Editing Vote pairing (section)

== Legality ==

=== Canada ===
In [[Canada]], vote swapping with other people in Canada is legal per the [[Canada Elections Act|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.<ref>{{cite news |title=Online vote-swapping legal but voter beware, Elections Canada warns |date=September 17, 2008 |newspaper=[[CBC News]] |url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/online-vote-swapping-legal-but-voter-beware-elections-canada-warns-1.715876}}</ref>

=== 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, [[Voteauction|vote-auction.com]], which was shut down by an Illinois judge.<ref>{{cite news |title=Web site says vote auction was just a 'game' |date=November 10, 2000 |first1=Craig |last1=Stedman |newspaper=[[Computerworld]] |url=http://transcripts.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/11/10/vote.auction.idg/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 8, 2008 |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20080208175647/http://transcripts.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/11/10/vote.auction.idg/}}</ref>

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, [[Pair (parliamentary convention)|vote pairing]] is a routine practice in legislative bodies, such as [[United States Congress|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, [[Secretary of State of California|California Secretary of State]] [[Bill Jones (California politician)|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.<ref name=McCullagh2007 /><ref name=PorterVBowen /> The district court was slow to respond and abstained from making any decision. In 2003, the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit|9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals]] overturned this abstention.<ref name=PorterVJones2003>{{cite court |litigants=Porter v. Jones |vol=319 |reporter=F.3d |opinion=483 |court=[[9th Cir.]] |year=2003 |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051027161513/http://nvri.org/library/cases/Porter_v_Jones/9th%20Cir%20opinion.pdf}}</ref>

On August 6, 2007, the 9th Circuit ruled that California's threats violated the First Amendment, writing:<ref name=McCullagh2007>{{cite news |title=Vote-swapping Web sites are legal, appeals court (finally) says |first1=Declan |last1=McCullagh |date=August 7, 2007 |newspaper=[[CNet]] |url=https://www.cnet.com/culture/vote-swapping-web-sites-are-legal-appeals-court-finally-says/}}</ref><ref name=PorterVBowen>{{cite court |litigants=Porter v. Bowen |vol=496 |reporter=F.3d |opinion=1009 |court=[[9th Cir.]] |year=2007 |url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6535498774163727228}}</ref>

{{quotebox|Both the websites' vote-swapping mechanisms and the communication and vote swaps that they enabled were constitutionally protected. At their core, they amounted to efforts by politically engaged people to support their preferred candidates and to avoid election results that they feared would contravene the preferences of a majority of voters in closely contested states. Whether or not one agrees with these voters' tactics, such efforts, when conducted honestly and without money changing hands, are at the heart of the liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.}}

The 9th Circuit did not decide whether the threats violated the U.S. Constitution's [[Commerce Clause]].<ref name=McCullagh2007 />

As of 2024, vote swapping remains legal, so long as no money or gifts are exchanged.<ref name=Schneider2024 />