Opinion ID: 3049588
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Protected speech or conduct

Text: [4] The first issue we must resolve is whether Jones’ actions burdened any constitutionally protected speech or conduct. That is, did Appellants have a First Amendment interest in voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000’s voteswapping mechanisms or the communication and vote swaps that the mechanisms enabled?8 Beginning with the voteswapping mechanisms themselves, we hold that they are entitled to at least some First Amendment protection. The mechanisms conveyed useful information to users by providing them with the e-mail addresses of appropriate counterparts with whom they could swap votes. Voteswap2000.com also offered data about states’ political leanings, ballot situations and electoral systems as soon as users of the mechanism identified their states of residency. See Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 444 U.S. 620, 632 (1980) (“communication of information” is “speech interest[ ] . . . within the protection of the First Amendment”); Giebel v. Sylvester, 244 F.3d 1182, 1187 (9th Cir. 2001) (“[B]ecause Giebel’s handbill was designed to convey information, it constitutes a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.”). [5] As Appellants argue, the vote-swap mechanisms also expressed a reasonably clear message of support for third- 8 Appellants plainly had a First Amendment interest in aspects of their websites other than the vote-swapping mechanisms. These other aspects provided information about the 2000 election and expressed Appellants’ support for vote swapping, third parties and (in voteswap2000.com’s case) Nader and Gore. We limit our inquiry, however, to the vote-swapping mechanisms (and the communication and vote swaps they made possible) because they were the focus of Jones’ threatened prosecution. Websites that advocated vote swapping without actually enabling visitors to swap votes were never targeted. 9356 PORTER v. BOWEN party candidates and concern that winner-take-all systems might allow a candidate to receive all of a state’s electoral votes even though he was opposed by a majority of the state’s voters (as measured by the popular vote).9 Any person who sought access to the mechanisms would have realized — even turning a blind eye to the text and hyperlinks that surrounded them on the websites — that their creators supported third parties and were seeking to create options that were otherwise foreclosed by most states’ electoral procedures. A user of voteswap2000.com’s mechanism who self-identified as a safe-state Gore supporter, for example, would have been asked to provide his or her name and e-mail address, and would have seen the following language on the online sign-up page: “You are a Gore supporter from a blow-out state who will agree to vote for Nader in exchange for someone in a swing state voting for Gore.” This statement certainly communicated voteswap2000.com’s pro-Nader, pro-Gore position, as well as its fear that Bush would win swing states’ electoral votes despite the opposition of a majority of the states’ voters. See Spence v. Washington, 418 U.S. 405, 41011 (1974) (expressive conduct requires “intent to convey a particularized message” and “likelihood [that is] great that the message would be understood by those who viewed it”); cf. Vlasak v. Superior Court, 329 F.3d 683, 690-91 (9th Cir. 2003) (protester’s wood-and-metal bull hook at circus was expressive conduct); Colacurcio v. City of Kent, 163 F.3d 545, 549-50 (9th Cir. 1998) (same for nude dancing at nightclub).10 9 Voteswap2000.com’s message was even more specific. Because its vote-swapping mechanism permitted only self-identified safe-state Gore supporters to trade votes with swing-state Nader supporters, the message conveyed was support for Nader (as opposed to third parties generally) and for Gore. 10 The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc. (FAIR), 126 S. Ct. 1297 (2006), is not to the contrary. The Court held in FAIR that law schools’ exclusion of military recruiters from campus was not expressive conduct because “[a]n PORTER v. BOWEN 9357 [6] Looking next at the communication and vote swaps that the mechanisms enabled between paired users, we agree with Appellants that they too constituted protected speech or conduct.11 As discussed above, after being matched by the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms, users were encouraged to contact each other by e-mail. It is reasonable to assume that the users’ ensuing messages would have concerned their political preferences and, if the users reached a meeting of the minds, resulted in agreements to swap votes on election day. This kind of communication is clearly protected by the First Amendment. “[T]here is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs,” including “discussions of candidates.” Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218 (1966); see also Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 422 (1988) (“[I]nteractive communication concerning political change . . . is appropriately described as ‘core political speech.’ ”); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 14 (1976) (“Discussion of public issues and observer . . . has no way of knowing whether the law school is expressing its disapproval of the military, all the law school’s interview rooms are full, or the military recruiters decided for reasons of their own that they would rather interview someplace else.” Id. at 1311. Here, in contrast, an observer who came across the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms would in all likelihood have discerned their message of support for third parties, concern about elections featuring multiple candidates and conducted under a winner-take-all regime and (in voteswap2000.com’s case) support for Nader and Gore. 11 Cody and Porter, the owners of voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com, may not have standing to assert this First Amendment interest since there is no indication that they planned to use their websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms. However, Kerr and Lewis, both of whom were interested in swapping votes through the websites but were unable to do so after the vote-swapping mechanisms were disabled, plainly do have the requisite standing. See Buono v. Norton, 371 F.3d 543, 548 (9th Cir. 2004) (noting that in a federal case involving multiple plaintiffs, “once the court determines that one of the plaintiffs has standing, it need not decide the standing of the others”) (quoting Leonard v. Clark, 12 F.3d 885, 888 (9th Cir. 1993)) (internal quotation marks omitted). 9358 PORTER v. BOWEN debate on the qualifications of candidates are . . . . afford[ed] the broadest protection . . . .”). [7] Any agreements that paired users may have reached about swapping votes were also constitutionally protected. Such agreements — like the e-mails that preceded them — involved people’s opinions on “campaigns for political office,” which are precisely where the First Amendment “has its fullest and most urgent application.” Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265, 272 (1971). Agreements whereby a swing-state third-party supporter and safe-state major-party supporter pledged to trade votes also would have expressed those voters’ (1) support for a particular major-party candidate or (2) support for a particular third-party candidate, as well as (3) their concern that unless action was taken, the winner-take-all electoral system could result in the will of the swing state’s popular-vote majority being overridden. [8] Whatever the wisdom of using vote-swapping agreements to communicate these positions, such agreements plainly differ from conventional (and illegal) vote buying, which conveys no message other than the parties’ willingness to exchange votes for money (or some other form of private profit). The Supreme Court held in Brown v. Hartlage, 456 U.S. 45, 55 (1982), that vote buying may be banned “without trenching on any right of association protected by the First Amendment.” Vote swapping, however, is more akin to the candidate’s pledge in Brown to take a pay cut if elected, which the Court concluded was constitutionally protected, than to unprotected vote buying. Like the candidate’s pledge, vote swapping involves a “promise to confer some ultimate benefit on the voter, qua . . . citizen[ ] or member of the general public” — i.e., another person’s agreement to vote for a particular candidate. Id. at 58-59. And unlike vote buying, vote swapping is not an “illegal exchange for private profit” since the only benefit a vote swapper can receive is a marginally higher probability that his preferred electoral outcome will come to pass. Id. at 55 (emphasis added); cf. Marc John PORTER v. BOWEN 9359 Randazza, The Other Election Controversy of Y2K: Core First Amendment Values and High-Tech Political Coalitions, 82 Wash. U. L.Q. 143, 221 (2004) (“There can be no . . . serious assertion, that anyone entered into a vote-swap arrangement for private profit or any other form of enrichment.”). Both the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms and the communication and vote swaps that they enabled were therefore constitutionally protected. At their core, they amounted to efforts by politically engaged people to support their preferred candidates and to avoid election results that they feared would contravene the preferences of a majority of voters in closely contested states. Whether or not one agrees with these voters’ tactics, such efforts, when conducted honestly and without money changing hands, are at the heart of the liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment. Cf. Brown, 456 U.S. at 52-53; Buckley, 424 U.S. at 14-15; Monitor Patriot, 401 U.S. at 271-72; Mills, 384 U.S. at 218-19.12 We do not decide, however, whether the vote-swapping mechanisms and the communication and vote swaps they made possible were pure speech or expressive conduct. The distinction between the two concepts is often difficult to discern. See, e.g., FAIR, 126 S. Ct. at 1308-11 (considering law schools’ policies toward military recruiters first as speech and then in the alternative as expressive conduct). It is also a distinction that makes no practical difference here, because our conclusion would be the same under the strict scrutiny that applies to restrictions of pure speech as it is under the intermediate scrutiny applicable to the burdening of expressive conduct that we employ below.13 12 The Secretary essentially conceded at oral argument that agreements between individuals to swap votes, when made without the use of a website or other enabling mechanism, are not illegal under California law. If this is so, the rationale for criminalizing vote swap mechanisms becomes even more problematic. 13 We thus do not address Appellants’ contention that their “websites engaged in and facilitated [pure] political speech and association” and 9360 PORTER v. BOWEN 2. Intermediate scrutiny under United States v. O’Brien [9] A government action that burdens expressive conduct is subject to intermediate scrutiny, and is upheld if (1) “it is within the constitutional power of the Government”; (2) “it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest”; (3) “the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression”; and (4) “the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest.” United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377 (1968). The government “bears the burden of proving that the elements of the O’Brien test are satisfied.” Preferred Commc’ns, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 754 F.2d 1396, 1406 n.9 (9th Cir. 1985). Applying this framework, we hold that the State’s legitimate interests did not support Jones’ threatened criminal prosecution of the owners of voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com.14 hence were not merely expressive conduct. We also note that the Secretary argues that the vote-swapping mechanisms were conduct rather than speech without considering the possibility that they were protected expressive conduct. Furthermore, the Secretary’s assertion that vote swapping is constitutionally unprotected because it is allegedly illegal under California law is a non sequitur. The constitutional status of a given activity is not determined by its legality under state law; indeed, a statute that proscribes a protected activity may for that reason be held unconstitutional. 14 If we treated the vote-swapping mechanisms and the communication and vote swaps that they enabled as speech rather than expressive conduct, strict scrutiny would be applicable. See Meyer, 486 U.S. at 420-22 (limitation on core political speech subject to “exacting scrutiny”); see also Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 434 (1992) (election law that severely restricts First Amendment rights subject to strict scrutiny); cf. Randazza, supra, at 219 (“The secretaries of states’ actions . . . implicate core First Amendment values to such an extent that strict scrutiny must apply.”); John M. Rushing, Vote Swapping and Free Speech: Voice, Politics, and Choice, 7 Tex. F. on C.L. & C.R. 73, 77 (2002) (same). Because Jones’ threatened prosecution of the websites’ owners fails to survive intermediate scrutiny, it necessarily follows that it would also be invalid under strict scrutiny. PORTER v. BOWEN 9361 The Secretary asserts three interests to justify any alleged burdening of Appellants’ protected activity: preventing corruption, preventing fraud and preventing the subversion of the Electoral College.15 Because the concepts of corruption and fraud are related although distinct, we consider California’s interest in preventing elections from being tainted by illicit financial transactions under the corruption rubric, and its interest in preventing deceptive campaign practices under the fraud rubric. See Fed. Election Comm’n v. Nat’l Conservative Political Action Comm. (NCPAC), 470 U.S. 480, 497 (1985) (“The hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors.”); Buckley, 424 U.S. at 27 (“[T]he appearance of corruption stem[s] from public awareness of the opportunities for abuse inherent in a regime of large individual financial contributions.”); see also Illinois ex rel. Madigan v. Telemarketing Assocs., Inc., 538 U.S. 600, 612 (2003) (equating fraud with “public deception”). Regardless of how they are categorized, these interests embody the Secretary’s understandable unease, as chief elections officer of California, with novel online applications that were perceived as threatening state and national electoral procedures and appeared to be susceptible to fraudulent activity. Beginning with the first O’Brien prong, we have no doubt that Jones had the constitutional authority to threaten the websites’ owners with prosecution. California’s police power 15 The Secretary also hints at a fourth interest: preventing vote swapping per se, even if carried out non-corruptly, non-fraudulently and on a small scale. Such an interest, whether it is distinct or subsumed into the State’s anti-corruption interest, is invalid given our conclusion above that vote swapping is a constitutionally protected activity. Even under intermediate scrutiny, the government’s interest in burdening expressive conduct must be something other than a desire to impose that very burden. See O’Brien, 391 U.S. at 377 (“[T]he governmental interest [must be] unrelated to the suppression of free expression . . . .”). Moreover, such a per se rule is inconsistent with the Secretary’s concession at oral argument that individual vote swaps carried out without the use of an enabling mechanism are not unlawful. See n.8, supra. 9362 PORTER v. BOWEN plainly authorizes state officials to send cease-and-desist letters to websites that are believed to be in violation of an otherwise valid statute, and to prosecute the websites’ owners for their offenses. See United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 587 n.9 (1981) (“States [are] free to exercise their police powers to the fullest constitutional extent in defining and prosecuting crimes within their respective jurisdictions.”). [10] The second O’Brien prong, whether Jones’ actions furthered important or substantial government interests, presents a question with mixed answers. Preventing corruption and preventing fraud have both been repeatedly recognized as weighty government interests. See, e.g., Fed. Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (WRTL), 127 S. Ct. 2652, 2672 (2007) (WRTL) (“[T]he Court has long recognized the governmental interest in preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption in election campaigns.”) (internal quotation marks omitted); Village of Schaumburg, 444 U.S. at 636 (“protecting the public from fraud” is “indeed [a] substantial” interest) (internal quotation marks omitted). However, as Appellants argue, no decision has ever recognized a state’s interest in preventing the subversion of the Electoral College, let alone characterized such an interest as important or substantial. Cf. Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 28-29 (1968) (rejecting Ohio’s asserted interest under art. II, § 1 of the Constitution in keeping minority parties off the presidential ballot). In any event, we need not decide whether preventing the subversion of the Electoral College is a legitimate government interest because, as we discuss below, even if it were, it was not furthered by Jones’ actions. The third O’Brien requirement, that the state’s interests be unrelated to the suppression of free expression, is easily satisfied here. The prevention of fraud, corruption and Electoral College subversion is conceptually distinct from the abridgement of speech. Cf. R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minn., 505 U.S. 377, 396 n.8 (1992) (“State’s compelling interest in preventing . . . election fraud” is an “interest[ ] unrelated to the supPORTER v. BOWEN 9363 pression of ideas”). Moreover, there is no indication here that Jones threatened to prosecute Appellants because of their political views, and the fact that he did not send cease-anddesist letters to websites that advocated vote swapping but did not include vote-swapping mechanisms suggests strongly that his motivation was not the suppression of speech. Finally, we examine separately each of the Secretary’s three asserted interests to determine whether the fourth and most important O’Brien prong was satisfied — that the incidental restrictions on First Amendment freedoms be no greater than is necessary to further those interests. We conclude that the Secretary’s interests in preventing corruption and preventing the subversion of the Electoral College were not furthered at all by the threatened prosecution of the owners of voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com, and that the State’s anti-fraud interest was not addressed in a sufficiently tailored manner. [11] a. Corruption. Beginning with the State’s anticorruption interest, we reiterate that we construe this interest to encompass only the prevention of illicit financial transactions such as the buying of votes or the contribution of large sums of money to legislators in exchange for political support. See WRTL, 127 S. Ct. at 2676 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment); NCPAC, 470 U.S. at 497; Buckley, 424 U.S. at 26-27. So defined, this interest was not advanced by the threatened prosecution of the owners of voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com. The websites did not encourage the trading of votes for money, or indeed for anything other than other votes. Votexchange2000.com actually included a notation that “It is illegal to pay someone to vote on your behalf, or even get paid to vote yourself. Stay away from the money. Just vote” (emphasis in original). And there is no evidence in the record, nor has the Secretary argued, that any website users ever misused the voteswapping mechanisms by offering or accepting money for their votes. 9364 PORTER v. BOWEN [12] b. Fraud. The state’s anti-fraud interest was furthered by Jones’ threatened prosecution of the website owners. At least three kinds of fraud could have been perpetrated through those websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms. People from other states (or even other countries) could have pretended to be third-party swing-state supporters or major-party safe-state supporters. Regardless of their location, people could have used the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms multiple times, thus trading their one vote (or zero votes) for several other votes. And even people who were truthful about their location and who only swapped votes once could have deliberately misrepresented their voting intentions. Threatening Appellants’ websites with prosecution unless they disabled the vote-swapping mechanisms thus served the State’s anti-fraud interest for the obvious reason that none of the above species of fraud could have been committed through mechanisms that were no longer in operation. [13] However, the Secretary has failed to demonstrate that the burden imposed on constitutionally protected activity by the disabling of the mechanisms was not “greater than [was] essential to the furtherance of [the State’s anti-fraud] interest.” O’Brien, 391 U.S. at 377. First, the Secretary has not called our attention to, nor have we been able to locate, any evidence in the record that fraud actually took place during the brief period that the vote-swapping mechanisms were operational. No website users came forward with either admissions that they committed fraud or worries that their counterparts misrepresented their state of residency or voting intentions. The websites’ owners also did not notice any suspicious online activity, such as the use of “obviously fake or multiple e-mail addresses,” which voteswap2000.com stated it would try to eliminate if it occurred. [14] Second, as described above, both websites repeatedly warned users that fraud was possible and advised them to take steps to reassure themselves that they could trust their matched counterparts. Voteswap2000.com told users to “[u]se PORTER v. BOWEN 9365 your own good judgement [sic] to determine if the person you are matched with is legitimate, and be aware that some people will try to abuse this system.” Similarly, votexchange2000.com recommended that users “take some reasonable measures to insure that you could trust the other person.” The Secretary has not explained why these warnings were insufficient, or what kind of language (if any) would have assuaged the State’s concerns. [15] Third, the manner in which the vote-swapping mechanisms operated reduced the opportunities for widespread fraud. Any would-be fraudster would have had to exchange e- mails and come to a vote-swapping agreement separately with each intended victim. There was no way to “automate” the fraud, that is, to agree to trade votes without first making e- mail contact and offering specific representations (even if bogus) to the other party about the fraudster’s identity, location and voting intentions. [16] Lastly, the Secretary has failed to establish (or, indeed, even to argue) that the State’s anti-fraud interest could not have been advanced as effectively through less restrictive means. Under our case law, it was the Secretary’s burden to show that the potential types of fraud the Secretary suggests might occur could not have been halted through measures less burdensome than the complete disabling of the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms. See Edwards v. City of Coeur d’Alene, 262 F.3d 856, 863 (9th Cir. 2001); Preferred Commc’ns, 754 F.2d at 1406 n.9. The Secretary, however, did not attempt to make such a showing, even though it was the Secretary who invoked the O’Brien framework to justify shutting down the vote-swapping mechanisms. Given the Supreme Court’s repeated admonishments that the government’s interest in preventing fraud does not justify sweeping restrictions on constitutionally protected activity, the Secretary’s failure to establish that Jones’ actions were his only reasonable recourse is fatal to the Secretary’s reliance on O’Brien. See Riley v. Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind of N.C., Inc., 9366 PORTER v. BOWEN 487 U.S. 781, 800 (1988) (“In contrast to the prophylactic, imprecise, and unduly burdensome rule the State has adopted to reduce its alleged donor misperception, more benign and narrowly tailored options are available.”); Village of Schaumburg, 444 U.S. at 637 (“The Village’s legitimate interest in preventing fraud can be better served by measures less intrusive than a direct prohibition on solicitation.”); cf. NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 438 (1963) (“Broad prophylactic rules in the area of free expression are suspect. Precision of regulation must be the touchstone in an area so closely touching our most precious freedoms.”) (internal citations omitted). Our conclusion is bolstered by Appellants’ offer of at least two suggestions for preventing fraud short of disabling the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms altogether, neither of which was addressed by the Secretary. First, Appellants pointed out that “[m]ore stringent warnings” about the danger of fraud could have been posted on the websites, to even more clearly alert users of the need to exercise good judgment in trusting someone known only through the Internet. Second, the State could have “pass[ed] a law that said you must be who you say you are when you do this, you must be from the state you say you’re from.” If those who utilized the voteswapping mechanism had been required by law (or even simply the websites) to prove their identity and residency before they could have been matched with other users (perhaps by providing information such as a driver’s license number or the voter registration number that is typically listed on voter identification cards), then the websites could have stopped users from swapping votes multiple times or from misrepresenting their state of residency. Although the record does not conclusively demonstrate the feasibility or effectiveness of such verification methods, it was the State’s burden to rebut Appellants’ suggested lesser alternatives and the Secretary did not do so. [17] c. Electoral College. Finally, the State’s interest in preventing the subversion of the Electoral College, assuming PORTER v. BOWEN 9367 it to be a legitimate interest, was not furthered by Jones’ actions. As a technical matter, Appellants are correct that the vote-swapping mechanisms did not enable users to cast their votes in states in which they were not registered, nor could the constitutionally prescribed arrangement for selecting the President have been undermined by the mechanisms. More fundamentally, the whole point of voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com was to prevent the preferences of a majority of a state’s voters from being frustrated by the winner-take-all systems in place in most states. For example, in a hypothetical swing state with 49 percent Bush supporters, 48 percent Gore supporters, and 3 percent Nader supporters (all of whom we hypothesize preferred Gore to Bush), an election conducted without vote swapping would have resulted in a Bush victory even though he was not the first choice of a majority of the state’s voters. However, if all the Nader supporters had swapped their votes with Gore supporters in safe states, then Gore — who was preferred by 51 percent of the state’s voters to Bush — would have prevailed. Such an outcome would not have represented a subversion of the Electoral College, which would have continued to operate precisely as set forth in the Constitution. It also would not have undermined the state’s electoral system, which would have still allocated all of the state’s electoral votes to the candidate who received a plurality of the state’s popular vote. All that the vote swapping would have done would have been to offset the anomalies that its advocates believe can result when more than two candidates face off in winner-take-all systems. Cf. Rushing, supra, at 88 (“[I]t is doubtful that the electoral college tenders a compelling state interest for ending vote swapping.”). [18] We therefore hold that Jones’ threatened prosecution of the owners of voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com was unconstitutional under the fourth O’Brien prong. His actions severely burdened activity protected by the First Amendment; after October 30, 2000, the websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms were entirely disabled, 9368 PORTER v. BOWEN and people were entirely unable to communicate or swap votes through the mechanisms. Moreover, his actions did not advance California’s interests in preventing corruption and preventing the subversion of the Electoral College, and the Secretary has failed to establish that the State’s anti-fraud interest could not have been furthered as effectively through measures less drastic than the complete disabling of voteswapping mechanisms at issue here.16 We express no opinion on whether less severe measures — such as the verification methods suggested by Appellants — would pass muster under O’Brien.