a.k.a. vote swapping. The idea was to pair up Clinton voters in safe blue states with third-party candidate voters in swing states. Then the Clinton voter would promise to vote for the third-party candidate in exchange for the third-party candidate voter promising to vote for Clinton.
The idea was to fight the âspoiler effectâ of third-party candidates. Since a Gary Johnson voter probably doesnât much care where their vote is cast, but a Clinton voter very much does, thereâs a positive-sum trade. You could sweeten the deal by offering more Clinton voters for every third-party voter.
There was a site called TrumpTraders that did this. IIRC it was the most popular. I used another site called makeminecount.org, as a Clinton voter in MA, and was paired with a Gary Johnson voter somewhere I donât remember.
The idea was interesting and novel. Iâm curious â in retrospect, how effective were these schemes? And what problems did they run into?
My motivation is to explore if supporting a similar effort this year would be a good idea.
Ben West, I (to a much lesser extent) and a few other EAs worked on this in 2016: Vote Pairing is a Cost-Effective Political Intervention.
tl;dr: Ben estimates a personal counterfactual impact of 10 counterfactual votes in swing states for every hour of his labor (mostly software engineering), significantly higher than other plausible alternatives for work in politics.
Note that there was some pushback in the comments and also I think thereâs likely substantial diminishing marginal returns.
Sweet, better than I could have hoped for!
Any sense of what organizations/âpeople are working on it this year? I wasnât able to find an email address for Steve Hull so I posted an issue â https://ââgithub.com/ââsdhull/ââstrategic_voting/ââissues/ââ20 â no response yet.
Iâll also contact Ben.
Nope, havenât looked at it at all this year!
You might find this RCT interesting/âhelpful: https://ââalexandercoppock.com/ââpapers/ââCoppock_trumptraders.pdf
Short answer: exploring this idea is a good ideaâvote swapping is a good idea and its basic common sense. But iâd just âexploreâ itâthe problem with vote swapping is most people who are sympathetic to it, or would be if they knew aboutâmany have never of heard the ideaâand if they have wonât actually do it. They find it too complex (as i did in 2016). Even registering to vote and then voting was too complex.
(Just as many people who are sympathetic to, or supporters of some candidate wonât vote for that candidateâthey just donât vote. I probably will not vote in nov 2020 electionsâin my area it doesnt matterâthis is an âanybody but Trumpâ district).
unless you have a âcritical massâ its useless. so explore the idea, but donât put all your eggs in one basket or kill yourself promoting this idea. just keep it on the shelf (if you have a support network of people with similar ideas then you can explore it furtherâit might work). Lots of explorers perished, but a few hit the jackpot.
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longer answer:
This idea was developed a long time ago in my area by a local Green Party Member who is also a local politician (who is also nationally knownâJamin Raskin. Iâm not sure if he is the originator of the idea.) . He said âvote greenâ if you are in a safely democratic district; otherwise swap your vote with someone in a republican district and they can vote green party (GP) and you hold your nose and vote democratic.
iâm a member of GP though i actually do not like the the GP candidatesâthey seem to âtalk left, and walk rightâ and tend to be bullies, elitists, and opportunists.
Iâm in a 90% democratic district. i did (hold my noseâiâm no fan of jill stein) vote GP in 2016 and also to legalize cannabis since i didnt like seeing people getting locked up for smoking a blunt on the streetâit also costs money to deal with all these police, courts, and jails, besides wasting the time of people by locking them upâand then people later complain that they didnt go to school and get an education. (i was smoking weed almost starting in elementary school but i never went to jail for that (i have been locked up a few hours a few times for drinking a beer outsideâwhich i did because its cheaper than going to a nosiy bar. ).
I almost regret voting for cannabis legalization because now its turning into another big business controlled by a few people.
I didnât do the âvote swapââtoo complexâbut its a good idea. I think very few people did thisâand this may be why Trump wonâhe won by a small margin, and a few of these green or other alternative parties may have made the difference (in places like Pennsylvaniaâwhich is about 50 miles from here ).
the vote swap was too complexâeven voting is too complex.
(I actually sometimes think the people in the GP actually are Trump supporters . Many of them are already associated with RT media (russia today).
Alot of GP people are âno compromiseââthey will never vote for a democrat because they are not strict enough on the environemnt and other issues. Theyâd rather have Trump as a lesser evil rather than than having dirty voting hands. (Many of them are in fairly elite professional and academic positions so another 4 years of Trump wonât affect them. If Trump decides to sell their favorite national park to an oil company, theyâll just go their second favorite national park for vacation. )