Legal News

9th Circuit: vote-swapping is legal
The National Law Journal reports: Third-party candidates take note for the upcoming presidential election: The First Amendment protects vote-swapping arrangements. The short-circuited campaign in 2000 to arrange vote trading between supporters of presidential candidates Al Gore and Ralph Nader died...

En Banc Ninth Refuses to Reconsider Vote Swapping Case
Porter v. Bowen, 06-55517 (9th Cir., March 13, 2008) In a fascinating decision issued last August, a panel of the Ninth Circuit declared that voters have a First Amendment right to enter into vote-swapping agreements...

En Banc Denied in First Amendment / Votepair Case
I blogged about this case back in August when the initial decision came out. See Vote Swapping / Vote Pairing Decision Back in August, the Ninth Circuit held, as I?ve argued for seven years that vote-pairing websites are constitutionally protected and that California Secretary of State Bill Jones violated the First Amendment when he threatened [...

Elections Canada Says Online Vote Swapping Legal
The CBC reports that Elections Canada has said that online vote swapping does not violate the Elections Act.

Court of Chancery Defines Illegal Vote Buying
Portnoy v. Cryo-Cell International Inc., C.A. No. 3142-VCS (January 15, 2008). This is the definitive decision on when arrangements to secure a stockholder's vote are invalid. "Vote buying" has long been criticized without much thought...

Ninth Circuit Rejects Petition for Rehearing En Banc
Source: Lexology, May 16, 2008. Ninth Circuit rejects petition for rehearing en banc, upholding its decision that vote-swapping websites cannot be prosecuted under vote-buying statutesMcDermott Will & Emery"The U...

Parody is a Protected Form of Speech
Targets of criticism seek to shut down Internet sites that poke fun