[V]ote-auction [Web-Site Nov 7 2000]
voteauction.com [Web-Site Mar - Jul 2000]

Vote-auction [court orders, various research materials]

Voteauction was a Website which offered US citizens to sell their presidential vote to the highest bidder during the Presidential Elections 2000, Al Gore vs. G.W. Bush.

The Website was conceived by the student James Baumgartner and then sold to the austrian business-artists Hans Bernhard (founder of etoy [5]) and Lizvlx from ubermorgen[1] in Austria and (V)ote-auction Inc. in Sofia/Bulgaria [a subsidiary of the ubermorgen group] for a undisclosed sum. Voteauction was ubermorgens feature Media Hacking performance in the year 2000.

Several US States (Missouri, Wisconsin, Chicago, Arizona, Nevada, California, Massachusetts, New York) issued temporary restraining orders or injunctions for alleged illegal vote trading. This led to the shutdown of 2 domains (voteauction.com and vote-auction.com). Federal Attorney Janet Reno, the FBI and the NSA were investigating the case to ensure the integrity of the voting process on november 7th, 2000.

Over 1800 global and national News features in online media, print, television and radio have been reported (including a 27 min. CNN exclusive "Burden of Proof")[2].

"[V]ote-Auction" is one of most risky and paradoxically successfull projects by ubermorgen: it is "the only platform in the world that provide the final consumer an effective role in the American election industry". A true interchange system that finally "brings capitalism and democracy closer together“.
ubermorgen exhibited the [V]ote-auction CNN tape, Voteauction-Seals and [F]original legal Documents in the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum 2001, The Premises Gallery Johannesburg 2002, Museu d`Art Contemporani de Barcelona 2003, Read_me 2.4 Helsinki 2003, Konsthall Malmoe 2004, Kunsthaus Graz 2004.

A follow up „legal art“ action called "The Injunction Generator" [4] was awarded with a "Honorary Mention" at the Prix Ars Electronica 2003. The Injunction Generator [4] is a artistic software module which claims to generate on request legal injunctions and personalized documentation in .rtf/.pdf format to force a site into taking its contents offline.

Carrying on with their principles of 'radical corporative marketing strategy' (Media Hacking), the artists group ubermorgen has produced an effective and credible interface which helps creating one's own documented cease-and-desist request, which is also automatically sent to the DNS administrators, to the site's owner and to some journalists to trick them into supporting the 'public trial'. Fall 2004, ubermorgen collaborated with Jorgen Follested on SELLtheVOTE.COM[6]

[1] http://ubermorgen.com
[2] http://ubermorgen.com/vote_auction_cnn_transcript.txt full transcript
[3] 2000_LEGAL_DOCUMENTS/CHICAGO_ILLINOIS/207.70.85.119/
[4] http://ipnic.org
[5] http://etoy.com
[6] http://SELLtheVOTE.COM

voteauction.pdf