Chuck Muth, a Republican activist in Nevada, suggests here that “vote-swapping”, an idea pioneered by Ralph Nader supporters and Al Gore supporters in 2000, should be revived this year. “Vote-swapping” depends on the internet. The facilitator sets up a web page, and voters in swing states are placed in touch with voters in non-swing states. The idea depends on trust. In 2000, Gore supporters in non-swing states were matched with Nader supporters in swing states, via the web page. The Gore supporter promised his or her “partner” to vote for Nader; in return, the Nader supporter promised to vote for Gore.

California’s Secretary of State in 2000, Bill Jones, had believed that the vote-swapping web page broke election laws, but the 9th circuit rejected Jones’ theory and upheld the legality of the practice.

Muth presumes that many, if not most, voters who lean toward Gary Johnson would be more sympathetic to Mitt Romney than to President Obama, but his assumption isn’t necessarily correct. Muth advocates that someone set up a web page to facilitate vote-swapping to match up Johnson supporters with Romney supporters.

Muth has not been a friend of minor parties and independent candidates. He used his influence to help persuade the 2011 session of the Nevada legislature to make ballot access more difficult. Muth did this because he was angry that in 2010, the Tea Party had placed a candidate for U.S. Senate on the general election ballot, using an easy method for a new party to place someone on the ballot. The Nevada legislature in 2011 repealed the easy method, leaving only a much more difficult procedure in place.

Richie Ross, a veteran California Democratic Party campaign consultant, has this op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. He concludes that the biggest change caused by California’s top-two open primary Proposition 14 was to vastly increase the amount of money spent in campaigns.

Marilyn Marks, an activist who worries about the accuracy of vote-counting equipment, has finally won her court battle to inspect ballots cast in Aspen, Colorado city elections from 2009. See this story. On June 28, the Colorado Supreme Court said it will not review the State Court of Appeals decision that had said old ballots are public records.

The legislature had passed a bill this year, clarifying that old voted ballots are public records available for public inspection (with certain restrictions), but that had not ended the controversy over ballots from a past election. When the ballots are made available for public inspection, of course there will be no method for knowing which voter put any particular ballot in the ballot box.