The Burr Dilemma or chicken dilemma is a dilemma that exists in electoral systems based on approval ballots. The term was used in the The Journal of Politics (2007) by Jack H. Nagel, who named it after Aaron Burr, who initially tied with Thomas Jefferson for Electoral College votes in the United States presidential election of 1800.[1][2] According to Nagel, the electoral tie resulted from "a strategic tension built into approval voting, which forces two leaders in appealing to the same voters to play a game of Chicken".[1]

A set of voters prefer two candidates over all others, while at best, only one is likely to win. Both candidates are incentivized to publicly encourage voters to support the other candidate while privately encouraging some supporters to only vote for themselves. When taken too far, this strategy may cause too many defections from both candidates' support such that both lose, while avoiding defections prevents an effective choice between the two candidates.

History

The 1800 United States presidential election was conducted using a voting-rule similar to approval voting. Each member of the Electoral College should cast two votes, with no distinction made between electoral votes for president and electoral votes for vice president. The candidate winning the highest number of votes would be the president, and the one winning the second-highest number would be the vice-president.

There were four candidates: the Democratic-Republicans nominated a ticket consisting of Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, while the Federalists nominated a ticket consisting of John Adams and Charles C. Pinckney. Each party formed a plan by which one of their respective electors would vote for a third candidate or abstain, so that its preferred presidential candidate (Jefferson for the Democratic-Republicans and Adams for the Federalists) would win one more vote than the party's other nominee.

At the end of a long and bitter campaign, Jefferson and Burr each won 73 electoral votes, Adams won 65, and Pinckney won 64. The Democratic-Republicans' failure to execute their plan to award Jefferson one more vote than Burr resulted in a tie, which necessitated a contingent election in the House of Representatives. Burr was accused of campaigning for the presidency himself in the contingent election, despite being a member of Jefferson's party. Each state delegation cast one vote, and a victory in the contingent election required one candidate to win a majority of the state delegations.

Following this political crisis, in 1804 the 12th Amendment was ratified: it required each member of the electorate to cast one vote for president and one vote for vice-president, rather than two indistinguishable votes.

Solutions

The 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution prevented a recurrence of the Burr dilemma by having the Electors vote separately for President and Vice President.

The Burr dilemma can also be avoided by switching from approval ballots to ranked ballots.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Nagel, Jack H. (February 2007). "The Burr Dilemma in Approval Voting". The Journal of Politics. 69 (1): 43–58. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00493.x – via JSTOR.
  2. ↑ Nagel, Jack H. (2006). "A Strategic Problem in Approval Voting". In Simeone, B.; Pukelheim, F. (eds.). Mathematics and Democracy. Studies in Choice and Welfare. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 133–150. ISBN 978-3-540-35603-5.
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