Vote pairing
For example, consider elections in the United Kingdom: In constituency A, the race is tight between a Labour and a Conservative candidate.
In the 2000 presidential election, graduate students created a satirical web site for buying and selling votes, vote-auction.com, which was shut down by an Illinois judge.
In addition, vote pairing is a routine practice in legislative bodies, such as Congress and city councils.
The debate regarding the legality of vote pairing peaked during the 2000 presidential election, when there was a strong effort to shut down the U.S. vote-pairing websites.
[5] On August 6, 2007, the 9th Circuit ruled that California's threats violated the First Amendment, writing:[3][4] Both the websites' vote-swapping mechanisms and the communication and vote swaps that they enabled were constitutionally protected.
Whether or not one agrees with these voters' tactics, such efforts, when conducted honestly and without money changing hands, are at the heart of the liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.
In at least two closely-contested ridings, strategic voting websites obtained enough pledges to account for the victory margin of the Liberal candidate.
Multiple web sites had sprung up that were matching supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, in non-swing states, with supporters in swing states of the strongest third-party candidate, Ralph Nader.
Some argued that Ralph Nader was drawing support from left leaning Democrats that would otherwise vote for Al Gore.
There are multiple reasons it would be important for Ralph Nader to still get his share of the national popular vote.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) got involved to protect the web sites, seeking a restraining order against Jones and then a permanent injunction against him, alleging that he had violated the constitutional rights of the web site creators.
It is possible that Jones's threats, which shut down several vote-swapping websites, changed the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.
The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals would eventually rule against him, but this decision did not come down until February 6, 2003, long after the 2000 election was already over.
The vast majority of vote swappers were opposed to the United States support for Israel in the Israel–Hamas war.
[31] In 2016, Yale political science associate professor Alexander Coppock partnered with TrumpTraders.org to empirically test the effect of vote swapping.
Instant-runoff systems are particularly vulnerable to the practice because they frequently fail the favorite betrayal criterion, which means casting a first-rank vote for a third-party can cause a "greater evil" candidate to win.
For example, in the 2009 Burlington mayoral election, voters who supported moderate Republican Kurt Wright eliminated Democrat Andy Montroll in the second round, allowing socialist candidate Bob Kiss to win.
Proportional representation systems also make the practice less important (although it can still occur if there are regionally-calculated electoral thresholds).
