Vote trading

Vote trading is the practice of voting for or against another person's bill, position on a more general issue, or favored candidate in exchange for the other person's vote for or against a position, proposal, or candidate that one supports.

In legislatures

Vote trading frequently occurs between and among members of legislative bodies. For example, Congressman A might vote for a dam in Congressman B's district in exchange for Congressman B's vote for farm subsidies in Congressman A's district.[1] One of the first examples of vote trading to occur in the United States was the Compromise of 1790, in which Thomas Jefferson made a deal with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton to move the capital from New York to a site along the Potomac (after a lengthy stay in Philadelphia) in exchange for federal assumption of debts incurred by the states in the Revolutionary War.[2] Hindrances to vote trading in the U.S. Congress include its bicameral structure and the geographic representation basis of its members. Vote trading is encouraged, however, by Congress's relatively loose party discipline which facilitates policy cross-overs by individual congressmen, in sharp contrast to European countries.[3]

Among citizens

United States presidential elections

Vote trading occasionally occurs between United States citizens domiciled in different states (and therefore citizens of those respective states) to demonstrate support for third-party candidates while minimizing the risk that their more favored (or less disfavored) major-party candidate will lose electoral votes in the nationwide election (i.e., the "spoiler effect").[4] For example:

In either case, both candidates and both voters receive a net benefit at minimal (if any) cost:

Vote trading thereby improves the outcome as measured by both candidates' preference orders and according to both "maximax" and "maximin" evaluation standards, at least given the constraints on the set of possible outcomes imposed by the "bottleneck" effect of the winner-take-all electoral-vote allocation procedure.

Presidential vote trading between citizens has increased in popularity since the development of the Internet and World Wide Web facilitated interstate communications between individuals not personally known to each other but identifiable by user account names.

In non-governmental contexts

Corporate vote trading has been proposed as a way of improving corporate governance.[5] In this context, vote trading refers to borrowing shares of a stock in time to be the shareholder of record on the day of an important vote.[6]

Variations

A variant called vote pairing refers to voters on opposite sides in a single vote agreeing to abstain from voting or otherwise changing their vote. This technique is often used by legislators who do not wish to take time to come to the floor for a vote. A legislator will find a member on the opposite side of the issue who also desires to save time, and they will both agree to skip the vote, maintaining the balance of votes on each side.

Ethical considerations

The Limits of Public Choice: A Sociological Critique of the Economic Theory notes that vote trading is often considered immoral, since votes should be determined on the basis of the merits of the question. It is viewed as being less serious an offense than bribery, although in some countries it is still unlawful. However, vote-trading can also be viewed as beneficial to democracy in that it makes it possible for minorities to exert some influence and thus alleviate the tyranny of the majority. In this way, vote-trading is similar to coalition-building, which also involves an exchange of policies and bargaining over cabinet positions in order to gain the parliamentary majority needed for approval of the entire program.[7]

There have been academic proposals to streamline the legislative vote trading process by creating a market brokered by party leaders in which members buy and sell votes at prices set by supply and demand.[8]

See also

References

  1. "Vote-Trading Ethics". The Washington Post. 2004-10-05. Retrieved 2010-05-27.
  2. Kiewiet, D. Roderick. "Vote Trading in the First Federal Congress?: James Madison and the Compromise of 1790".
  3. Rowley, Charles Kershaw and Tollison, Robert D. The Political Economy of Rent-seeking.
  4. "How It Works". VotePair.
  5. Neeman, Z. and Orosel, G.O. (1999). "Corporate Vote-Trading as an Instrument of Corporate Governance".
  6. Hulbert, Mark (2006-03-31). "Vote early, vote often". MarketWatch.
  7. Udhen, Lars. The Limits of Public Choice: A Sociological Critique of the Economic Theory. pp. 118–119.
  8. Kenneth J. Koford. "Centralized vote-trading". Springer Netherlands.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, November 11, 2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.