See also:
Thousands Sign Up to Sell VotesAustrian Takes Bids on U.S. VotesVoteauction Bites the DustClose Vote? You Can Bid On ItVote 2000: Life after Bill (Lycos News)
"We continue to have many investigators out there trying to
locate the gentleman responsible in Vienna, Austria and then
determine how we might bring him under jurisdiction of the Illinois
courts," said Langdon Neal, chairman of Chicago's Board of Election Commissioners.
Such actions are, of course, easier said than done. Voteauction
is run by an Austrian company and its website's server is, according
to Voteauction's chief investor Hans Bernhard, somewhere in
Bulgaria.
Neal countered that any court order arising from the lawsuit
could be enforceable since he had information that part of
Voteauction is being run via servers in Maryland -- a charge that
Bernhard denies.
"I don't even know about it yet," Bernhard said of the lawsuit.
"I have some indirect information that Chicago is going out to the
press. But we did not receive anything legal. No official documents,
no contact."
He added, however, that Voteauction recently did receive an
official cease and desist letter from California's secretary of
state, where 1,836 presidential votes are reportedly currently up
for auction.
"To be honest we don't see a problem at the moment," Bernhard
said. "The only point where there is a possibility to do something
is towards the voters who sell their votes. But we don't give out
this information."
Begun in August by a graduate student in upstate New York
developing the site for his master of fine arts thesis, Voteauction
had previously received one legal threat. At the time, the site was
being run stateside and was thus readily subject to enforcement
actions by American prosecutors and electoral boards.
When New York City's board of elections filed its cease and
desist letter with Voteauction on Aug. 18, the site was shut
down before the end of the day.
However, when Bernhard bought the site and moved it offshore, he
simply removed New York state from the bidding but continued to
trade in presidential votes for the other 49 states.
And now, according to the tallies on Voteauction, over 15,000
Americans have offered up their vote for sale, with $170,600 in
winning bids registered so far.
"You wonder what soldiers who died to preserve our right to vote
in a democracy would think about citizens willing to sell their vote
for $10 to $20," said Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia
professor who studies corruption in American politics.
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