Not sold on Harris over Gaza yet anti-Trump, some Pa. activists are asking blue-state voters to cast protest ballots on their behalf

Anti-Trump voters in Pennsylvania who have struggled to decide whether to cast a protest vote against Vice President Kamala Harris over her stance on the war in Gaza have a new option: vote swapping.

The Swap Your Vote effort, inspired by past vote-swapping efforts, pairs up one swing-state voter who agrees to vote for Harris with two safe blue-state voters who agree to cast a protest vote. The concept of vote swapping, also known as vote pairing, is simply a trust-based pledge between voters. The strategy is legally protected under freedom of speech, according to a 2007 court ruling — as long as no money or gifts are exchanged.

Marin Exler, 26, a Swap Your Vote organizer from Pittsburgh, said that it was difficult for her to see a strong moral argument for voting for Harris without an end to the Israel-Hamas war because of the United States’ military support of Israel and the rising death toll in Gaza. But she is also horrified by the idea of former President Donald Trump returning to the White House.

“I think there are a lot of people in that space where if they’re being told there’s a moral obligation to vote for the Democrats, they’re not connecting with that message,” Exler said. Pro-Palestinian activists are disappointed that Harris has generally maintained U.S. policy of supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, though Harris has emphasized that “how” the country does so matters.

“I support the need for Palestinians to have dignity, self-determination, and security as we move forward and get a two-state deal done,” she said in Philadelphia in September.

Exler sees the vote-swap effort as a way to mount pressure on Democrats and help build third-party influence while also helping prevent another Trump presidency. She already cast a ballot for Harris, and paired up with a friend in Illinois, who voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein on her behalf.

Various pro-Palestinian activist groups banded together to vote “uncommitted” during the primaries in a protest against President Joe Biden’s military support of Israel, but activists have split off with different approaches for the higher-stakes general election.

The Uncommitted National Movement encouraged people to vote against Trump, and discouraged third-party voting over the concern it could help Trump win — effectively encouraging a vote for Harris while withholding an outright endorsement of her. Other groups have decided to endorse Stein or Trump.

Meanwhile, organizers with the #NoCeasefireNoVote initiative decided to mount a pressure campaign, saying they will vote for Harris only if she calls for an arms embargo of Israel or if a permanent cease-fire is secured before Election Day.

» READ MORE: Pro-Palestinian activists threatened to withhold votes in Philly just before Kamala Harris talked about Gaza at CNN’s town hall in Delco

But that continued persistence to maintain a pressure campaign is where organizers of Swap Your Vote diverged over the concern that there wouldn’t be an October surprise over drastic policy shifts in Gaza.

“The broken two-party system with an undemocratic Electoral College means voters in seven states decide the election and the rest of us don’t matter,” said Kipchoge Spencer, founder of Landslide PAC, which is hosting the Swap Your Vote effort. “We are offering a simple, legal, proven, private way to outsmart the system. I voted for [Ralph] Nader in 2000, and that didn’t go well for anything I care about. We want to give people an opportunity to vote their conscience without being a spoiler and electing Trump.”

The concept of vote swapping is not new.

If 200 more Florida voters had participated in a vote swap organized in 2000, Al Gore could have won the election, Exler said. The practice was also used in 2016 for anti-Trump voters who didn’t align with Hillary Clinton. It has also been done in the U.K. and Canada.

Exler, who runs the vote-swapping initiative’s social media, said that as of Friday morning, the two-week-old group had reached 211,000 accounts on Instagram in the last four days and more than 2,300 people had signed up to participate.

The group also encourages people to simply vote swap with their friends, outside of the group’s website, if they feel more comfortable doing that than connecting with a stranger.

Exler, who works in COVID-19 recovery grant implementation efforts for local and state government, was involved in organizing efforts against Gov. Josh Shapiro becoming the vice presidential nominee for Harris. She’s also involved in advocacy efforts to implement ranked-choice voting in the state, which she says would get rid of issues of vote splitting and spoiler candidates — and ultimately, vote swapping.

“The game is rigged against us,” she said. “We’re playing it back. And that’s also what ranked-choice voting is about … we need a solution that unites us based off of our similarities, instead of exacerbating our differences.”