10/30/16

Donald Trump, The Prisoner’s Dilemma and Maine’s Instant Runoff Initiative

Sometimes, in politics, weird things happen. (No kidding, right?) Witness Maine’s controversial governor, Paul LePage, who won his first visit to the state house with less than 38% of the vote. The reason? It was a three-way race.

Or even more dramatically and historically, this past spring’s Republican primary eleven-person cavalry charge. With so many folks running, and running into each other, the winner only needed a fraction of the vote, as long as it was a bigger fraction than anyone else’s. And that’s what happened.

Journal Universel, Paris, 1863

Then, as the Republican establishment began to realize that they were about to nominate perhaps the only candidate who could possibly lose to Hillary Clinton, they tried to put together a strategy that would #DumpTrump.  It didn’t work.

Why not?

First, it was too little, too late.  Trump was already well on his way to amassing sufficient delegates.  But their strategy also required the remaining candidates to play the Prisoner’s Dilemma and win. 

Say what?

Here’s how the Prisoner’s Dilemma works:

CanStock Photos

Imagine that you and your friend, Mr. D, are cat burglars. You were caught breaking into the Snodgrass Mansion in search of the priceless Cat’s Eye Diamond. The local police take you off to the station house and put you in separate rooms.  Eventually, the district attorney comes to both of you and offers the same deal:

      

      1.  Admit your guilt. If Mr. D also admits his guilt, you will both get a 6-month sentence at a minimum security prison. If Mr. D says he’s innocent, you go to prison for 12 years while he goes free. 

      2.  Insist on your innocence. If Mr. D admits his guilt, you go free and he gets the 12-year sentence.  If Mr. D also insists on his innocence, you both go to trial and each of you will get a 6-year prison term based on their airtight case.

Obviously, the best deal for both of you is for you both to admit your guilt.  The best deal for a single person is to hold on to your innocence and hope the other guy confesses. You are not allowed to communicate with Mr. D. What do you do?

If you live in a collectivist society (like Japan or Mexico, or India), one that values the group over the individual, you pick the first option. The good of the group outweighs the good of the individual. You trade off your chance to go free for the lower sentences for both of you. And Mr. D will do the same.  You both get the shorter sentence at a better facility.

If you live in a society that values the individual, like the U.S. does, you pick option two and hope for the best, because the good of the individual outweighs the good of the group. Unfortunately for you, Mr. D makes the same choice and off you both go for a long term in a maximum security prison.  What sunk the Republicans was that none of the pack running against Trump were willing to trade off their individual presidential ambitions for the good of the party. Not until it was far too late. As a result, they lost the Prisoner’s Dilemma and came very close to losing the election.

gograph

Now, what does this have to do with Maine’s “Instant Runoff” Initiative?  Everything, actually. 

LePage won because he was in a three person race. The candidate with the least chance of winning took votes from the other, and LePage won instead.  Happened twice, once in 2010 and again in 2014. So in the hopes of preventing a minority winner in the future, Maine voters now have the chance to change how they vote with this new Initiative. Instead of picking a single candidate, voters would be asked to rank the candidates: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc .  Then, if no one gets a simple majority from the 1st choice votes, they would drop the lowest person and count the votes again.  The votes from the dropped candidate would then be assigned based on their second choice. And so on, until someone gets a majority.  An "instant runoff". They hope to do this in races for the governorship, senate, house, state senate and state representatives, thus eliminating the Prisoner’s Dilemma in these races and allowing only majority vote candidates to win.  Elegant and simple. I wish them the best.

Gary Johnson take note: Are you playing the Prisoner's Dilemma? Your vice-president has figured it out.