Vote swapping: medicine for the ‘orphan voter’ problem?

A friend told me about an interesting voting strategy yesterday: the vote swap.

Let’s say I live in a riding where I am quite certain that my vote will have no impact on the final outcome.  Such ridings exist all over Canada: places where long-standing members of parliament are re-elected with little effort; ridings where the same party wins election after election regardless of who the party’s candidate is.  This is all well and good, unless I happen to prefer a party other than the one that always seems to win.  Since we use the ‘first-past-the-post’ system in Canada – riding by riding – it can be argued that votes not cast for the winner essentially don’t count.  These votes add up, and based on 2006 election results, 51.2% of all votes cast — more than 7.5 million votes — were “orphaned” in this way.

Fifty-one percent. This is not what I would call a democracy.

Vote swapping is a creative method of reducing this orphan vote count, and it is completely legal.  Here’s how it works (and while I am using myself as an example for clarity’s sake, I am really trying to be as non-partisan about this as I can):

1. I am convinced that my vote for the NDP will have little impact in my staunchly Conservative riding.  Normally I would cast my vote for the NDP anyway, but the only benefit is that Elections Canada would use it to give my favorite party a little funding (parties receive $1.75 for every vote they receive, so no vote is completely useless).  I don’t want to do this again.
2. I go to a web site like Vote Pair and sign up.  I tell them I want to vote NDP, but that I would also be willing to vote Liberal or Green.
3. Vote Pair tries to match me up with another voter, in another riding, who is facing a similar situation.  The critical thing here is that vote swap schemes focus on “swing ridings” — where polling indicates that races are close and a few votes can affect the outcome.  For me, they would try to find someone in a “swing riding” that has expressed a willingness to vote NDP.
4. Close to the election, Vote Pair will tell me if they’ve found a match.  They will help me and my match connect, and when we do, we will agree to swap votes: she will vote NDP in her riding, and I will vote (for example) Liberal in mine.  Both parties still get their $1.75 from Elections Canada, but that extra NDP vote may help send an MP to parliament and, as a result, better reflect the true makeup of voters in Canada.

The system seems great, but relies greatly on trust and the honor system.  After all, I may agree to vote for your party, but you have no way of knowing how I actually behave in the voting booth, and I really have no way of proving to you that I did what I said I would.  In the absence of electoral reform, however (I was deeply saddened at the defeat of the Mixed Member Proportional referendum in the last Ontario election), this sounds like an empowering alternative.  The system also depends upon voters in critical swing ridings registering as swappers (perhaps a tall order).

If you might entertain the idea of a vote swap, I am keen to recommend Vote Pair.  If you look online (especially on Facebook) you’ll find a ton of vote-swap groups.  Some have been set up for specific ridings; one very popular one has an intense party bias.  Many of the Facebook groups work by asking you to send messages to the group administrator, which seems sketchy to me (are my messages private?  Is the matching done carefully by people I can trust?).  Vote Pair appears to be working very hard to be non-partisan and transparent, which gives me some faith in their (hopefully) arm’s-length approach, their willingness to treat people’s voting interests with respect, and a genuine interest in improving the electoral system (as opposed to employing a specific strategy for a specific campaign, intended to defeat a specific party).  They have one knock against them: they’re calling themselves Vote Pair but their web address is http://pairvote.ca/ — confusing.

I am interested in this concept, but will proceed with caution and care, as any voter should.  If a match is found for me, I hope to be able to connect with my partner in order to confirm our level of trust and the potential impact.

Vote swapping.  If you’re in a riding where you feel your voice won’t be heard, think about giving it a shot.  If you are in one of the 68 swing ridings, REALLY think about it.

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