RS 171 - Scott Aaronson on "The ethics and strategy of vote trading"
Release date: October 30th, 2016
It can be pretty frustrating to live in a "safe" state during national elections, where the chance your vote will affect the overall results is practically zero. This episode, with professor Scott Aaronson, explores an unorthodox solution to the problem: "swapping" your vote with someone in a swing state who was going to vote for a third party candidate. Scott and Julia explore the game theory of vote swapping, and whether there are any ethical problems with it.
Vote Swapping Sites: TrumpTraders.org (recommended), MakeMineCount.org
Scott's Pick: "Why Nerds are Unpopular" by Paul Graham
Podcast edited by Brent Silk
Full Transcripts
Reader Comments (7)
The biggest and most important political prediction market by far is Betfair.com which saw about $250 million traded dwarfing all others.
On the day this podcast was released Trump was rated about a 22% chance of winning.
May I also mention that a podcast called "Rationally Speaking" should be able to rise above open political posturing ?
I was thinking about the point Brendan (http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/contributor/29420654) made about the slippery slop of vote selling, through out the podcast. Coming from Africa, this would be an inevitable outcome, so it ran counter intuitive to me.
Regards, Alan
Wow, vote swapping really could have changed the 2000 Presidential Election result. Democrats could have swapped just 500 votes or so, especially with Ralph Nader's popularity and the 100,000 voters voting for him in Florida.
Perhaps we need to switch to an election system that has a Popular Vote with Automatic Runoff.