[Election-Methods] US court rejects threat to 'vote-trading' websites

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:06 PM 8/9/2007, Gervase Lam wrote:
>Hmmm...
>
><http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2195759/court-rejects-threat-vote>

Yes. Very interesting. I think the decision of the Court reasonably 
obvious; however, they consider that the issues were sufficiently 
unsettled at law that they did not find the Secretary of State of 
California, the defendant, to be liable for damages to the 
plaintiffs. However, if another official attempts, in the future, to 
harrass, and threaten with prosecution, vote-swapping web sites -- 
that is, votes for votes, not votes for money or other private, 
personal benefit -- they would now be on notice that this would be a 
violation of the constitutional rights of the site owners and those 
using the sites, and, in the future, damages could be awarded.

I think they were incorrect in this. The Secretary of State had 
acknowledged that vote swapping itself was not unlawful; and if the 
web site is not assisting or promoting an unlawful act, it is 
difficult to imagine how the web site could be violating the law, 
unless it were doing something specifically prohibited, which was not 
alleged. Apparently several states faced the issue, and different 
Secretaries of State reached different conclusions; however, we can 
strongly suspect that the affiliation of Secretaries of State with 
the major parties might have biased them, in some cases, against 
actions that would benefit third parties. Which vote swapping does, 
but, most notably, it also benefits the major party that would stand 
to possibly lose the Presidential election but which might gain 
enough votes through vote swapping to win.

In Florida, for example, even a fairly small level of vote swapping 
between Gore supporters in other states and Nader supporters in 
Florida, would have turned the election, and a Republican Secretary 
of State might surely have anticipated this, and would accordingly, 
if motivated by partisan goals, have attempted to intervene.

The Court extensively dismantled the Secretary of State's arguments, 
and the only shred remaining that protected the S of S from liability 
was an argument that the matter was not settled law. But *no* basis 
for prohibiting vote swapping was found. So what was the motive of the S of S?

The S of S's argument was based on a proposal that vote swapping was 
an attempt to subvert the Electoral College, a position which found 
no support at all from the Court. It was also based on laws that 
prevent selling votes, but no precedent existed which indicated that 
votes could not be traded for votes, and the laws against buying and 
selling votes were clearly not designed to prevent voters from making 
agreements as to how to vote.

The S of S argued that the agreements could involve fraud; however, 
no allegations of actual fraud were made, the web sites warned 
extensively that voters should personally satisfy themselves that the 
one with whom they were swapping votes was trustworthy, and the sites 
did take steps to detect such things as multiple registrations; the 
procedure that was used was not susceptible to wholesale fraud. The S 
of S's position is analogous to preventing on-line auctions on the 
argument that a seller might be a fraud. The Court, following the 
arguments of the Appellants, noted that the State could make 
fraudulent representations regarding vote swapping illegal, if it 
chose, but it has not chosen to do so. (Enforcing actual votes would 
be impossible under current conditions and could quite possibly be 
contrary to public policy, but false representations as to, for 
example, state of residence, could be prohibited. And voter 
registrations can be verified.)

In any case, they got away with it, those Ss of S. That time. Not in 
the future.

My congratulations to the plaintiffs and the organizations that 
pursued this, they did a public service.

I don't think that individual vote swapping is a major answer to our 
problems with elections, because it is too inefficient. However, done 
through Delegable Proxy, it could get efficient. It has been 
suggested that forms of vote swapping, or the campaign equivalent 
that could be called "election disarmament," could be arranged by 
FA/DP organizations, and some of this could be verified.

In general, collective action *outside* the official system is the 
solution. If the people have means of making collective judgements, 
they can bypass the defective elements of the electoral and political 
systems, making them moot. For example, the corrupt influence of 
money in politics would be rendered ineffective if people had 
reliable, trustworthy sources of advice, that they actually trusted.

While it might seem that the corrupting influences would then pursue 
the sources of advice, if the source is a distributed fractal that 
Delegable Proxy creates, it would become extraordinarily expensive. 
FA/DP organizations don't directly control votes, and the advice is 
not issued from on high, so corrupting a highly placed proxy is not 
enough. That proxy then has the task of convincing his clients, who 
are themselves highly involved, knowledgeable proxies for others, 
that they should support the corrupt proposition or candidacy. Not easy.

And if the corrupter has such good arguments, perhaps the corrupter 
could simply present them! It would be a lot cheaper! FA/DP *does* 
make lobbying the public *much* easier. And that is good. But what 
the lobbyists present will confront the massive distributed analysis 
of the entire public, so it better be good!

Lobbying *should* be cheap! And corruption should be so expensive 
that it isn't worth it. And that is what FA/DP could do.