VoteSwap 2004

VotePair.org continues to roll

VotePair.org continues to roll along! We are signing up more supporters each day. We are getting great media coverage! Come over to the site and check it out! VotePair.org

VotePair.org

VotePair.org is up and running. Check out the splash page and sign up for updates. Strategic voters will help defeat George Bush. Return the village idiot to Texas!

We are about to launch!

The clock is ticking and we are gearing up for the most important elections of our lives. The votepair team has been working around the clock to launch our campaign. Only a couple more days! Keep checking back for our new website and address!

S.F. Takes the Lead in New Voting Method

Los Angeles Times: S.F. Takes the Lead in New Voting Method

SAN FRANCISCO — The city that brought the nation beat poetry, free love and sourdough bread now is taking on election reform. With a quiet nod from the secretary of state, San Francisco will soon let voters rank multiple candidates in citywide elections, a system that proponents say would eliminate the "spoiler" problem if used nationwide.

In November, San Francisco will become the first U.S. city to adopt the voting method since a short-lived experiment three decades ago in Michigan.

Under the system, voters will rank their top three candidates in order of preference. If no one wins 50% of the votes when first choices are tallied, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated. The second choice of those voters is then added to the remaining candidates' tallies. The process — which some call an instant runoff — continues until a majority winner emerges.

GREENS FOR KERRY

GREENS FOR KERRY
The greens are getting into it with a campaign to help defeat Bush. Check out the Greens for Kerry (GFK) campaign website to see how Greens are organizing to help Kerry be the next president.

VoteSwap 2004

Lots of activity going on with the voteswap campaign. We are gearing up and getting ready for Nov 2nd. Keep visiting us as we continue to post updates on this blog. Your vote makes a difference!

IT Clouds Over the Sunshine State

IT Clouds Over the Sunshine State

By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, July 30, 2004; 10:18 AM

The Sunshine State, still smarting from the 2000 presidential election debacle, is once again making headlines for problems with its voting technology, this time with the new high-tech machines that state officials rushed to install to avoid another controversial vote count

Officials from sprawling Miami-Dade County this week acknowledged that technical problems resulted in the loss of most of the electronic records for the 2002 gubernatorial primary, and the glitch is being held up by e-voting critics as yet another example of the pitfalls and lack of security with touch-screen machines.

According to the New York Times, which first reported the news on Tuesday, county elections officials said the "records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year." The Times noted that the "news of the lost data comes two months after Miami-Dade elections officials acknowledged a malfunction in the audit logs of touch-screen machines. The elections office first noticed the problem in spring 2003, but did not publicly discuss it until this past May. The company that makes Miami-Dade's machines, Election Systems and Software of Omaha, Neb., has provided corrective software to all nine Florida counties that use its machines."

Is Vote Swapping Legal?

Marc Randazza recently published a law review article in the Washington University Law Quarterly making a case for why vote swapping is legal. Marc's article The Other Election Controversy of Y2K: Core First Amendment Values and High-Tech Political Coalitions gives a well thought out analysis of core first amendment issues. A definite read if you are intersted in the concept of vote swapping.

Download randazza_article_voting.pdf

Libertarian Badnarik May Cost Bush Support, Poll Finds

Libertarian Badnarik May Cost Bush Support, Poll Finds

WASHINGTON — Democratic strategists have long fretted that Ralph Nader could draw votes from their presidential candidate. But a new survey suggests that President Bush faces a potential threat of his own from a more obscure spoiler: Michael Badnarik.

Nader's "Grassroots" Campaign

TomPaine.com - Nader's "Grassroots" Campaign

For many progressives, even if you didn't vote for Ralph Nader in 2000, you had a lot of respect for what he was doing. It took guts to challenge the two-party duopoly, and Ralph seemed just the guy to do it. Fast forward four years. Nader's struggling for supporters and resorting to some unsavory techniques to get them. Turning to the GOP's phone lists, right-wing big money donors and, yes, Armey's army is no way to run a principled campaign.

Nader debates Dean

Justice Talking is broadcasting a debate between Howard Dean and Ralph Nader. With so much at stake in this election, now is not the time for a third party candidate. Governor Dean will make the case that anyone who cares about the future of our country and undoing the damage George Bush has done will be voting for John Kerry.

Greens choose pragmatism over protest

Xander Patterson writes that as a Green party member she choose to endorse David Cobb rather than Ralph Nader. She writes, "Greens need to be a pragmatic choice, not merely a symbolic protest vote. We need to show that we care about the real-world consequences of our actions."

Bush or Kerry: The Electoral College Map

The LA Times has a cool tool to track the electoral college on their website. Of course as with all polling results, keep a sound head and a grain of salt in your palm.

Check out the 2004 Electoral Vote Tracker

The U.S. presidential election is decided by the results of 51 electoral vote contests. In all states except Maine and Nebraska the electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote in a "winner-take-all" system. Thus, trends in the campaign must be considered on a state-by-state basis.

Electoral Vote Changes for 2004:

After the 2000 census, seats in the House of Representatives were reallocated based on new population trends. Electoral votes are based on those numbers. Here are the changes for 2004 from 2000:

Gained Electoral Votes: Arizona (+2); Florida (+2); Georgia (+2); Texas (+2); California (+1); Colorado (+1); Nevada (+1); North Carolina (+1). All gained electoral votes are either in Bush dominated states on swing states

Lost Electoral Votes: New York (-2); Pennsylvania (-2); Connecticut (-1); Indiana (-1); Illinois (-1); Michigan (-1); Mississippi (-1); Ohio (-1); Oklahoma (-1); Wisconsin (-1).

Bush and Kerry split in key state of Florida

Poll: Bush and Kerry split in key state of Florida

Tallahassee, Florida-AP -- A new poll says President Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry are in a virtual dead heat in the state that turned into a fierce tug-of-war in the 2000 presidential election.

The poll from the Quinnipiac (KWIN'-uh-pee-ak) University Polling Institute of Connecticut says Bush and Kerry are split at 43 percent each in Florida, which holds 27 electoral votes. Five percent of the state is leaning toward Independent candidate Ralph Nader.

With Nader removed from the race, Kerry gains a two percentage point advantage. That's within the poll's three percent margin of error.

A pollster says Florida voters are "sharply polarized" -- and also that voters in the state "don't like either of the candidates very much."

Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Oregon Vote Swapper

Dan Carol is a Democratic political strategist and a founding partner of CTSG (www.ctsg.com),a progressive consulting firm based in Eugene and Washington, D.C. writes his views onvote "swapping" in Oregon in the Eugene Weekly. A satirical way to look at the importance of swing state voters in this year's presidental elections.

Is Vote-Swapping Legal?

We are back and getting ready for the 2004 elections. Make sure to check back as we get our campaign off the ground! You can also check out this blog for more updates.

Is Vote-Swapping Legal? By Jeremy Derfner

Slate, the Industry Standard, and washingtonpost.com join forces to examine the effect of the Internet on Campaign 2000.
Last week, Jamin Raskin, a law professor at American University, published an article in Slate proposing that Ralph Nader supporters who live in battleground states (such as Michigan) swap votes over the Internet with Al Gore supporters in states where the outcome of the election is an all-but-settled issue (such as Texas). That way, Nader could get the 5 percent of the popular vote he needs to secure federal matching funds for the Green Party in 2004 without tipping swing states to George W. Bush and costing Gore the electoral votes he needs to win.

It turns out a technical writer from Washington, D.C., had already thought of the idea and launched Vote Exchange Oct. 1. A Wisconsin graduate student launched a second site, Nader Trader, the same day the Raskin article appeared. Since then, the idea has exploded. At least six other trading sites have gone up: Voteswap 2000, Nader's Traders, VoteExchange, votexchange2000, nadergore.org, and WinWin Campaign. The media has given the trading trend heavy coverage, driving hundreds of thousands of visitors to these sites. Nader Trader reports that it got more than 90,000 hits on Monday alone. It seems as if vote-trading is catching on everywhere. A Democratic club in Alabama has declared Minnesota