Voteauction.com was a satirical website that during the 2000 U.S. presidential election offered U.S. citizens an anonymous and quick way to sell their vote to the highest bidder.[1] 13 U.S. states issued temporary restraining orders and injunctions,[2] [3] [4] for alleged illegal vote trading and consumer fraud.[5] Over 2,500 news media outlets reported on the project including a 27-minute CNN "Burden of Proof" special.[6] [7]
Voteauction was the brainchild of James Baumgartner, at the time a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,[8] the website was later sold for an undisclosed sum to Ubermorgen.com in Austria. The artist duo consisting of lizvlx (AT) and Hans Bernhard (CH/USA) ran it from August 1 – November 7, 2000, posing as "Eastern European business people". CNN.com called them "Maverick Austrian Businessmen".[9] Legal precautions against extradition and rendition were taken by consulting specialists in different countries and by physically moving on a daily basis.[10] The auctioning web-site was re-designed in September and underwent minor changes over the course of the project.[11] [12] The web-site initial domain voteauction.com (hosted by Domainbank) and the second domain vote-auction.com were disabled by American court orders[13] and without legally served court order by CORENIC in Geneva, leading to a series of press-releases to communicate the new location, hence generating more publicity for the web-site.[14] The server-infrastructure was attacked several times and the site had to move to a more secure location.
UBERMORGEN.COM shows all the original documents (approximately 700 kg of complaints, court decisions, injunctions) generated by the proceedings in exhibitions worldwide,[15] and refers to them as ‹foriginals› (a combination of ‹forged› and ‹original›). The permanent amalgamation of fact and fiction[16] realized in this way points toward an extremely expanded concept of one’s working materials, which for Ubermorgen.com also include (international) rights, democracy and global communication (input-feedback-loops).[17] Vote-Auction was exhibited at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (Austria) 2005, Eyebeam New York, 2010,[5] expo.02 Switzerland, 2002.
As an affirmative approach towards the illegal delivery of court orders from U.S. courts to Europe, UBERMORGEN.COM released the "Injunction generator", an engine which renders customized court orders on demand.[18]
In 2004 UBERMORGEN.COM released the 2nd part of the "Election Trilogy" named *THE*AGENCY for manual election recount.[19] [20] In 2007 WAHLGELD.COM, a vote-buying and selling platform for the Swiss parliamentary elections was launched. The actual selling and buying of votes was covered by leaking information about the authors (as artists),[21] therefore the election commission, the media and the voters were certain about the non-commercial motivation. Approximately 700 electoral votes were bought for an average of CHF 75.-.[22]