and
Summary
(under construction)
Nader "trading" is an quest of either a Nader supporter in a swing
state or a Gore supporter in a Bush-safe or Gore-safe state
for the another supporter in the other situation with whom he or
she shares common ground.
The expected outcome is that each supporter in the pair, seeking to further their individual and common goals, will vote for the other's candidate.
Both supporters are free to feel bound by an honor system or systems, but this free association and declaration of intentions, however, is not and cannot in any way be legal binding and should only be motivated by a sense of common ground.
If you know someone to "trade" with, this site may may be the most helpful:
www.nadertrader.org
If not, one of the sites below might be more helpful.
It may partly or totally be just my internet connection but www.nadertrader.org
and this next site seem to be staying accessible more of the time:
www.VoteExchange.com
This next link is a "trading" site specifically for voters in Michigan (a swing
state) and (and voters in Bush-safe and Gore-safe states):
www.nadergore.org
This site "arranged trades" for xxxx voters and still supplies useful
information, but is no longer offering to assist with "trades".
www.voteswap2000.com
Is Nader "Trading" Legal?
I am not a lawyer. This much I've read:
CNN reported that the State of California shut down www.voteswap2000.com, a Nader "trader" website in California. ABC News posted a similar report and a second indicating the ACLU is going to court to allow the site to reopen. The ACLU issued a strong, articulate condemnation of the State of California based on the First Amendment rights of free expression and association. The ACLU is seeking an injunction against the State and, together with the National Voting Rights Project, has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a prospective voter. Hopefully this next factor is irrelevant: The California Secretary of State who closed VoteSwap2000.com is a republican.
A earlier statement by the Federal Justice Department quoted by www.nadertrader.org (near the bottom of the first page) indicates Nader "trading" does not violate federal law.
I had planned to attempt to apply some of what the ACLU said about the VoteSwap2000.com closing more generally here, but decided something written by TexasProgressive 11/3 on the bulletin board at www.VoteExchange.com (and reprinted here) might well be more helpful.
11/1 - Today California Secretary of State Chief Counsel William Wood said that winwincampaign.org is legal according to California law: "It's a political discussion, and the Secretary of State of California believes that is protected political speech." ("Burden of Proof," CNN) On October 31 CNN also presented a more general article on Nader trading. They reported that then over a 1000 "trades" had been arranged and that traffic to one trading site had recently grown by a factor of over 100. Nader "trading" was also mentioned briefly in the ABC October 29 Round Table (near the middle by George Stephanopoulos) and ABC Raw News listed the NaderTrader and VoteSwap2000 websites.
In the same article CNN indicated that the Nader "trading" got an initial major impetus from an article in Slate by American University law professor Jamie Raskin. Two sites also launched independent of the Slate article. One, voteexchange.org, was launched before the article posted and the second, www.nader.org, coincidentally the day the article appeared.
An articulate personal argument for Nader "trading" was posted in Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) and reposted at nadertrader. (The same article can be obtained directly from the Capital Times by searching their archives on October 26 using the keywords Nader and Vivian, but the full article will cost you a $1.95 there.)
There is an additional ABC News article.