{news} (Rep_Ammerican)" 11 Nutmeggers Paired up with Swing State voters"

[Tim McKee]

11 Nutmeggers paired up with swing-state voters

Sunday, September 26, 2004 
By Trip Jennings 

Copyright © 2004 Republican-American 
On Election Day, 11 Connecticut residents will go about their normal routine. 
They will scan the ballot, vote and get an "I voted" sticker. 
In one way, though, their experience will differ from the rest of the state's voters. 
The ballots they cast for president likely will count hundreds of miles away -- perhaps in Ohio or Florida, in a way they hope will help U.S. Sen. John Kerry win those swing states and defeat President Bush. 
At least that's the objective of the creators of www.votepair.org, which started Monday, and encourages Kerry supporters in states where the presidential contest is not close to pair up with third-party supporters in states where the race is up for grabs. 
As of 6:30 p.m. Saturday, 11 of the 643 voters signed up nationally to participate in the so-called "vote pairs" hailed from Connecticut, Brent Emerson of VotePair.Org said from Oakland, Calif. 
Nadia Steinzor, the organization's spokeswoman, said she could not make any of Connecticut registrants available for comment. 
"We are definitely trying to find people who will talk to the media," she said. "We unfortunately don't have anyone in Connecticut" who wants to. 
In coming weeks, Emerson predicted more Connecticut voters will rally to the cause, much to the annoyance of some state government and election officials. 
"Disgraceful" was Gov. M. Jodi Rell's reaction to the practice upon hearing it described. 
"There are people dying right now to protect people's right to vote," she said Thursday. 
State Democratic Party Chairman George Jepsen's appraisal was equally succinct but more colorful. 
"It sounds kind of yucky," he said. 
The novel practice may dismay voting purists but it is legal, at least in Connecticut, said Jeffrey Garfield, the executive director of the state's Election Enforcement Commission. 
"While Connecticut has a statute that restricts vote buying or vote selling, it only applies to state and local offices," Garfield said. "It doesn't apply to the presidential election." 
At the same time, he added, " I am personally troubled by the concept." 
The creators of www.votepair.org insist what they are doing is not vote swapping, but bringing together like-minded progressive voters who hope to swing the election in Kerry's favor. 
"We are pairing progressive voters who have reached similar conclusions about the necessity of a strategic cross-party political alliance in the 2004 election," a note on the Web site says. "Nothing is 'traded.' Everyone votes his or her conscience." 
Here's how www.votepair.org works: The Kerry supporter in the "safe" state will vow to vote for the third-party candidate preferred by his or her battleground state ally -- such as Ralph Nader or Green Party nominee David Cobb. In return, the third-party supporter will pledge his support for the Democratic nominee on Election Day. 
The organizers of the Web site are trying to re-ignite the spark that created an ad hoc movement in the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, when groups all over the country developed independent vote pairing sites to help the Green Party receive 5 percent of the national vote and to help then-Vice President Al Gore defeat Bush. 
In 2000, at least 36,000 people, including more than 1,400 in Florida, participated in vote pairing, according to www.votepair.org officials. And because the margin of victory in several states is predicted to be as close as it was in 2000, officials are thinking the practice of vote pairing may carry the day for Kerry. 
The vote pair organization uses several strategies to distinguish swing states from safe ones, Emerson said. Among their resources, they track the swing vs. safe categorizations on four Web sites: electoral-vote.com, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 
He added the organization currently placed more than 20 states in the swing or battleground category, more than the usual count of states considered up for grabs. 
On Saturday, people from more than 40 states had signed up, with California leading the way with more than 228, according to the Web site. New York and Massachusetts had 58 and 33 residents, respectively. 



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