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| Vote-Auction Sidesteps Legalities Associated Press 2:00 a.m. Oct. 26, 2000 PDT
| SACRAMENTO, California -- A website offering to sell 21,000 votes for president to the highest bidder has changed its domain name and switched its registrar to a company based in Germany. Federal and state laws prohibit the sale of votes, but the Austrian owners of vote-auction.com denied they had moved operations overseas to avoid legal challenges. Instead, investor Hans Bernhard wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press, research showed that users frequently tried to type the new name of the site instead of the old name, which lacked the hyphen.
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| Today's Headlines 2:00 a.m. Dec. 13, 2001 PST |
| Independence Day for Indie Bands New IPO Rallying Cry: This is War Waiting for Godot, er, Bluetooth NextWave Deal Falling Through Wham, Bam, Thank You Spam MS TV: It'll Be Watching You Real Gets the Deal Auction Sites Love the Euro Google's Gaggle of Discussions Fed Cuts Rates One More Time Xerox Seeks PARC Investors Bluetooth Is Here: Yawn or Yay Black Publisher: From Net to BET Napster Still Playing, in Court Sites Forlorn When Reborn as Porn Getting the FDA Hooked on Ecstasy Plenty of Spam for the Holidays Report: Top Analyst Being Probed AT&T Weighs Broadband Sale Biz-Woman Mystique Dispelled Real Debut: Subscribe If You Can I'll Be Hacked for Christmas Taking a Public Firm Private Commerce One Founder Dies China PC Makers Fight MS Piracy China Braces for Media Onslaught
See also: Thousands Sign Up to Sell Votes Austrian Takes Bids on U.S. Votes Voteauction Bids the Dust Close Vote? You Can Bid on It
The site asks voters to fill out personal details and then offers to sell the votes in blocks broken down by state to the highest bidder. The technique, the website says, brings the "big money of campaigns directly to the voting public." The site offers to deliver the votes to any corporation or individual, but it hasn't identified voters, bidders or said when the sale will end. The owners say the U.S. vote auction is a test to determine how they can make money. They still need to work out how voters would be paid and how to verify that they cast the right ballot. Election officials in Michigan and New York have criticized the scheme and a court challenge in Illinois led to the closing of the old site. California Secretary of State Bill Jones warned any vote sellers they could face felony charges and a minimum of three years in prison. The site was reopened this week with the help of CSL Computer Service of Germany. By Thursday, more than 2,500 California voters had offered their votes and the leading bid was $48,000 or $19.61 per vote. "Truthfully, this could probably go on forever, so long as it is known by those who wish to use the service, for lack of a better term," said Steve Jones, a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who follows the Internet. Shad Balch, a spokesman for California's secretary of state, said the domain name change would not affect California's investigation into the site and its employees. He said investigators have found a way to identify users but would not go into details. Bernhard said the site's message board had been taken offline to protect users from the investigation. Industry experts say it would be almost impossible to identify voters by using technology. "There is virtually no legal way to check who is using the site without a subpoena or warrant, which is unlikely when the operations are international," said Stewart Farley of Internet Products Inc., a San Diego company that makes Web-filtering products. The original website was launched by a New York graduate student who sold the site in August after he was threatened with legal action by New York state officials. Internet auction site eBay has also had to wrangle with potential vote selling. In August, six people offering to sell their votes for president drew bids as high as $10,100 before the online auctioneer shut them down. Copyright © 2001 Associated Press Have a comment on this article? Send it. Printing? Use this version.

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