Vote trading is the practice of supporting someone else's initiative in exchange for their support of one's own initiative. It frequently takes place in legislative bodies. An example would be Congressman A voting for a dam in Congressman B's district in exchange for Congressman B's support for farm subsidies in Congressman A's district. One of the first examples of vote trading to occur in the United States was the Compromise of 1790

Compromise of 1790

The Compromise of 1790 was the first of three great political compromises made in the United States by the Northern and Southern states, occurring every thirty years, in an attempt to keep the Union together and prevent civil war...

, in which Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

 made a deal with James Madison

James Madison

James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...

 and Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...

 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. There are many 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. 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

Party discipline

Party discipline is the ability of a parliamentary group of a political party to get its members to support the policies of their party leadership. In liberal democracies, it usually refers to the control that party leaders have over its legislature...

 which facilitates policy cross-overs by individual congressmen, in sharp contrast to European countries.

Corporate vote trading has been proposed as a way of improving corporate governance. 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.

Members of the electorate can also engage in a vote trading variant called vote pairing

Vote pairing

Vote pairing is the method where a voter in one district agrees to vote tactically for a less-preferred candidate or party who has a greater chance of winning in their district, in exchange for a voter from another district voting tactically for the candidate the first voter prefers, because that...

; an example is the strategic voting facilitated by VotePair in which third party supporters in swing states agree to vote for a more centrist major party candidate in exchange for citizens in "safe" states voting for the third party candidate. The idea is to defeat the spoiler effect

Spoiler effect

The spoiler effect describes the effect a minor party candidate with little chance of winning has in a close election, when that candidate's presence in the election draws votes from a major candidate similar to them, thereby causing a candidate dissimilar to them to win the election...

.

Ethical considerations

The Limits of Public Choice: A Sociological Critique of the Economic Theory notes that vote trading is often considered immoral, since votes are to 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

Tyranny of the majority

The phrase "tyranny of the majority" , used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, is a criticism of the scenario in which decisions made by a majority under that system would place that majority's interests so far above a dissenting individual's interest that the individual would be...

. 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.