Our Goal: To maximize the percentage of the popular vote that Nader receives, yet allow Gore to win the national election.
This is a pretty cool idea with the purpose of minimizing the chances of George W. Bush winning the presidency - yet maximizing support for Ralph Nader so the Green Party can recieve over 5% support to get the campaign funding assistance from the government for 2004. The project is located at www.voteswap2000.com.
Why you should do this: Many progressive voters in "swing states" in the U.S. presidential election would like to vote for Ralph Nader, but are afraid that if they do Bush may outpoll Gore and take all the electoral votes for their states.
Conversely, in states where wide margins of victory are predicted for either Bush or Gore, addtional votes for Gore will become meaningless in the election at large, because the winner of the popular vote in each state receives all the electoral votes for that state.
We have set up a system in which potential Gore voters in blow-out states can trade their meaningless votes for Gore votes in the key swing states. In return, potential Nader voters in those swing states will commit to voting for Gore in exchange for a commitment from the Gore voters to vote for Nader instead.
This way both agendas can be advanced. We can maximize the Nader vote, hopefully pushing beyond the level of 5% of the national popular vote that the Green Party needs to achieve in order to receive matching federal funds in the 2004 Presidential race. At the same time, we can diminish the chances of Bush winning a close race in a swing state because the progressive vote has been split between Gore and Nader.
How it works: A Gore voter in a solid Bush state, such as Texas, will use the pull-down menu below to go to a "blow-out State" page. There he/she fills out a simple form. (Note: your e-mail address will NOT be given out unless you authorize it, and will not be sold.) The Gore voter's information will then go into our database, where it will be matched with the name of a potential Nader voter in a swing state. At that time, e-mails will be sent to both the Gore voter and the Nader voter, telling them that they have been matched with a voter in the designated states. Then on election day, the original Gore voter will vote for Nader, boosting his national popular totals, while the Nader voter will vote for Gore, which will hopefully prevent a Bush victory in that state.
The Honor System: We will do our best to eliminate obviously fake or multiple e-mail addresses, but we can't guarantee that everyone will keep their word. However we hope that the benefits of this system are obvious enough that cheating will be kept to a minimum. Also that those of us with a progressive agenda can trust each other. We encourage you to make your e-mail address visible to the person you will be swapping votes with so you can contact each other independently, but this is not required.