Nineteenth-century voting system, meet your 21st-century protest.

Hoping to add more value to their presidential vote, a group of disenfranchised voters have created a Web site where supporters of John Kerry in "safe" states can trade their vote with a third-party supporter in swing states. In theory, both votes will each serve a purpose by helping Kerry win vital electoral college votes without costing a third-party candidate any portion of the popular vote.

In Utah or other states where either Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., or President George W. Bush are practically assured a victory, that could mean that a Kerry supporter would actually vote for a third-party candidate such as Ralph Nader, while a Nader supporter in a state like Ohio, Florida or New Mexico would vote for Kerry. Doing so, said University of Utah student and www.votepair.org participant Jared Richmond, would make him feel like his vote actually made a difference in the election, whereas a vote for Kerry in Utah is essentially useless because of the strong Republican majority that practically guarantees that all five of the state's electoral votes will go to Bush.

"Hundreds of thousands of votes never reach Washington," he said. "The only way I can get my vote to have more leverage is to pair it with somebody in a state where a Kerry vote could count."

Richmond and the organizers of the Web site are confident that swapping his vote is completely legal. Unlike in 2000, when a number of similar Web sites closed down because of legal threats from election officials in a half-dozen states, the Web site's organizers have posted their legal arguments and maintain there is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about pairing votes.

Utah Elections Director Amy Naccarato said that although Utah officials have heard of the vote-pairing efforts, they have not ruled on its legality. Instead, they are urging people to vote for their candidate of choice on their ballot, not for somebody else's choice.

"It's one of those legal gray areas that the law doesn't address," she said. "But we generally discourage it. As an election official, I would caution people to be careful."

What is illegal is selling your vote, and officials at Internet auction site eBay occasionally have to stop somebody who is looking for a bidder on their ballot, spokesman Hani Durzey said. Usually, they "inform the seller that it's illegal" and put an end to the auction, just as they would for anything illegal that is being sold online.

The company's "general policy is that if it's illegal to sell it offline, it's illegal to sell it online," he said.