vote-swapping could prevent another Trump presidency
while preserving third-party votes
Hello to the 1,453 hotties who subscribe to this newsletter! Thank you for being here.
Like most of the country, I have wicked election anxiety right now. Many of us on the Left cannot bring ourselves to vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris because of her ongoing support for Israel. But we don’t want Trump to become president again either.
I intended to send my ballot with a blank vote for president. Besides, I live in California, a solid blue state where Harris will likely win. The truth is, thanks to the Electoral College, my vote for president in California doesn’t actually count. Instead, I focused my energy on voting for local measures on the ballot this year.
Defeated, I was ready to stick my ballot in the mail until my friend Sabrina, whom I met through Anticapitalism for Artists, told me about vote-swapping.
Vote-swapping is when a third-party voter in a swing state swaps their vote with someone in a solid blue state. The swing-state voter will vote for Kamala Harris, and, in exchange, the blue-state voter will vote for the third-party candidate of the swing-state voter’s choice.
Why vote-swapping works
Wtf is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College, established in 1787, is the process of electing the president. There are 538 total electoral votes, and a presidential candidate must achieve a majority of 270 votes to be elected into office.
Each state receives one electoral vote per senator, plus an additional number of electoral votes corresponding to the number of House representatives that the state has. A state with a larger population gets more electoral votes, but states with lower populations get at least three electoral votes.
Every state in the US, except Maine and Nebraska, has a winner-take-all policy. So even if the general public’s vote is split 51-49 in favor of Trump, Trump will take all of that state’s votes.
Wtf are swing states?
A red state has mostly Republican voters, while a blue state has mostly Democratic voters. There are complicated polling and statistical processes that predict which states are likely to be red or blue. For example, New York and California are typically blue states and Texas is typically a red state.
A swing state (aka a purple state or battleground state) is a state that could be won by either a Democratic or Republican candidate. For example, in the state of Michigan, Trump and Harris are both polling at 47%, according to USA Today. The remaining 6% of voters will decide whether Trump or Harris take all 15 electoral votes in that state.
Because of this system, third-party candidates have never been given any electoral votes. At this point, a third-party vote’s biggest impact on the public is to raise awareness about a candidate and their causes, moving the needle forward, little by little, until systems change down the line.
Swing states: (according to swapyourvote.org)
Arizona
Georgia
Michigan
North Carolina
Nevada
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Blue states: (according to World Population Review)
Vermont
Massachusetts
Hawaii
Maryland
California
New York
Rhode Island
Washington
Connecticut
Delaware
Outsmarting the Electoral College
Vote-swapping can prevent a Trump win in swing states while uplifting a third-party voter’s intended political impact.
There was a surge in vote-swapping during the 2000 election (Bush v. Gore), with the majority of the organizing happening through websites. The Internet was brand new back then, and there was a strong effort to shut down vote-swapping websites. Opponents argued that it is illegal to promise anything in exchange for a vote.
On October 30, 2000, California Secretary of State Bill Jones threatened to prosecute voteswap2000.com, a California-based vote-swapping website. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stepped in to protect the website, and in 2007, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutionally protected.”
Building trust & organizing networks across the country
At this point, my friends, I’d like to remind you that our work does not stop at voting. There is so much more to do after Election Day, and there are so many more networks to be built across the country.
Think of your vote-swap as a political organizing meet-cute. This is a chance for us to build networks across the country. We are also at a point in time where we need to practice trust and respect in the Left: We do not need to coddle or people-please with our comrades to organize together. Leftist organizing is not some kind of utopia where there is no conflict and everyone gets along. The Left is not a cult nor some kind of escape from the capitalist truths we need to face. We are a strategic movement with our eyes wide open in this critical moment.
The skills we cultivate while vote-swapping can plant seeds for stronger networks built on trust.