argued that the exchange of votes is free. The Justice Department has issued a statement legitimizing vote pairing.

“There is no money or material consideration,” Raskin said, “[Votepair] is protected by the First Amendment and is a form of political expression and association by people talking about the election across the state and party lines.”