U.S. voters look to game election system
by 'trading' ballots
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[November 08, 2016]
By Joseph Ax
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sophy Warner wanted to
vote for third-party U.S. presidential candidate Jill Stein. But she
worried that her ballot, cast in the swing state of Ohio, might help
Republican Donald Trump capture the White House.
Through the website "Trump Traders," the 20-year-old biology student at
Cleveland State University got in touch with Marc Baluda, 44, a
Republican corporate lawyer in California who opposes Trump's candidacy
and planned to vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The two strange bedfellows made a deal worthy of congressional
horse-trading: Warner would vote for Clinton in Ohio, where polls show a
tight race, while Baluda would cast a ballot for the Green Party
candidate Stein in California, where Clinton is assured of winning the
state's electoral votes.
Tens of thousands of voters, the vast majority seeking to prevent a
Trump presidency, have signed up on "vote-swapping" exchanges in advance
of Tuesday's Election Day. There is no way to verify the ballots are
cast as agreed, though some people are taking "ballot selfies" in states
where such photos are legal.
The swaps take advantage of a unique feature of U.S. presidential
elections. The winner is decided not by the national popular vote.
Rather, the outcome depends on what are known as electoral votes, which
are awarded to the victor of each state's presidential election, with
rare exception.
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The overall electoral vote winner becomes president, and the national
contest thus often comes down to votes in a handful of states.
"Swing states" such as Ohio are hotly contested because their voters can
swing either to Republicans or Democrats year after year and so play a
decisive role. By contrast, pollsters view states such as California as
reliably Democratic.
40,000 MATCHES
Trump Traders had matched 40,000 voters as of Monday, according to
co-founder John Stubbs. Although that may be a small fraction of the
electorate, a few hundred votes could make a difference in a state where
the race is close.
The practice appears to be legal. In 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco ruled that swapping votes is a protected form
of free speech, even if some disagreed with the tactic.
Vote trading first gained attention in 2000, when some voters sought to
ensure Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate, did not siphon off enough
support from Democrat Al Gore to hand the election to Republican George
W. Bush.
The so-called "Nader Traders" failed when Bush famously won the election
after capturing Florida by only 537 votes. Nader drew more than 97,000
votes there.
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![](../images/110816pics/news_c3.jpg)
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump listens as
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton answers a question from the
audience during their presidential town hall debate at Washington
University in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., October 9, 2016.
REUTERS/Rick Wilking /File Photo
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Stein and Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson together are drawing
nearly 7 percent in opinion polls, far more than normal for those
parties and enough to raise the specter of another Nader-style
outcome in 2016.
The digital exchanges seek to solve a quadrennial conundrum for
voters "trapped" in one of the 40 or so noncompetitive states: how
can I make my vote count?
For supporters of third-party candidates like Stein and Johnson who
have almost no chance of capturing electoral votes, however, all
that matters is their raw national totals.
That difference is what allows the type of vote trading that occurs
on Trump Traders and #NeverTrump, a mobile app launched this fall by
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Amit Kumar.
"Living in California, our votes aren't that important in
determining who wins," he said in a phone interview.
Kumar said the app has been downloaded 20,000 times, with around
8,000 active users.
Trump Traders' Stubbs, a Republican, said technology advances since
2000, including social networking sites and mobile phones, made
vote-trading exponentially easier.
For Republican voters like Baluda, even saying aloud that he is
supporting Clinton is difficult. But he said he had no regrets about
trying to maximize the power of his vote by commoditizing it.
"Votes do matter, and Floridians found that out 16 years ago," he
said.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Howard Goller)
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