Vote swapping, also called co-voting or vote pairing or vote trading, is an informal strategic agreement between two voters to "exchange" their votes, in order to vote tactically and maximize the chances that their preferred candidates will win election. Vote swapping avoids wasted votes (and the "spoiler effect") by shifting votes from uncompetitive districts to competitive districts.
In a vote swapping agreement, Voter 1 in District A commits to vote for Voter 2's preferred candidate in District A, and Voter 2 in District B commits to vote for Voter 1's preferred candidate in District B.
For example, consider elections in the United Kingdom: In constituency A, the race is tight between a Labour and a Conservative candidate. In constituency B, the race is tight between a Liberal Democrat and a Conservative candidate. A Liberal Democrat voter in constituency A would agree to vote Labour, and in exchange, a Labour voter in constituency B would agree to vote Liberal Democrat. This makes it more likely for either Labour or the Liberal Democrats to win that seat from the Conservatives.
In the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, the process has been subjected to legal challenge and been deemed legal.
Legality
Canada In Canada, vote swapping with other people in Canada is legal per the Elections Act, as long as there is no money or "material benefit" that passes hands in the vote swap agreement. It's also illegal to trick someone using a false identity to influence someone to vote in a different way.
United States In the United States, it is illegal to buy or sell votes. In the 2000 presidential election, graduate students created a satirical web site for buying and selling votes, vote-auction.com, which was shut down by an Illinois judge.
Opponents of vote swapping claim that it is illegal to give or accept anything that has pecuniary value in exchange for a vote. Proponents for vote pairing respond that vote pairing does not involve any pecuniary or monetary exchange. Instead, vote swapping is simply an informal, nonbinding agreement between people to vote strategically. In addition, vote pairing is a routine practice in legislative bodies, such as Congress and city councils.
The debate regarding the legality of vote pairing peaked during the 2000 presidential election, when there was a strong effort to shut down the U.S. vote-pairing websites. On October 30, 2000, eight days before the November 2000 United States presidential elections, California Secretary of State Bill Jones threatened to prosecute voteswap2000.com, a California-based vote pairing website. In response, voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com immediately shut their virtual doors. The site operators, Alan Porter (votexchange2000.com) and William Cody (voteswap2000.com), and two potential users of the sites, Patrick Kerr and Steven Lewis, took the state of California to court. The district court was slow to respond and abstained from making any decision. In 2003, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned this abstention.
On August 6, 2007, the 9th Circuit ruled that California's threats violated the First Amendment, writing:
The 9th Circuit did not decide whether the threats violated the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause.
As of 2024, vote swapping remains legal, so long as no money or gifts are exchanged.
History
Canada Canadian voters extensively use strategic voting and strategic voting pledges. For example, during the 2015 federal election, strategic voting was used extensively against the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, which had benefited from vote splitting among centrist and left-leaning parties in the 2011 election. Following the landslide victory of the Liberals led by Justin Trudeau over Harper's Conservatives, experts argued that this dramatic increase in support for the Liberals at the expense of the NDP and Green Party was partially due to strategic voting for Liberal candidates. In three weeks, 1.4 million voters switched from NDP to Liberal. In at least two closely-contested ridings, strategic voting websites obtained enough pledges to account for the victory margin of the Liberal candidate.
Vote swapping websites can also help voters switch votes from district to district, such as VotePair.ca (also PairVote.ca), created by Gerry Kirk. In the 2008 Canadian federal election, VotePair.ca claimed that 6,000 people registered to swap their vote and 2,800 successful vote swaps occurred. In the 2011 Canadian federal election, VotePair.ca claimed that 5,741 people had registered 1 week before the election, that 7,522 people registered in total, and that 1,713 swaps (for 3,426 votes) officially occurred, of which 838 were swapped into Greens, 1367 into NDP, and 1488 into Liberals.
United States
Since 2000, voters have used vote swapping as a tactical voting strategy in U.S. presidential elections. In this practice, a third-party voter from a swing state reaches an agreement with a Democratic or Republican voter from a red state or blue state (or "safe state"). Under this agreement, the third-party voter pledges to support the other's major party candidate, and in exchange, the Dem/Rep voter pledges to support the other's minor party candidate. For example, a Green voter in Wisconsin might swap with a Democratic voter in California.
Under the United States Electoral College, all of a state's votes go to the winning presidential candidate for that state, no matter how close the margin, in a winner-take-all system. Third-party candidates for president frequently garner no Electoral College votes, but can siphon off total votes from the front runners in order to call attention to their causes. Vote-swapping agreements allow third-party candidates to get of the popular vote, while the major-party candidate gets more of the Electoral College vote.
2000 United States presidential election
The debate over the legality of vote swapping intensified in the final days of the 2000 election when six Republican state secretaries of state, led by the California Secretary of State Bill Jones, charged that vote-pairing web sites were illegal and threatened criminal charges against their creators. Multiple web sites had sprung up that were matching supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, in non-swing states, with supporters in swing states of the strongest third-party candidate, Ralph Nader. Some argued that Ralph Nader was drawing support from left leaning Democrats that would otherwise vote for Al Gore. This would have allowed Nader to get more of the popular vote, or at least his fair share of it, and at the same time allowed Gore to perhaps get more of the Electoral College vote.
There are multiple reasons it would be important for Ralph Nader to still get his share of the national popular vote. One is that if he got five percent or more, then he could get federally distributed public funding in the next election. Also, and perhaps more importantly, he could possibly get included in the presidential debates for the next election in 2004. Third parties have protested their exclusion from the presidential debates.
In 2000, many of the vote pairing web sites were hosted in California, and so when the California Secretary of State, Bill Jones, charged that the web sites were illegal and threatened their creators with criminal prosecution, some (but not all) of the sites reluctantly shut down. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) got involved to protect the web sites, seeking a restraining order against Jones and then a permanent injunction against him, alleging that he had violated the constitutional rights of the web site creators. However, the issue would only be resolved after the 2000 election had already occurred.
Votes swapped to Gore in Florida 1412 Bush's margin in final recount 537 Bush's margin in Dec 8 ruling 193
It is possible that Jones's threats, which shut down several vote-swapping websites, changed the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. After the election, votetrader.org tallied up the total number of voter swaps across all vote-swapping websites at 16,024, of which 1,412 were Nader-to-Gore voters in Florida. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified George W. Bush as winning Florida by just 537 votes, and certified Ralph Nader as winning 97,421 votes. Under this standard, if another 550 voters had swapped (about 0.5% of Nader's total), then Gore would have won. In their ruling on December 8, 2004, the Florida Supreme Court changed this margin to just 193 votes. Under this standard, if another 200 voters had swapped (about 0.2% of Nader's total), then Gore would have won. Put another way: If about 1,600 Nader supporters had vote paired instead of 1,400, Gore would have carried the election.
There were numerous other controversies in Florida's vote count: from the Palm Beach County butterfly ballots; to the question of whether Bush would have still won the state in a full recount; to how Katherine Harris, a Republican, was the co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida at the same time she was the Florida state secretary of state. Notably, the California state secretary of state, Bill Jones, who charged that the vote-pairing web sites were illegal, was also a Republican supporter of George W. Bush. The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals would eventually rule against him, but this decision did not come down until February 6, 2003, long after the 2000 election was already over. In the next presidential election, in 2004, the legality of the vote-pairing web sites went unquestioned. Indeed, the California state secretary of state for the 2004 election (a successor to Bill Jones) publicly announced, before that election, that vote pairing was legal.
Organization Shut down after Jones threat Signups Swaps (2 voters each) Swaps in Florida to Gore nadergore.com Shut down 221 98 (est) 15 nadergore.org 300 150 13 (est) nadertrader.org 0 0 0 tradevotes.com 310 147 13 (est) voteexchange.com 9698 3127 277 (est) voteexchange.org 692 346 17 voteswap2000.com Shut down 5000 2500 265 voteswap2000.net 6325 3102 322 votetrader.org 228 98 10 votexchange2000.com Shut down 3000 1331 (est) 118 (est) winwincampaign.org 10251 5125 362 Total (including estimates) 36025 16024 1412
2016 United States presidential election
In 2016, four substantial vote swapping campaigns appeared. Two of these campaigns hoped to swap votes from Clinton supporters in safe states with supporters of third parties, such as NeverTrump Republican voters:
The #NeverTrump app, created by Amit Kumar, sought to exchange votes between Clinton voters in safe states and third-party voters in swing states, in order to prevent Donald Trump from being elected. Kumar claimed that 16,000 people had signed up to trade. On November 8, the #NeverTrump app listed 10,568 "active traders", including about 550 people in Florida, 600 in Pennsylvania, and 250 in North Carolina. TrumpTraders.org, created by Republicans for Clinton in 2016 (R4C16), sought to exchange votes between Clinton voters in safe states and third-party voters in swing states, in order to prevent Donald Trump from being elected. TrumpTraders.org claimed that, by October 31, more than 10,000 voters had signed up. In November, TrumpTraders.org offered a 2:1 exchange rate, such that one third-party supporter could vote for Clinton, and in exchange, two Clinton supporters would vote for that third party. After the election, TrumpTraders.org claimed that over 45,000 voters had signed up, including 5,000 in Florida.
Two campaigns hoped to swap votes between one Democratic voter and one Republican voter, who would both agree to vote for a third party candidate such as Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or Green candidate Jill Stein: