Presidential Election 2016: A Prisoner's Dilemma

Introduction

I wrote in a previous post that the 2016 Presidential election is a moral dilemma for many voters.  But that is not the only kind of dilemma we can use to analyze this event.  In this post, I look at the election as a sort of Prisoner's dilemma, that is, as a kind of economics, expected value, or rational dilemma.  We can take the analogy and assess the corresponding voter's dilemma in order to determine how this dilemma may be resolved.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

One can add nuances to the prisoner's dilemma, but the essential ingredients are something like the following. 

Two criminals that participated in the same crime are arrested and placed in separate cells from which they cannot communicate or coordinate.  The possible outcomes and resulting jail sentences are as follows:

• If both prisoners betray each other by confessing the other's crime, both will serve 2 years in jail.
• If one betrays the other, but the other remains silent, then the former will get out of jail while the latter will serve 3 years of jail time.
• If neither betrays the other, then both of them will serve 1 year of jail time. 

What should the prisoners do?

The dilemma is that, from the standpoint of each individual prisoner, it is rational to betray the other prisoner.  If A betrays B, then either A gets out of jail immediately (B did not betray A) or A serves two years (B also betrayed A) which is better than 3 years (which would happen if B betrayed A but A didn't betray B).  So both prisoners reason that they should betray the other, and both end up with 2 years in jail.

However, from the "God's eye" perspective, the best solution is for neither prisoner to betray the other.  In the first scenario, 4 years total are served.  In the second scenario, 3 years are served.  In the last scenario, 2 years are served.  So if the prisoners are wanting to have the least amount of jail time in total, they should not betray each other.  This would be the rational thing to do.

So the dilemma is that if both prisoner's act rationally, this leads to a less desirable result for both.  But since it is irrational to act towards a less desirable result, rationality would seem to dictate a different course of action.  Since rationality seems to dictate two differing courses of action, we have a dilemma.  What in fact is the rational thing to do?  Is there a way to get to the overall optimal solution in which neither prisoner betrays the other?

The Solution: Communication/Coordination

Ultimately, the solution is to have communication/coordination.  If the prisoner's could coordinate their actions, then they could both not betray the other, and thus, end up in the most desirable outcome.  Such coordination is forbidden in the original setup, but in other setups, it is allowed.  It is this coordination and the feedback of what the other prisoner does which solves the dilemma.

The Voter's Dilemma

What does this have to do with the election?  Have you heard things like:

• "Any third party vote is a vote for Trump."
• "If you don't vote for Trump, then you are basically voting for Clinton."
• "I'm not voting for Clinton: I'm voting against Trump."

I recall hearing that more than 60% of all voters are not voting for a candidate but are voting against the other candidate.  Most of us want a good third candidate, and maybe more of us could agree on a third candidate than we could on either Trump or Clinton.  If this were true, then this third candidate would actually be more popular than either Clinton or Trump.

However, we fear voting for a third party because if we do, our least favorite candidate may win.  So we ignore third parties, even if they could potentially unite more Americans than the other candidates could.  We compromise.  Again and again and again.  I vote Democrat and you vote Republican when maybe both of us would prefer a third option, or we could at least both agree to support a third option over the other two options as the best outcome overall.

If we could coordinate our voting, then maybe we could get out of the dilemma between the two major candidates and on to the optimal solution of a third party candidate.  But how can we do this?

A Solution?

It's rather strange that in 2016 we still have to wait for election day to coordinate our various desires for the President for the next 4 years by casting our vote.  And even then, the result may be surprising to many or most.  It is like we are all gambling.  How odd that elections of this magnitude should be a surprise in this day and age, and that we can't figure out a better way to coordinate our various interests towards the optimal solution.  Wouldn't it be nice if Democrats and Republicans could unite behind a single candidate who, through various means of communication, social media, polling, etc. was settled on prior to election day?  What if we could coordinate our votes to pick the best overall candidate?

This is not an endorsement for Gary Johnson, but I think the method proposed by this site to coordinate a Democrat's third party vote with a Republican's third party vote is getting at the sort of thing that is needed.  It provides a way out of the prisoner's dilemma for our 2016 election by coordinating the votes of would-be Democrats and Republicans towards a (presumably) more desirable third-party candidate.

Conclusion

Even if you are a hardline Democrat or Republican, I think you can agree that our current situation presents a real problem for our election system.  And I hope you can appreciate the similarities it has to the Prisoner's Dilemma.  Our method of voting does not seem to lead Americans towards the optimal candidate, a candidate that substantially more than 50.1% of Americans will support (and do so willingly, not begrudgingly).  Consequently, the more ways that we can find to effectively coordinate our electoral desires towards the best overall candidates, the better off we will all be, and the better off our elections will be.