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Austrian Takes Bids on U.S. VotesVoteauction Bites the DustClose Vote? You Can Bid On ItEverybody's got
issues in
Politics
Boasting of the more than 6,000 Americans who have signed up to
auction off their presidential votes to the highest bidder --
illegal activity under the laws of every state in the union --
Voteauction is now detailing its plans to begin an outreach
campaign.
Using its "Voter Empowerment Kits" and "Action Teams," the
company claims in a press release that it can reach more potential
customers and facilitate voter fraud without the intervention of an
online middleman.
Such activity leaves Deborah Phillips of the Voting Integrity Project
flummoxed.
Phillips has been observing the ups
and downs
of the blatantly felonious site since August, when Wired News first
reported
on this curious conglomeration of satire, lawlessness and voracious
capitalism.
"Why isn't the Justice Department getting involved?" she said.
"Why hasn't there been any comment from the White House? Why hasn't
Congress held any hearings?"
Federal Election Commission member Brad Smith noted that federal
and state officials may be hesitating for three reasons.
First, the site probably hasn't garnered enough media attention
yet to mobilize all the forces who should be opposing Voteauction.
Second, since the site traffics in a novel form of
overseas-instigated vote fraud, it's also undoubtedly unclear just
who those forces are -- whether they be the Department of Justice,
Department of State, municipal or statewide boards of election,
state attorneys general or other offices tasked specifically to
monitor the Internet. (Voteauction, he guessed, would probably not
be handled by the FEC.)
Finally, he said, it's still unclear just how widespread a threat
a site like Voteauction represents.
"I suspect that if this began to appear to be a problem on a
large enough scale, though, you'd see action, and it'd come
quickly," Smith said.
According to Hans Bernhard, the Austrian businessman who bought
Voteauction from James Baumgartner, a New York graduate student who
developed the site, American reaction against his investment has
already begun.
In addition to the hate emails he receives for running an
offshore enterprise that facilitates American felonies, Berhard
reports that the site has also been the recipient of numerous hacks
and electronic attacks.
"We do understand that there is a certain interest on the part of
certain services of the U.S. government who most probably are
interested in this data," Bernhard said of Voteauction's list of
vote sellers and buyers. "Our job is to protect this data. We don't
want this data to be public."
According to James Baumgartner, the MFA student who first
conceived of the site as a commentary on wholesale corruption in
American politics, a few facts can be divulged about the $75,000 in
bids so far and the 6,000 participants.
Vote-sellers on the whole tend to be in their twenties, male and
with at least some college education -- including a lot of college
students, he said. Vote buyers, on the other hand, tend to be in
their forties, affluent and Republican.
Almost all of the bids for votes -- broken down by state -- have
come from individuals seeking to increase the number of votes for
their favorite candidates. Only three companies, in the "$200
million sales range," Baumgartner said, have yet placed any bids for
Voteauction votes.
The profile of both sides of the Internet auction does jibe with
the history of vote-buying in America, said Larry J. Sabato, a
University of Virginia political scientist and author of the 1996
book Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in
American Politics.
Especially telling is the fact that the payoff-per-vote, as
tallied on the site, is settling into the $10-$20 range -- the
amount of cash an individual vote tends to command in other,
non-Internet-based schemes.
"It always seems to be about $20," Sabato said. "That must be the
going rate. And when you think about it, it makes sense. Because 10
bucks is not what it used to be. With 20 bucks you can get a pretty
good meal, if you know where to go. And I think that's how some
people conceive of it. Their vote may be worth a meal. It's sad, but
that may be true."
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