Sunday, September 19, 2004
Vote in another state?
Today I got a Google alert today telling me about Operation Snowbird. This is a service which allows people living in states other than Florida to vote in Florida. This is an interesting concept. It is a direct assault on the Electoral College, that bastard of an institution which, so far in the history of the United States, has determined the winner of a Presidential election.
The 2000 Election caused this to come about. Gore won New York by 6 million votes, and Bush won Texas by a similar amount (although wait a minute… maybe he should have lost Texas! See below). Bush "won" Florida by a mere 537 votes out of about 4.6 million votes cast. Now what if we could have transferred 538 votes from New York State to Florida? That is a mere 0.009% of the vote in New York. But yet it would have won the election for Gore.
So this lawyer has come up with this idea. He has posted the Operation Snowbird site, which explains how non-residents of Florida can vote in Florida. You can't just up and sign up at the Florida Election website. You have to have something to do with Florida. Maybe you stay a good part of the time at a relative's house in Florida. Maybe you rent a property in Florida. Maybe you attend SWIM south of Miami every year. (But can you claim Camp Owaissa Bauer as a residence?) Whatever. If you have any connection at all with Florida, you can vote in Florida. If only 0.1% of voters in New York vote in Florida instead, and all are Kerry voters, that would provide an extra 60,000 votes for Kerry in Florida, and maybe that would squeak out a Kerry electoral victory.
Of course there are limitations. If you vote in Florida, you can't vote in New York. If you vote in two different places, you have cast two votes, and there are stiff penalties for doing that. In fact, maybe Gore took Texas in 2000. The Constitution forbids both the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates for the electoral votes of a state to come from that state. Cheney lived in Texas for a number of years in the 1990s while he ran Halliburton. At the last moment he said, well he has a residence of some sort in his birth state of Wyoming, so he registered to vote there, and he voted there. If Cheney can do it, so can everyone, says Operation Snowbird. If we can't do it, then Cheney can't either, and Gore won Texas in 2000. So do it. Kerry can afford a vote or two in New York, which he is going to take anyway by a landslide. Same for voters in Texas. Kerry's not going to win that state anyway. So why not? Vote in Florida and help Kerry win.
Of course don't just consider this for Florida. If it makes sense for non-Floridians to vote in Florida, then it makes just as much sense for non-Missourians to vote in Missouri, non-Ohioans to vote in Ohio, non-Pennsylvanians to vote in Pennsylvania and so forth. For these are all swing states. If enough New York and Texas voters pile up votes in any one of these, it could tip that state, and maybe the entire election, to Kerry.
This is not the only time this sort of thing has happened. In 2000, someone tried to set up a "vote swap" site, which supposedly would have allowed a Nader supporter in Florida to swap votes with a Gore supporter in New York, so the New Yorker would vote for Nader and the Floridian would vote for Gore. But agreements of this sort are not binding, and you are going on trust alone. The fact that swap or switch schemes like this comes up attests to the serious flaws in the Electoral College system. If everyone were allowed to vote in any state, then people would pile up votes first in swing states, then in any big state, and the voting pattern would approach popular vote, which is what I think this country should have anyway.
The 2000 Election caused this to come about. Gore won New York by 6 million votes, and Bush won Texas by a similar amount (although wait a minute… maybe he should have lost Texas! See below). Bush "won" Florida by a mere 537 votes out of about 4.6 million votes cast. Now what if we could have transferred 538 votes from New York State to Florida? That is a mere 0.009% of the vote in New York. But yet it would have won the election for Gore.
So this lawyer has come up with this idea. He has posted the Operation Snowbird site, which explains how non-residents of Florida can vote in Florida. You can't just up and sign up at the Florida Election website. You have to have something to do with Florida. Maybe you stay a good part of the time at a relative's house in Florida. Maybe you rent a property in Florida. Maybe you attend SWIM south of Miami every year. (But can you claim Camp Owaissa Bauer as a residence?) Whatever. If you have any connection at all with Florida, you can vote in Florida. If only 0.1% of voters in New York vote in Florida instead, and all are Kerry voters, that would provide an extra 60,000 votes for Kerry in Florida, and maybe that would squeak out a Kerry electoral victory.
Of course there are limitations. If you vote in Florida, you can't vote in New York. If you vote in two different places, you have cast two votes, and there are stiff penalties for doing that. In fact, maybe Gore took Texas in 2000. The Constitution forbids both the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates for the electoral votes of a state to come from that state. Cheney lived in Texas for a number of years in the 1990s while he ran Halliburton. At the last moment he said, well he has a residence of some sort in his birth state of Wyoming, so he registered to vote there, and he voted there. If Cheney can do it, so can everyone, says Operation Snowbird. If we can't do it, then Cheney can't either, and Gore won Texas in 2000. So do it. Kerry can afford a vote or two in New York, which he is going to take anyway by a landslide. Same for voters in Texas. Kerry's not going to win that state anyway. So why not? Vote in Florida and help Kerry win.
Of course don't just consider this for Florida. If it makes sense for non-Floridians to vote in Florida, then it makes just as much sense for non-Missourians to vote in Missouri, non-Ohioans to vote in Ohio, non-Pennsylvanians to vote in Pennsylvania and so forth. For these are all swing states. If enough New York and Texas voters pile up votes in any one of these, it could tip that state, and maybe the entire election, to Kerry.
This is not the only time this sort of thing has happened. In 2000, someone tried to set up a "vote swap" site, which supposedly would have allowed a Nader supporter in Florida to swap votes with a Gore supporter in New York, so the New Yorker would vote for Nader and the Floridian would vote for Gore. But agreements of this sort are not binding, and you are going on trust alone. The fact that swap or switch schemes like this comes up attests to the serious flaws in the Electoral College system. If everyone were allowed to vote in any state, then people would pile up votes first in swing states, then in any big state, and the voting pattern would approach popular vote, which is what I think this country should have anyway.
