
Trade votes with voters from swing states - tinbad
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/apps-trade-votes-clinton-swing-states/
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x1798DE
This is not as stupid an idea as I thought from the headline, but it still
suffers from the problem that (for good reason), there is no way for a
position to prove who they voted for. As such, both parties are strictly
better off cheating by saying they want to trade and voting for their own
preferred candidate instead.

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moftz
The article says they met up and mailed their absentee ballots together. Maybe
the trading sites could use something like a video recording of someone
checking a box on their ballot and sealing it up or do a recording of them in
the booth casting their ballot (state law permitting). There is still some
trust involved, both people can't really vote at the same time. You have to
trust the other guy will go through with it after you cast your vote first but
it's no different than buying and trading used goods on forums. Although on
forums, people are usually making exchanges more often than once every 4 years
so someone can build a trustworthy reputation.

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x1798DE
Yeah, mailing in your absentee ballots together could work - I assume that the
people on apps aren't doing that because it would be difficult for most people
to travel to another state.

That said, anything that allows you to prove who you voted for is a flaw in
the design of the voting system anyway, so to the extent that there are
loopholes that allow this, one would hope that they will be fixed.

As for reputation - reputation systems rely on the ability to verify that
something has already been completed. If you order something online and never
receive it, you are able to complain and cause reputational damage to the
seller. In the case of vote-swapping, you shouldn't _ever_ be able to know
whether or not the other person voted the way they said they did, so you never
actually know that the other person is untrustworthy.

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galfarragem
Fighting 'anti-democracy' with anti-democracy.. Disgusting.

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Sagiri
We just need to remove the Electoral College and use a straightforward
majority wins (or plurality, as the case may be).

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bobwaycott
Wondering how/if this strategy could help voters in safely Republican states
who wish to make a dent in that safety.

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howItsDone123
Is this a legal strategy? It seems illegal.

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bobwaycott
On what grounds are you thinking there's anything illegal happening here?

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jack9
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/net_election...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/net_election/2000/11/is_voteswapping_legal.html)

Technically, tampering. Yet-to-be-adjudicated in the same way as someone doing
something illegal doesn't always get prosecuted because stare decisis (or
political backlash) is so crazy-overused that you rather avoid going forward
than lose on technnicalities or by a small margin.

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bobwaycott
Swapping your vote is not technically tampering. And the practice has been
adjudicated. See _Porter v. Bowen_. Of course, since that was only an Appeals
Court ruling and not SCOTUS, the legality is strictly dependent upon your
state and whether it has laws on the books expressly prohibiting swapping.
But, those laws could be challenged if one desired to put _Porter v. Bowen_ to
the test.

PS: The article you linked dates from 2000. _Porter v. Bowen_ was in 2007. You
really ought to check the dates on things you read. A lot has changed in 16
years. Look at _Citizens United_.

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thefastlane
everything looks like a market when all you have is a hayekian ideology

