How to bypass the exception multiple actions were

When trying to find solution for this below question:

MVC Web Api Route with default action not working

Mostly I run across the problem "multiple actions were found". If routing mechanism finds out more than one actions matched with a route, it throws out the exception 500.

For example, there are two actions in ValuesController:

[HttpGet]
public IEnumerable<String> Active()
{
    var result = new List<string> { "active1", "active2" };
    return result;
}

public IEnumerable<string> Get()
{
    return new[] { "value1", "value2" };
}

which match with default route:

 routes.MapHttpRoute(
          name: "DefaultApi",
          routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
          defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
      );

With

GET: /api/values

will get error multiple actions were found.

My question: how I can bypass the exception "multiple actions were found" by choosing specified action (choose the first matched action is also okay).

Update 1: Update from tugberk's comment, thanks to point out.

Update 2: Update from Mike's comment, seems the question is not correct much, so I change the way to ask by not mentioning the routing constraint.

Thanks

First of all, it shouldn't be possible for those route to match Active action unless you apply HttpGet attribute on it. I will assume you already did that. The second thing is that what you want is not logical. You would like to make a get request and have two identical actions. You are now using so-called HTTP-method-based routing. For you situation, I am sure that so-called action-based routing is the best.

Assuming you have following two actions:

[HttpGet]
public IEnumerable<String> Active()
{
    var result = new List<string> { "active1", "active2" };
    return result;
}

[HttpGet]
public IEnumerable<string> Retrieve()
{
    return new[] { "value1", "value2" };
}

You route should be as follows:

routes.MapHttpRoute(
        name: "DefaultApi",
        routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
    );

Then you can request to those with following URIs: