Will the Austrians treat the
US injunction like Cryptome treats
letters from HRH?
Monday October 23 07:00 PM EDT
Vote auction site attempts to skirt
shutdown order
By Patricia Jacobus, CNET News.com
A rogue Web site purporting to sell votes for the upcoming U.S.
presidential election is back in operation after being shut down
last week under a federal court order.
The Web site, formerly Voteauction.com, reappeared on the Net
over the weekend under a new address run from outside the
United
States and beyond the easy reach of election officials.
"The Web site may have started as a parody, but we dont think
its a
joke," said Thomas Leach, spokesman for the Chicago Board of
Elections, which last Wednesday won an injunction ordering the
site
taken down. "Its encouraging U.S. citizens to break the law."
The idea for the site, now Vote-auction.com, is to capitalize on undecided
voters who
planned on sitting out the November presidential election. Uncommitted voters
can sell their
votes to the Web site. The votes are then auctioned to the highest bidder, who
decides which
presidential candidate gets them.
About 1,131 Illinois voters have participated in this questionable practice,
according to the
Web site. In California, 2,546 voters have so far taken part in the auction.
Selling votes
carries a maximum three-year federal prison term.
It is unclear whether the votes being auctioned are legitimate. But with the
balance of the
presidential election hanging on a thin margin, the authorities arent taking
any chances.
"Could it affect the outcome of the elections? Yes," Leach said. "Should it?
No."
Created by James Baumgartner, a graduate student in New York, and later sold to
a group
of investors in Austria, the Web site has U.S. election officials up in arms.
Authorities in New York, Illinois and California moved to shut down the site,
with Chicagos
election commission winning an injunction last week against Baumgartner,
Austrian
entrepreneur Hans Bernhard and three others, as well as Domain Bank, the
registrar that
provided the Internet address. As part of the court order, the judge
specifically said
Voteauction.com could not appear on the Net under a different name.
After the order, Bernhard found a foreign registrar that issued a new, but
slightly changed,
Web address.
Bernhard could not immediately be reached for comment, but information on his
site
declares that bidding on votes "works for, not against democracy." It also says
he had huge
reader support to keep the site in operation.
Leach said the Chicago election commission has asked for help from the Austrian
Embassy
in Washington, D.C., to permanently shut down Bernhards business. The court
injunction
has also been delivered to the Ministry of Austria.
"Theyre in defiance of a legitimate court order and in contempt of the American
judicial
system," Leach said of Bernhard and the others involved in Vote-auction.com.
