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Everybody's got issues in
Politics
However, in the meantime, Voteauction.com has changed owners as
well as modus operandi. And this time, it appears, the prospect of
squelching the wrongdoing is going to involve more than a
threatening phone call.
"Our server is in Bulgaria at the moment," said Hans Bernhard, an
Austrian investor and new owner of Voteauction. "It's a Twilight
Zone out there. And we can even move it further on, if it's
necessary. We can disconnect it from my person. We're very flexible
with this. Because we're very interested in the core business, in
the idea -- and in the future of this idea."
On Aug. 22, Bernhard bought the fledgling site from James
Baumgartner, an art graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute in Troy, New York, who had conceived of the site as a
satire on the American campaign finance system. However, where
Baumgartner -- who ran Voteauction himself from his studio in
upstate New York -- viewed the site as a commentary on the vagaries
of American plutocracy, Bernhard espouses no such higher motives.
For the Austrian businessman, American voters have a product that
can be sold. Simple as that.
"They're proving the point that the market knows no bounds," said
Jamin Raskin, a law professor at American University. "These people
are just 50 years ahead of their time in seeing that the ultimate
destination of the current [electoral] process is that everything
will be for sale -- from the votes of citizens to the votes of
legislators to perhaps even, heaven forbid, the votes of Supreme
Court justices.
"So the society has got to get serious and figure out what are in
fact the principled limitations on the logic of the marketplace.
Because right now 'May the highest bidder win' is the logic for
everything."
Presently, according to Bernhard, Voteauction has a core team of
seven employees: lawyers, communications experts, and marketing
people. As of Tuesday morning, the site was trafficking in 376 votes
with $10,600 in bids already posted. Bids are submitted via email to
the Austrian clearinghouse and are broken down state by state.
New York, whose electoral boards shut down Voteauction with one
phone call when it was run stateside, has been excluded from the
bidding. But in every other state in the union -- where, according
to Raskin, vote buying and selling are also unambiguously illegal
activities --Voteauction blithely continues to facilitate vote fraud
as if it were just another Beenie Baby auction on eBay.
The 68 California voters who have reportedly offered up their
presidential votes to the highest bidder currently face a $34.56
paycheck for marking their ballots as told -- as well as the
possibility of criminal prosecution if they get caught. As of
Tuesday morning, the price-per-vote in Illinois was up to $64.70,
while Kansas' two Voteauction participants are promised $100 each.
According to Brad Smith, a law professor at Capital University
and current member of the Federal Election Commission, the only
distinction between Voteauction and other electoral fraud systems is
size.
"Conceptually, the enforcement problem is really no different
from any other vote-fraud or vote-buying scheme," Smith said. "If
I'm going to go out and buy votes with street money I'm going to try
to keep it underground, and make sure people can't track it or get
witnesses. What's different here is the potential magnitude of
operation. Because what the Web does, as it does in all kinds of
legitimate commerce, is provide this great worldwide auction
market."
Smith, who also pointed out that prosecution of such illegal
activities would most likely be up to individual states, questioned
the ultimate feasibility of the Voteauction scheme -- since
verification is a bottleneck that fortunately no one has been able
to work around.
However, verification is only as much of a concern as buyers want
it to be.
"Verification will now be the responsibility of the winning
bidder," a spokesman for Voteauction said in a recent email
interview. "They can choose from a variety of methods for
verification of the votes. They may have the voters send in their
absentee ballots for verification, they may have the voters take a
photograph inside the voting booth, or they may go on the honor
system -- this is the system that many vote-purchasing endeavors
have used in the past.
"We have chosen to have the winning bidders responsible for the
verification because it would not be feasible to have people send
their absentee ballots all the way to Austria and have us send them
back to America within an appropriate time frame."
As for the obvious and undoubtedly immediate reaction Voteauction
will inspire when state prosecutors and boards of election get wind
of its activities, Bernhard sounded a sentiment all too familiar in
an age where the difference between onshore and offshore commerce
can be measured in mouse clicks.
"Why should we react on a state prosecution level?" Bernhard
asked. "Outside of the U.S., we don't care about state law. We only
care about any kind of international law that might be affected. On
the other hand, there might be a reaction on our side, if it might
affect the users who sell their vote. That would be the only reason
why we would react. But then we would be protecting our customers,
and not our company."
Should Voteauction actually manage to weather the coming tempest
of summons and prosecutions -- and also somehow insulate its buyers
and sellers from detection and conviction -- Bernhard said he has
plans to venture beyond what he calls "the American election
industry."
"For us, it's a double strategy," said Bernhard, whose
investments include the wily conglomerate of Internet mischief
makers etoy. "On the one side, we do
run Voteauction for this election. On the other side, we definitely
see it as a test pilot for [elections] in Europe."
Roger Pilon of the libertarian Cato Institute noted that
Voteauction's illegal activities should indeed be curtailed. But he
also understood the frustration of the American voters and
vote-buyers who participate in the process:
"When Al Gore promises prescription benefits for seniors, is he
not buying votes? When George W. Bush says to college students, I'm
going to give you free tuition if you vote for me, it's the same
thing, isn't it?"
Still, according to Smith of the FEC, an important distinction
remains between vote-influencing and outright vote-buying.
"There is much that is problematic about any system of financing
elections, including the way we finance our elections now," Smith
said. "But there is a fundamental difference between paying someone
to vote in a certain way and trying to convince someone to vote in a
certain way. Trying to convince any large group of people involves
spending money to communicate, and that's what the Supreme Court
said in Buckley
v. Valeo.
"But the voter remains under no obligation to vote in any
particular way. There's a reason why every state in the union makes
it illegal to buy votes. But no state makes it illegal for
individuals to contribuite money to a candidate."
Raskin of American University reiterated that Voteauction has
entered the American marketplace when accusations of corruption and
influence peddling have become so rampant that outright vote fraud
loses some of its outrageous taint.
"Traditionally, we have thought that votes operate in a separate
sphere from dollars," he said. "But the Supreme Court has not helped
to build a wall of separation between public elections and the
private economy. On the contrary, that wall is riddled with holes
and crumbling all the time. So I think this business is appealing to
a strong public sense that everybody's getting rich in politics but
the voters."
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