CHICAGO--Mindful of the city's history as a
place where elections have been bought, Chicago officials are trying
to shut down a Web site that offers votes to the highest bidder.
The Board of Elections sent letters yesterday to federal and
state prosecutors, saying that Voteauction.com should be
shut down.
"In
Chicago we react strongly and quickly to this type of
activity--whether it's tongue-in-cheek or not--because we need to
guard our reputation here that this is a place where voting activity
is legal and aboveboard and beyond reproach," board chairman Langdon
Neal said.
Voteauction provides "a forum for campaign contributors and
voters to come together in a free market exchange," according to the
site. Voteauction says it will collect absentee ballots from voters,
verify them, and then sell them to the highest bidder, who can
"choose who the group will vote for en masse." Sellers then receive
money depending on how much is bid.
So far, the site boasts that 8,313 voters nationwide have signed
up--380 in Illinois. The price tag thus far in Illinois, according
to the Web site, is $15.79 a vote, or $6,000 for the state.
California, the national prize because of its 54 Electoral
College votes, has a high bid of $22,000 offered to make the choice
for 1,230 voters. The Web site notes that it is not valid in New
York after that state questioned its legality.
Neal said there is no indication any money or ballots have
changed hands. Nor, he said, is there any way to verify how many
voters have signed up or even contacted the Web site. But, he said,
"we don't think it can work."
The U.S.
attorneys' office has forwarded the board's letter to the Justice
Department, and the state's attorney's office would only say it
received the letter.
A New York graduate student, James Baumgartner, launched the site
this summer and said it wasn't really meant to work at the time.
"It was more to make a point that the campaign financing system
operates as a business," he said.
Neal said while others may think the site is funny, "To us it is
not, particularly because of the history of Chicago."
Stopping it, though, may be tough. The site has been sold to a
Vienna businessman, Hans Bernhard, who, Baumgartner said, is "in
Austria and the server is in Bulgaria, so he thinks he's outside the
jurisdiction" of any American board of elections.
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