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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