[6][7] Voteauction was the brainchild of James Baumgartner, at the time a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,[8] the website was later sold for an undisclosed sum to Ubermorgen.com in Austria.
The artist duo consisting of lizvlx (AT) and Hans Bernhard (CH/USA) ran it from August 1 – November 7, 2000, posing as "Eastern European business people".
[citation needed] UBERMORGEN.COM shows all the original documents (approximately 700 kg of complaints, court decisions, injunctions) generated by the proceedings in exhibitions worldwide,[16] and refers to them as ‹foriginals› (a combination of ‹forged› and ‹original›).
The permanent amalgamation of fact and fiction[17] realized in this way points toward an extremely expanded concept of one’s working materials, which for Ubermorgen.com also include (international) rights, democracy and global communication (input-feedback-loops).
The actual selling and buying of votes was covered by leaking information about the authors (as artists),[22] therefore the election commission, the media and the voters were certain about the non-commercial motivation.