Free Keene

Comment by bile

August 24, 2008 @ 12:14 am

Already taken down.

I was considering doing the same thing. You need to find a more willing host or perhaps do it here with people leaving comments with their bids.

Or you could always setup your own auction site: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-auctions/

Comment by jzacker

August 24, 2008 @ 1:09 am

Very illegal to sell your vote
Illegal to do this, Russell should stop now.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/04/ebay.vote.ap/

Comment by RWW

August 24, 2008 @ 6:33 am

Russell should stop now.

Because it’s illegal? Or because it’s dangerous?

Comment by jzacker

August 24, 2008 @ 6:52 am

Dangerous. Men with guns will take him to a jail cell.

Comment by bile

August 24, 2008 @ 9:58 am

I was just thinking that hosting the auction on here may be dangerous too. I don’t know what setup error has for his servers but given he’s going through some telecommunications firm at some point you could have the account terminated should the government folks catch wind.

Comment by Ian

August 24, 2008 @ 11:37 am

We’re not hosting it, just reporting on it.

Comment by bile

August 24, 2008 @ 12:15 pm

Understood. Just a general warning to those interested in similar acts and for the Kannings. I was sort of assuming NH Free Press was hosted by error too.

Comment by Charlie

August 24, 2008 @ 9:45 pm

I hope you don’t quit trying to sell your vote from this setback.

It pushes a lot of questions about our political system that need to be heard. You probably heard of the 19-year old University of Minnesota student who tried to sell his vote. The reaction from the press was really neat. Some sympathetic, too.

Comment by Liam from Sweden

August 25, 2008 @ 1:35 pm

I’m considering selling my vote myself, but I’m not sure if it’s morally justified to vote, period, and if voting is morally wrong then getting paid doesn’t change that. I’m not sure if I’d feel morally justified actively helping a bad person, or group of persons, get into power, just because someone was paying me. I do feel it’s a powerful way of showing how illegitimate voting and democracy is, but I’m skeptical.

Comment by A nobody

August 25, 2008 @ 3:13 pm

I had this idea after a night of drinking, the genesis of all great ideas. You create a pool of votes for sale. The more you can get the better. Now here’s the good part. All the proceeds go to a children’s hospital, and if anyone is convicted of selling there vote the hospital gets no money (Think of the children!). This turns the feds into the bad guys in the public’s eyes. Anyway, I’m just throwing that out there.

Comment by bile

August 25, 2008 @ 3:28 pm

The media would just conveniently leave that component of the story out.

The whole ‘is voting moral’ debate goes on often enough but I don’t see how voting, which in and of itself is not aggression, is illegitimate. Those who say it gives credence to the system place it far above other participation which they do (pay taxes, use parks, roads, etc). I understand that voting is easy to withdraw from and results in no aggression against you by the State but in the least it’s a defensive action. Making it so that your stolen money is used to feed people inefficiently is better than your money being used to blow up brown people. Selling your vote couldn’t be considered defensive really but you could argue showing the illegitimacy of voting by selling it explicitly is an offensive act against the state and therefore worth the cost.

Comment by Thomas

August 25, 2008 @ 4:26 pm

Besides, moral or immoral, legitimate or illegitimate, is irrelevant; a vote is worth nothing anyway.

Comment by Liam from Sweden

August 25, 2008 @ 8:54 pm

Bile: The problem with voting for a person or a party that is a “step in the right direction” is that any given political party or politician has the “wrong” opinion on at least one issue. There is virtually always at least one area where any given politician, even one who is pro-liberty for the most part, will increase the amount of tyranny. There is always at least one area where the politician or political party is a step in the wrong direction. And that’s where my problem with voting is – even if the person you voted for does the right thing 99 times out of a 100, when the politician that one time out of 100 does the wrong thing, you have it on your conscience that you actively helped put this person into power. When you watch the news and hear about that guy doing some tyrannical and horrible thing in that one area where he has the wrong opinion, you have to watch the tyranny knowing you voted for this person.

So, in a nutshell, it’s rarely, if ever, a case of any given politician or political party being a “step in the right direction”.

Comment by bile

August 25, 2008 @ 9:13 pm

That’s simply not true. To claim that at no time does a person do no more or less then the person before them is a shallow generalization. On a national scale that’s typically the case but do you believe the person before Ron Paul was smaller government than he? On a local level you definitely have people who don’t do more or actually do less. And even if you have the choice between a 10% increase and a 20%… why would you sit idle when there is a chance the 20% may get it? The politicians just don’t go away because you ignore them. If you are going to try to guilt people by claiming they are somehow responsible for a system that aggresses against them then you’re pretty sick. One is just making the best of a lose / lose situation. Just because some you may have voted for fucks up doesn’t mean you are morally responsible for everything they do. To act as if that’s the case is ridiculous. People are representatives in all parts of other’s lives and no one claims that the representative is a full proxy of the represented.

I never said anything about a vote being step in the right direction. I don’t know where you got that. I said that it’s not an act of aggression to vote and in fact can be seen as defense. Strategically voting for the lesser of a set of evils is better than sitting on your backside complaining about the aggressors. Especially at the local level. It’s a low cost defensive action and a possible educational tool.

Comment by Liam from Sweden

August 25, 2008 @ 10:05 pm

Voting for the lesser of two evils, in my opinion, only works on an issue by issue basis. On any specific issue, one politicians position is less evil than the other guys position. But once you start comparing one politicians entire platform with another politicians entire platform, then I become uncomfortable having to say which platform is less evil. How do you calculate who is less evil? Do you figure out some kind of mathematical formula where you say “The politician wants to legalize marijuana, that’s worth +5 points, but he wants to increase the income tax by 1%, that’s -7 points”, and go through their positions like that, applying points to their positions and then finally arrive at a “score” ?

It’s just not as simple as saying “the lesser of two evils” when it comes to entire platforms, because there are countless different issues and guaranteed, “your guy” is the worst of the two evils on some of them. I don’t feel comfortable voting for someone who will do the right thing on 9 issues out of 10, if he’ll do the wrong thing 1 time out of 10.

I’m not sure I agree that voting is self-defense, either. Not if the politician is going to use the power your vote gave him to aggress against people.

Comment by bile

August 25, 2008 @ 10:22 pm

Your vote is not power. The power is in the violence THEY enact. You are not responsible for that. You can say: “I want him to aggress against people” and you are still not responsible for their actions.

The 1 out of 10 times idea is silly. You are paying taxes which directly enable them to aggress but you don’t feel comfortable using a non-violent means to persuade people to not aggress or aggress less? Your tax dollars go a lot further than your vote does in enabling them. And as I said before… if you applied that logic to every aspect of your life you’d be nowhere with no associates because in every aspect of life there is the possibility that you are enabling another person to harm.

You don’t need to quantify harm to make an educated guess on who would be worse. You may be wrong, you may be right. That’s how life is. If I were to make a guess right now Obama after 4 years would do less overt harm than McCain. They will harm less people with socialism than war. Likely there is little difference between them even on that broad a view. So perhaps a Barr vote is best. There is no NOTA but at least I can help the LP maybe get on the ballot next time with less effort freeing up more resources for education and outreach. There are tangible benefits to 3rd party voting like the previous example and to take the position that “well it’s not going to make a difference” helps make it that way. If someone is going to try to work within the system to get closer to my idea society the least I can do is spend the 10 minutes out of a whole year to walk down to the voting center, which I’ve already paid for under duress, and plug in the candidate. If I want help in my sphere I’m going to need to show some support in theirs.

Comment by H. L. Mencken

August 26, 2008 @ 8:33 pm

? ?Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods. – H. L. Mencken

Comment by Jeff

August 29, 2008 @ 2:52 pm

I was going to do it until EVERYONE I told said “that’s illegal”. My question, where is the law that says I can’t sell my vote? If it IS illegal, then I will sell the rights to lobby me. You may be an Obama fan; give me 500$ and I’ll listen to your argument. I’m very impressionable and you will more than likely sway my vote… Would that be illegal? The government does it all the time. Voting is a sham anyways, so who cares if I sell it?

Comment by Retiredassassin

October 16, 2008 @ 11:07 am

I thought of doing this a few years back when the joker was running against the retard. I will allow the reader to determine who was who.

It is ridiculous that the bastards we elect to office, (be it city, state, federal) can accept kickbacks of either monetary or intrinsic value to sway their vote and we are not allowed the same “right”.

My vote is worth monetary value to someone. Someone that believes our country is still free and that believes that the way our country is run is actually in the best interest of “the people”.

But it isn’t worth anything to me. The people I want in office are not ever going to run for office because they are too damn smart and nowhere near dirty enough. We have created a system of life long politicians interested only in the power they hold.

So why not be allowed to sell someone double their dream vote? Maybe, instead of actually blatantly selling the vote we should allow “lobbyists” to “influence” our vote. Something that is written is illegal only if the letter of the law can prove it is worded illegally.

“… depends on what your definition of “is” is.”