Third-party voters ‘trading votes’ with Clinton voters to defeat Trump

Amit Kumar saw the tightening polls ahead of Election Day and, knowing that third party voters could tip the election one way or another, decided to give third party voters a way to express their preference for their candidate while also keeping Donald Trump out of office: “Let them trade votes.”

Now, #NeverTrump, a “marketplace” app, is allowing users to trade votes with each other as third-party voters in states that are considered to be swing states trade their votes with others in states considered to be safe.

For example, Nicholas, a Jill Stein supporter in Ohio, deeply supports his third party candidate but is well aware of the fact that he lives in a swing state and that Trump is currently leading in the polls there. But rather than give up his vote for the candidate he wants to support, he can trade votes with Alex, a voter in California, where Clinton is 99.9 percent likely to win. Nicholas and Alex, operating on the honor system, will hit the polls on Election Day with the understanding that they will vote for each other’s candidates.

–White nationalists to hand out drugs, liquor to keep Blacks from voting polls–

The practice is perfectly legal, too, thanks to the 2007 case Porter v. Bowen, which established vote trading as “clearly protected by the First Amendment.”

“Vote trading is just people deciding how they’re going to vote, based on forming a strategic political alliance,” Senator Jamie Raskin, who proposed vote trading in 2000 to try to help get Al Gore elected, explained. “In some sense, it is the principal activity of Democracy.”

Still, the idea of vote trading has many people crying foul and claiming it is an example of “rigging” the election, especially in the wake of claims made by Donald Trump and his supporters that the election is “rigged.”

Yet supporters of the idea of vote swapping are throwing their support behind it, saying that it is not only a way to make sure your vote is heard but also to rebel against the two-party system.