Vote pairing is a cost-effective political intervention

Abstract

I became interested in vote trading several months before the 2016 US presidential election. At the time there were two major vote pairing platforms: Make Mine Count and #NeverTrump.2 I volunteered my time over a couple months to make improvements to the MMC platform. The platform worked as follows: users would sign up, listing their state and candidate preference. Clinton voters in safe states would be paired with third-party voters in swing states, and they would be connected through a secure, private messaging system. After being connected, they would message each other to ensure that both wanted to be paired, after which they would each vote for the other’s candidate.