This is an interesting development in the US – an appellate court has ruled that it is legal to ’swap’ votes, and also to facilitate the swapping of votes.

The idea emerged in the 2000 presidential election campaign – supporters of third-party candidate Ralph Nader and supporters of Al Gore would strategically swap votes to maximise their effectiveness.  A Nader voter in a state that was likely to be a close contest between Gore and Bush would agree to vote for Gore in exchange for a Democrat voter in a state likely to be a clear win for Bush agreeing to vote for Nader.  In that way, neither candidate loses or gains any votes, but they are more effectively utilised and the damage that a progressive candidate like Nader does to a moderate candidate like Gore is reduced – with the obvious goal of countering a common opponent (Bush).

It’s interesting to consider how a similar scheme might operate in Australia in an attempt to enfranchise supporters of parties and candidates with broad, but thinly spread, support.  Our system naturally lends itself to niche candidates with appeal in a specific geographic region gaining the most benefit, whereas candidates who appeal to people across the country are significantly disadvantaged.  For instance, the National Party typically has a number of lower house MPs and Senators because their support is concentrated in certain regions (the country) and states (Queensland).  In contrast the Greens are rarely in contention in lower-house seats because their support is spread fairly evenly across most urban electorates in the country.  The consequence is that although more people vote Green than National, they receive less representation in parliament.

This situation is partly by design – MPs are meant to represent their local constituents, and Senators are meant to represent the interests of their state.  Still, it would be an interesting experiment to (for example) attempt to get a Greens senate candidate over the line in a particular state rather than (say) a third Liberal senator by arranging a vote swap between Labor and Greens voters.