[Newspoetry] Prinsoner's Dilemma: How to Vote Strategically for Nader

[Donald L Emerick]

Prisoner's Dilemma is the name for a classic problem of rational individual choice in voting theory.  In the usual setting, suppose voters would prefer an outcome that requires cooperation to reach it.  But, in the absence of some mechanisms to assist the emergence of mutuality of cooperation, the voters are forced to rely upon sub-optimal decision analysis.  They vote to get a crumb when they could have had the whole loaf because they can not be sure of what the other voters will do.  They secure, by acting only individually, as independent decision makers, and thus by acting essentially randomly, in some sense, a sub-optimal outcome -- one that is far less than their ideal outcome.

They have the satisfaction of knowing that they, individually, did the best that they could, acting alone, to be rational.  But, they (ought to) remain unhappy, because of the continued inferior quality of the outcomes that they continually select.

The present election presents some voters with a Prisoner's Dilemma.  For instance, ideally, I would vote for Nader, rather than Kerry or Bush.  But, instead, I will probably vote, individually, pragmatically for Kerry because -- for me -- the Bush alternative is far worse.

However, I might be better off if I could find my symmetrical opposite in the Bush camp -- some one who prefers Bush to Kerry, but Nader over both of those.  Suppose that person and I could enter into a private pact -- that we both would vote for Nader -- because otherwise our choices would just cancel each other out.

Our private pact would give each of us the perfect moral defense about voting for a lesser evil when a greater good was around.  Namely, each of us could legitimately say "I did not help {Bush, Kerry} by voting for Nader -- I doubly helped Nader and did no harm to the prospective outcome between {Bush,Kerry}.

But, of course, there may stand election laws -- about the privacy of the ballot, about the unenforceability at law of voting pacts like this.  That is, if you can't trust the other person who is party to the pact to honor the agreement, in fact, by acting in the promised way, then you have become a sucker -- fooled by another, and fooling yourself into thinking you were "better off" (in the game theory sense of the term).

Sometimes, you might trust another person if you had sufficient previous positive relationships with them.

Of course, if you happen to be voting in the same precinct, I suppose you might also arrange to show each other how you marked your "secret" ballot on that choice before casting it into the ballot box for counting.  (This would be more difficult to arrange under "Touch Screen" systems, unless you both agreed to push ENTER at the same time -- but there would always be the risk -- in the case of absolute distrust -- that the other voter would not push ENTER at just that instant, but fake you into locking in your vote, and then going back on the screen and altering the declared choice, after all.

Now, how can I find a local Nader>>Bush>Kerry voter in my local area to form a pact with him-her, to cooperate with, as I am a Nader>>Kerry>Bush person?  How can I have my loaf of bread?



Of course, once we all get used to the idea that we almost all of us despise the two-party system, and the major two parties, and their nominees, (as we know that every duopoly screws us far more than any oligopoly would), then we will eventually create voting preference systems that do not turn us voters into prisoner's.  We will no longer have to rattle our tin cups against the cold steel prison bars, complaining of our fate, locked into a system that imprisons us, that constantly forces us to choose between the lesser of great evils and the smaller of their wampum heaps of trifling trinkets and other trivial goods.