Probably the most-asked question about VotePact is the question of trust. How can you trust someone you’ve met on the internet?
Well, we’re using the internet to spread this idea, have set up a FaceBook page and such, but we’re not really suggesting that people meet on the internet. We want people to deal with people in their own lives. Lots of spouses could do this, brothers, co-workers, neighbors, etc. The issue of trust remains, but it’s subsided significantly when the person you’re dealing with is someone you have a real relationship with and have really talked about what you’re going to do. If you trust someone with your kids, shouldn’t you be able to trust them with your vote? It might work best with people you’ve avoided talking about politics with, avoiding the subject because it might hurt the relationship.
You could have prominent people doing this to publicize it — a union official and a business owner who have fought with each other for years, but agree on trade/war/civil liberties. Two famous actors. Two famous intellectuals. Combination we can’t imagine yet. For reasons we can’t imagine yet.
Another alternative is to have absentee ballots, walk them down to the mail box together and mail them together. (There might be problems with this, we understand some places don’t let you do absentee ballots unless you really are away, and some places allow you to “over ride” your absentee ballot by voting on election day.)
But if this takes off, say by people co-writing articles — if it’s publicized, it makes a dent in the polls (dispite how flawed they are), then you get third party candidates in the debates and then you’ve got a real three-or-four-way race. The seeming inevitability of the two establishment parties dissipates and people can begin to judge the candidates on their merits rather than political calculation.