cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/44904749
I heard about this in the UK elections recently, and someone recommended it to me recently for the US elections, because I said I empathize with the people who are voting against Kamala because of the genocide, despite being a Kamala supporter myself (you’ve probably seen me around arguing as such lol).
Basically, it’s a system where people in safe states, like me, agree to trade votes with someone in a swing state. So the safe state person would vote with the heart of the person in the swing state, so they can kind of vote their heart and mind at the same time.
Is this a thing we could set up? Would it be legal to make a community for that, or would it rub against laws about affecting votes or something? There was even a whole site for the UK, but not sure if it would work in the US.
Ah, I think get it now.
So swing state voter who really wants to vote for say Stein due to her policy on Gaza but wants Harris to win in case Stein loses, can swap with a safe state voter who’s first preference is voting for Harris.
Then the safe state voter votes Stein (perhaps as a write-in vote if Stein’s not on the ballot there), and the swing state voter votes Harris.
The safe state voter feels good because they caused one vote for Harris that Harris might not have gotten otherwise, especially in a swing state. The swing state voter feels good because they caused one vote for Stein but also didn’t risk swinging the election to the GOP by costing Harris a valuable swing state.
This is brilliant! I wish I had heard about this earlier, as I already voted, but I’d love to do something like this next time around.
Imagine, if every voter in Michigan and Wisconsin who was voting for Stein swapped with a Dem voter in California. Maybe a lot of these folks wouldn’t care between the two (GOP vs Dem) but probably there’s a significant amount here who would still rank Harris above the GOP choice. So this prevents a protest vote from helping the candidate that they’d like the least.
Right?! At last, someone gets it! Lol and you explained it even better.
Although you bring up a good point that early voting has started. Probably too late for me to start looking into something like this now 😩
Hey, it’s not too late yet. I may not be able to take part in this election anymore but if you haven’t voted yet, you still can.
I imagine that there are tons of third party voters out there, who haven’t voted early yet because they’re feeling conflicted between voting their conscience and preventing armageddon. I’m sure you’ll be able to find folks to pair up with and exchange if you go for it!