The Trumpian Vote Dilemma
The classic problems of choice in game theory are called “dilemmas”, such as the “prisoner’s dilemma”, or the “farmer’s dilemma”. Millions of Republican voters who are not happy with having Donald Trump as their President, are facing a similar voting dilemma. This is also true of a number of traditional Democrats and new, young Democrats considering whether to vote for Hillary Clinton. I wish I were a game theory mathematician to give a comprehensive analysis to this problem. But I will give some initial investigation into the problem.
Republicans are very loyal, in my opinion. 88% of Republicans are now going to vote for Trump. The party needs to improve this to 93%. Nevertheless, many Republicans and Democrats are deeply religious, and very concerned with morality and conscience. Many are concerned with human rights and acting humanely. Many educated voters are looking for intelligent policies and choice of advisors and future cabinet members and political appointees.
So many Republican voters have the following choices:
1) Vote for Trump
a) Like Trump, he’ll make America great again;
b) Don’t like Trump, but want Republican policies and conservative Supreme Court Justices
2) Skip voting for President
3) Vote for Clinton
4) Vote for another Candidate, like Gary Johnson, the Libertarian
The value question associated with your vote is whether you are voting your conscience, as emphasized by Senator Ted Cruz at the Republican convention, or, are you voting your most intelligent option? Or are you doing both with the same vote?
I will not attempt here to argue against voting for Trump, since many of my previous articles are in that vein. My argument here is that choices 2) or 4) may not satisfy your vote by conscience or your vote by logic.
Clearly, skipping the Presidential vote or voting for Johnson takes one vote away from Trump, but does not add to Clinton’s total. But by adding a vote for Clinton, the voter increases the margin by two, or cancels somebody else’s vote for Trump.
If you really want to stop Trump then, you have to vote for Clinton. This is especially true if you are a conscience voter. If Trump gets elected and infuses our government with craziness, and makes political appointments of business and industrial lobbyists, your conscience will torment you every day of his imperial reign.
If you are a voter who believes in using intelligence, as much as you mistrust Clinton, you have to realize that a large part of the mistrust results from years of constant unfounded hype and fear instilled by conservative media. To the extent that Clinton continues policies close to Obama’s, you have to admit that Obamacare, and the recovery from the housing recession, have been positive developments. America will still be pretty much the same until the next election, when you will have choices of reasonable Republican candidates.
