Sneaky way Democrats are using anti-Harris progressives to win swing states

As voters headed to polling stations on Tuesday, a new website has emerged as a way to influence the outcome in the seven swing states that will decide who wins the White House.

It’s called Swap Your Vote. Set up by anti-war campaigners, it has won plaudits from HBO host John Oliver, Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman, a Democrat, and others. 

Organizers say it helps electors in tossup states register objections to Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for the Israel-Hamas war, while not clearing a path to victory for former president Donald Trump.

They do this by signing up to ‘swap’ their vote with an elector in a safely blue state, such as New York, California, or Massachusetts.

In doing so, the tossup state elector agrees to vote for Harris, in a state where every ballot counts.

Speaking to Arab-American voters in battleground Michigan this week, Harris vowed to do ‘everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.’  

In exchange, their partner in a blue state agrees to cast a protest vote for the third-party or write-in candidate of the swing-state voter’s choice.

That way, the purple state voter registers their protest against the Democratic Biden-Harris administration, without making it easier for Trump, a Republican, to win their state, organizers say.

It also likely means extra votes for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and other outsiders in safe blue states.

To encourage more sign-ups from the battlegrounds, website organizers are currently matching them with two voters in safely blue states.

So far, about 11,000 voters have signed up to the platform.

That number of swaps is unlikely to affect the outcome in any state.

The closest state in the 2020 election was Georgia, where President Joe Biden beat Trump by some 12,000 votes.

But it could prove pivotal in a tossup state with a razor-thin margin between Trump and Harris when the votes are counted on Tuesday night.

Its biggest impact may be seen in Michigan, a swing state with an outsize share of Arab-American voters who have leaned Democrat in recent cycles but are disgruntled by the administration’s support for Israel.

In her closing pitch for the presidency this week at a rally in East Lansing, Michigan, home to 200,000 Arab Americans, Harris vowed to end Israel’s assault on the coastal Palestinian territory.

‘As president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza,’ Harris told the crowd.

The site was started two weeks ago by Rae Abileah, a long-time anti-war campaigner. 

The Swap Your Vote site matches electors in battleground states to those in safely blue states.  

She vowed to ‘bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure, and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination.’

The vote-swap site comes as progressives across the nation describe heart-wrenching decisions over how to voice disapproval of the administration without inadvertently boosting Trump’s chances.

It was started two weeks ago by Rae Abileah, who was formerly involved with the hard-left anti-war groups Jewish Voice for Peace and CODEPINK.

She says she felt stuck between a rock and a hard place about voting for Harris as her administration continued sending guns and money to support Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Gaza officials say some 44,000 Palestinians have died from Israel’s assault on the Strip following Hamas’ murderous raids into southern Israel on October 7.

Abileah says the site solves the ‘conundrum’ of being able to ‘keep pressure’ on the Biden-Harris administration over Gaza while also managing to ‘defeat Trump,’ she told Fast Company.

She says she was inspired by the 2000 election, which came down to a few hundred votes between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in Florida.

Back then, vote swapping was uncommon.

But the right number of trades could have swung the election for Gore — who may have made less hawkish decisions than Bush about actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, says Abileah.

US representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, was one of the first to propose organized vote swapping in the 2000 race, but it did not become widespread until 2016.

The vote-swapping site could lead to some extra ballots for the Green Party’s long shot candidate Jill Stein. 

Organizers say the deals are legal, but even so, vote-swapping is not without its problems.

Chiefly, there is no way to enforce what a vote-swapping partner actually does when they’re at the polling station.

It’s an honor system, which is vulnerable to people operating in bad faith.

Romman, the Palestinian-American lawmaker from Georgia, says she was skeptical about the scheme at first but ultimately decided to trade her ballot.

She cast her vote for Harris in battleground Georgia, pairing with voters in safe states. She left it up to them to decide who to back.

The system was an option for ‘people like me, who continue to be completely torn up about how to maneuver this election cycle as an ongoing genocide continues in Gaza,’ Romman told The Intercept.