Vote Auction was a Website which offered US citizens to sell their presidential vote to the highest bidder during the Presidential Elections 2000, Al Gore vs. G.W. Bush. The
website was conceived by a student, James Baumgartner, and subsequently sold to Austrian artists Hans Bernhard and Lizvlx. Several US States (Missouri, Wisconsin, Chicago, Arizona, Nevada, California, Massachusetts, New York) issued temporary restraining orders or injunctions for alleged illegal vote trading. This led to the shutdown of two domains (voteauction.com and vote-auction.com). Federal Attorney Janet Reno, the FBI and the NSA investigated the case to ensure the integrity of the voting process.

Subtitled ”Bringing Democracy and Capitalism Closer Together,” the project was a satire which criticized the connection between capital and government. It elicited harsh and at times illegal responses. Network Solutions (a private corporation in charge of all the .com, .net, and .org domains) shut down the vote-auction.com domain without warning or explanation, shortly after the public attacks made by the California Secretary of State, and following an election fraud lawsuit in Chicago against the domain. The project criticizes the corporate funding of election candidates and the links between capital and government.

The site highlights the ways in which corporations purchase votes uninterruptedly as part of candidate financing. In reference to the project, constitutional Law Professor
Jamin Raskin said: ”...we have now evolved a system in which it’s OK for money to buy elections, and yet we somehow cling to the fantasy that there’s something deeply immoral about the purchase of an individual vote.” The legal campaign and the US legal system’s swift response reinforce this assertion. The unbearable lightness with which the project could be opposed and the site could be shut down exposes the priorities of American democracy and who it is intended to serve.

The explicit link today between capital owners and election candidates is not perceived as a threat to democracy, the rule of law and the incorruptibility of the election process. In response to the measures taken against the project, the domains vote-auction.com and voteauction.com were disseminated to servers throughout the world. The project is supported by RTMark whose primary goal is to publicize corporate subversion of the democratic process, and support anti-corporate projects.
 

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Vote Auction

Vote Auction was a Website which offered US citizens to sell their presidential vote to the highest bidder during the Presidential Elections 2000, Al Gore vs. G.W. Bush. The
website was conceived by a student, James Baumgartner, and subsequently sold to Austrian artists Hans Bernhard and Lizvlx. Several US States (Missouri, Wisconsin, Chicago, Arizona, Nevada, California, Massachusetts, New York) issued temporary restraining orders or injunctions for alleged illegal vote trading. This led to the shutdown of two domains (voteauction.com and vote-auction.com). Federal Attorney Janet Reno, the FBI and the NSA investigated the case to ensure the integrity of the voting process.

Subtitled ”Bringing Democracy and Capitalism Closer Together,” the project was a satire which criticized the connection between capital and government. It elicited harsh and at times illegal responses. Network Solutions (a private corporation in charge of all the .com, .net, and .org domains) shut down the vote-auction.com domain without warning or explanation, shortly after the public attacks made by the California Secretary of State, and following an election fraud lawsuit in Chicago against the domain. The project criticizes the corporate funding of election candidates and the links between capital and government.

The site highlights the ways in which corporations purchase votes uninterruptedly as part of candidate financing. In reference to the project, constitutional Law Professor
Jamin Raskin said: ”...we have now evolved a system in which it’s OK for money to buy elections, and yet we somehow cling to the fantasy that there’s something deeply immoral about the purchase of an individual vote.” The legal campaign and the US legal system’s swift response reinforce this assertion. The unbearable lightness with which the project could be opposed and the site could be shut down exposes the priorities of American democracy and who it is intended to serve.

The explicit link today between capital owners and election candidates is not perceived as a threat to democracy, the rule of law and the incorruptibility of the election process. In response to the measures taken against the project, the domains vote-auction.com and voteauction.com were disseminated to servers throughout the world. The project is supported by RTMark whose primary goal is to publicize corporate subversion of the democratic process, and support anti-corporate projects.