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Vote Swap Site Gets Court O.K.

A controversial Web site that allowed people to switch their votes in the 2000 presidential election was completely legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling Thursday.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overruled a lower court's decision that banned Web site www.votexchange2000.com from letting voters exchange votes between Vice President Al Gore and third-party candidate Ralph Nader in an attempt to defeat then Texas governor George W. Bush. Another lower court will now reconsider the case.

In the weeks preceding the closely contested presidential elections of 2000, a number of Internet Web sites were created that facilitated discussions among voters regarding potential strategic ways of voting. Through these discussions, the participants could agree to informally "swap" their votes, generating additional votes for the Democratic candidate in crucial swing states while allowing the third party candidate to garner enough votes to become eligible for federal financing in future elections.

San Francisco resident Alan Porter, the creator and users of one such Web site, brought suit alleging violations of the First Amendment after Defendant Bill Jones, then Secretary of State for California.

Jones had sent a cease and desist letter to the operators of a similar website in which he threatened to prosecute them under California Elections Code sections 18521 and 18522 for brokering the exchange of votes.

In the court's ruling judge Richard A. Paez said, "there are no special circumstances here that would indicate that we may disregard our general unwillingness to abstain in First Amendment cases when abstention itself could result in chilling the very First Amendment rights that plaintiffs seek to protect by suit."

The panel of three judges also reversed the district court's dismissal that Porter should receive damages.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which helped represent Porter, was satisfied with the decision.

"We're please that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election," Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU's southern California office told Reuters.

Jones' lawyers were not immediately available to comment on the ruling.

Porter has said he plans on setting up a similar website in 2004 and that this controversy is capable of repeating itself. The district court did not resolve the 2004 issue. The appeals court said it would only address the situation if it came back to them.