Throwing My Vote Away
Last Friday, I trotted down to my local county courthouse “Judicial Center” to cast my early ballot. It will surprise few that I voted for Bob Barr and Whatshisface. If I recall correctly, I’ve voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate every time, but this year, more people than usual have derided me for “throwing my vote away,” probably because Indiana is suddenly a battleground State.
Unlike other third-party voters, I’ve never really thought too hard about this objection before now. Partly this is because I’m increasingly of the opinion that democracy is a farce meant to legitimate the abuses of power perpetrated by the knaves and charlatans who prevail at the ballot. In this respect, literally throwing away one’s vote is not only unobjectionable but perhaps morally required. But since Bob Barr a) will not prevail and b) would renounce much of his power if he did, I feel as if I’m not contributing to the travesty.
But if we take the romantic view of democracy, that it is a noble and enlightened medium for selecting rulers who reflect the public will, voting third party seems like opting out of the system. This is superficial. My detractors are proposing that voting for a candidate polling in the single digits means that I don’t have a say in the outcome. It escapes their attention that up to 49.9% of the electorate can have no say in the outcome of an election. I fail to see the difference between voting for a sure loser and a probable loser, which leaves us with the proposition that one ought only to vote for a probable winner — in which case, why bother to vote at all?
Ultimately, this line of thinking will propose that one should only vote in close elections, or at least that in close elections, voting for one of the two top candidates is especially important. At this point, I have to reject Probability of Victory as a criterion for deciding how to vote. (I’ll leave it as an aside that the Electoral College makes close elections rarer still and largely illusory.) It is a sign of my growing radicalization that the marginal difference in awfulness between the two candidates is becoming less and less apparent, and so the logic of voting for the lesser of two evils breaks down. Casting a ballot for the candidate who disgusts one slightly less strikes me as the truer definition of throwing away one’s vote.
If we entertain the romantic view just a little longer, voting for a candidate who does not reflect one’s will perverts democracy, as the victor will govern on his own agenda rather than the implicit compromises among individuals within the majority. If I’m going to go through the performance of democracy, I’m going to select the candidate who most closely matches my preferences, or, failing that, no one at all.
26 Responses to “Throwing My Vote Away”
Looking only at the short term of this election and the fate of Indiana’s 11 electoral votes, a vote for Barr is essentially meaningless. But, it may well have been your best option if you find that Obama and McCain are equally objectionable to you.
At the moment, there appears to be two plausible outcomes of the Presidential election in Indiana – the electoral votes go to either McCain or Obama. Voting is one tool with which you can affect that outcome. If you have a preference as between those two outcomes, the rational thing to do (short term) is to use that tool to increase the chances of your preferred outcome (of the two available) becoming reality.
Long term, as I say, things become more complicated. It might be that voting for a third party now increases the chances of some future third party candidate becoming viable in a subsequent election. However, casting a vote for President might not be the most useful potential tool in this regard — organizing and gathering money for lower level third party candidates might offer more of an impact.
“democracy is a farce meant to legitimate the abuses of power perpetrated by the knaves and charlatans who prevail at the ballot.”
Ok maybe so, but at least we get to decide which knave or charlatan we want abusing our power.
Do you really believe that somebody who thinks that the “fundamental flaw” of the constitution is that it only focuses on “negative liberties” that limits the governments incursion into people’s lives rather than such “positive” action as redistribution of wealth – that such a person is only marginally less disgusting than John McCain?
*That should read “more disgusting” above.
Mike, you assume that McCain would show any practical difference. I do not.
John Quincy Adams said it best: “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
As a supporter of third-party candidates, I have long heard the comments that I am ‘throwing my vote away.’ I see voting my conscience as an important part of democracy. Its the ‘marginal difference in awfulness’ that started me on this path a while back. As Helen Keller (yes, Helen Keller) said “Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
Cherish that sweet reflection that your vote was not lost.
Doug, all votes in a presidential election are essentially meaningless.
Zach, I was recently defending my vote for Barr with a mutual friend of ours. I asked this friend if the only valid vote would have been one for Reagan, as Mondale obviously did not have a chance. He seemed to tentatively agree with that sentiment.
I believe that Washington was the popular choice in the first election before the votes were cast. I wonder if the “vote wasting” crowd would say the electors (and the people they represented) wasted their votes on the 11 other candidates who received electoral votes in 1789. (Of course this was a much different system then.)
What a moron! “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. You have exceeded Edmund Burke’s dictum beyond all expectations.
The rationality of voting is, I think, best viewed as a collective action problem, a kind of tragedy-of-the-commons issue for the democratic process; and not viewed in terms of the instrumental rationality of one’s (tiny) influence on the outcome.
Given that, there’s no reason to think of any sort of vote that registers one’s preferences as “thrown away”. The hard part is often determining which of the limited range of options actually registers one’s preferences well. Makes sense to me that a number of ITA folks might take Barr to do so for them.
I’m with you. I used to vote Republican, but quit in 2000 after candidate Bush wouldn’t breath a word against Clinton-style corruption. I’ve been glad ever since that I haven’t had to defend the abuses of his administration. At the time I said that I couldn’t get worked up over the choice between going to hell in a handbasket going 60mph and one going only 50 mph. I still can’t, even though one handbasket now promises to increase its speed to 200 mph.
Keep in mind that your vote is not the only voice you have, whether in a democracy or in any other system. Why stifle that voice by becoming complicit in the operation of either one of those handbaskets.
“What a moron! “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. You have exceeded Edmund Burke’s dictum beyond all expectations.”
Apparently you’re not choosing between candidates, but between GOOD and EVIL. I’ll take a side of extreme partisanship covered in Manichaeism.
What a moron! “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. You have exceeded Edmund Burke’s dictum beyond all expectations.
It would seem to me that voting for the party that does not reflect your interests is the precise definition of doing nothing. Thus, Zach is doing far more than most.
“It would seem to me that voting for the party that does not reflect your interests is the precise definition of doing nothing.” I would go farther and say that voting contrary to one’s considered preferense would indeed be doing something — in the wrong direction. Just because one shouldn’t do _nothing_, it doesn’t follow that one should just do _anything_.
Okay Zach, I see our disagreement. But remember – people who voted for Nader in 2000 did so because they thought there’d be no practical difference between Gore’s policies and Bush’s policies.
I would go farther and say that voting contrary to one’s considered preferense would indeed be doing something — in the wrong direction.
I think you mean to say that you would go “further”, not “farther”.
“people who voted for Nader in 2000 did so because they thought there’d be no practical difference between Gore’s policies and Bush’s policies.”
Mike, Are you speaking for yourself? That overly broad generalization does not fit with any of the Nader voters I know and uses hindsight to distort reason. In 2000, Bush ran as “the uniter, not the divider” and spoke of “compassionate conservatism.” He ran a centrist campaign, but then moved right (particularly in foreign policy)following the election. Gore ran a feeble campaign, with the environment one of the few tangible differences between party platforms, yet the democratic party platform still catered to corporate, as opposed to individual, interests. Nader pointed to the similarities between the party platforms, and in particular the democratic party’s appeals to corporate interests as a means for winning the election, a point your criticism ignores. Sure there are differences, but those of degree, and you ignore the substantive similarities between the parties, then point to how Bush actually has governed (compared to some unstated hypothetical of how Gore would have governed) to overgeneralize.
The Nader voters I know are no different (in a sense) than libertarians or green party voters- they tend to vote on issues, stay true to the issues, and are not swayed by arguments that one candidate is “the lesser of two evils.” There is no vote “lost” on supporting the issues you believe in.
Anyone who would say that there’s no discernable difference between McCain and Obama is either uninformed, much more cynical than realistic, or has political views that are far outside the mainstream.
I’m with Doug. The rational thing to do in any contested election is to vote for your preference among the viable candidates. If there’s only one truly viable candidate, then the election is not effectively contested and it is rational to vote for any candidate who most closely matches your preferences.
I don’t believe that third parties can ever be nationally viable in our current political system. But if we instituted a change such as instant runoff voting, we’d probably very quickly see our two-party system dissolve into a large number of parties–some national and some regional. This means that in all likelihood, instant runoff voting will never be a reality.
I should probably clarify what I’m thinking when I say a candidate is “viable.” I don’t mean that there’s a large chance he/she will win, I mean that there’s a significant chance. FiveThirtyEight.com currently estimates McCain’s chance of winning the election at 3.3%, or 1 in 30. Long odds, to be sure…unless those were your odds of winning the Powerball lottery, in which case you’d definitely be buying a ticket. On the other hand, you probably have a better shot to win the lottery than Bob Barr has to win the Presidency. At this point, McCain is still a viable candidate, but Bob Barr is not.
To put it another way, if a candidate is 10% or less behind the leader in the popular vote, they are probably viable. If they’re down by a 2-1 margin, they’re not.
Wonderful decision! You made the right choice.
I’m just not seeing why viability should necessarily be a relevant criterion here. I can understand someone’s reasoning in those terms, but I don’t see what the argument is for prescribing it to someone else.
As for the Nader voters: there’s an epistemic gap here between having one’s own political preferences on the one hand, and figuring out which candidate is best for those preferences on the other. One might not do a very good job in figuring that out, perhaps out of a cognitive error, perhaps just out of bad luck with the incredibly lousy information stream that the media provides. Nothing about this is particular to third-party candidates, and one can make this sort of mistake with main-party candidates, too — anyone who votes for McCain this time around because they think that Obama is a Muslim, for example, or who votes for Obama because they think he’s an uber-pacifist.
“Nader pointed to the similarities between the party platforms, and in particular the democratic party’s appeals to corporate interests as a means for winning the election, a point your criticism ignores.”
Actually, that sounds like what my criticism states: that Nader supporters thought there’d be no practical difference between the big party candidates.
“and you ignore the substantive similarities between the parties, then point to how Bush actually has governed (compared to some unstated hypothetical of how Gore would have governed) to overgeneralize.”
Nothing that I said ignored substantive similarities between the parties, nor did I point to how Bush has governed. All I said was that Nader voters thought there’d be no practical difference between the candidates.
The funny thing is that you start out by saying that this “does not fit” with any Nader voters you know, then you go on to explain why someone might have thought there was no substantive difference between Bush and Gore. Interesting.
Mike,
Its clear that you strongly believe Nader voters saw no difference between Bush and Gore, but you attribute the reason they voted for Nader to this one factor. That is where we disagree. Nader’s theme was ‘vote your dreams, not your fears.’ Nader voters I know followed Ralph Nader’s admonition to take the ten issues that mattered to them most (independent of whatever issues the parties advocated), rate all of the candidates on where they stood on those issues, then vote for the one candidate who best represented their interests or ideals. When questioned on it, Nader even said at the end of the process, if it means that you vote for the democratic party candidate, or the libertarian party candidate, or the republican party candidate, you do so because the candidate stands for the issues that you support. At the end of the process, one may conclude that there is little difference between candidate/party a and candidate/party b, but you elevate the result of the analysis to the sine qua non of why voters supported Nader, overlooking the stances on issues (and the rationale) that led to the decision. Its the emphasis you place on the result of the analysis that I take issue with.
Nader voters I know point to stances on issues as the reason why they voted for Nader (and my Libertarian and Green Party friends adopt a similar rationale for how they exercise their vote). The ‘no practical difference’ that you assign to the reason voters supported Nader is often leveled by those who do not understand the rationale used by those supporting third party candidates, or by those who seek to ridicule Nader supporters by citing differences between Bush and Gore. In either case, Nader voters did not vote for Nader “because of” George Bush’s policies, or Al Gore’s policies, but because of Nader’s own policies. That is what voting for your ideals is about, and is what Zach seems to be doing in this election.
“Its clear that you strongly believe Nader voters saw no difference between Bush and Gore, but you attribute the reason they voted for Nader to this one factor.”
I don’t think that this is the only or even the main reason why people in 2000 voted for Nader. Nor did I say they saw “no difference.” Of course they voted for Nader because he was the candidate who most closely stood for their views. But I do think the fact that Nader voters, by and large, saw no practical difference between the two leading candidates was how they justified voting for someone who had no chance of winning when the front two were in a very tight race.
Bush may have sold himself as a “compassionate conservative,” but anyone who really cared about the environment or the power of corporations must have realized that a ticket where both candidates were veterans of the oil industry and whose campaign was substantially funded by that industry would take a very different approach to these issues than Al Gore. I don’t need to rehash what happened the next eight years.
Now we have a contest between a moderate conservative on the one hand and, on the other hand, a candidate who thinks the constitution should have been written to encourage the govt. to redistribute wealth. We are perhaps only one Supreme Court vote away from overturning Roe v. Wade. And we face the possibility of a Democrat supermajority in the senate. For anyone who cares about these issues (as I believe Zach does), the idea that the outcome of Obama vs. McCain doesn’t matter seems ludicrous.
Mike,
Think what you want, but you are projecting your own rationalizations onto Nader voters and why they voted as they did. For someone who did not support Nader, you are probably not the best person to explain why Nader voters voted the way they did.
You and many other big party supporters focus on the immediate election (’If you don’t vote Kerry, Bush will win’ and ‘If you don’t vote for McCain, Obama will win’), and that factors very little in the thinking of the third party supporters I know. Good luck with trying to convince Zach with that one.
Supporters of big party candidates also like to frame the argument in terms of a vote for a candidate ‘with no chance of winning.’ Their reference to “winning” is limited to the immediate election. I cast my vote for a third party candidate with full knowledge that they will not “win” the election, but with the hope that the ideas the candidate supports “win” in the hearts and minds of individuals. A party or candidate does not have to “win” the election in order for the ideas to gain support among the general populace. Maybe out of necessity, third party supporters typically adopt a definition of “winning” that big party supporters have a difficult time understanding.
RJ, I understand your point about voting for a third party candidate so that their ideas will gain recognition. But I still think what I said about the reasoning of Nader voters in paragraph one of my last comment is valid.
I think most of them thought there was little practical difference between Bush and Gore, that this played into their reasoning on how to vote, and that they got a rude shock a few years later when they found out there was a big difference. Similarly, I think that people of a libertarian mindset who think there isn’t any practical difference between Obama and McCain may get a rude shock in the next couple of years, especially if the Democrats gain a supermajority in the Senate.
phil wrote:
I’m just not seeing why viability should necessarily be a relevant criterion here. I can understand someone’s reasoning in those terms, but I don’t see what the argument is for prescribing it to someone else.
I was assuming that individuals view voting as a mechanism that allows them to affect, in some small measure, the way in which they will be governed.
If one views voting as a form of speech, then I suppose viability is irrelevant. However, I think that view is flawed. I don’t think anyone of any importance really cares whether the Libertarian candidate gets 2% or 3% of the popular vote.
I find the “logic” that “one is throwing one’s vote away” by voting for a third party candidate almost indistinguishable from arguing that voting for any likely loser is “throwing one’s vote away”. The use of this argument by supporters of the two major parties dovetails nicely with their routine resort to negative campaigning. In their world why should we care that the Republican/Democrat is awful, it is more important to stop the lessor of two evils represented by the Democrat/Republican. And G_d forbid that those of us disgusted by the two major parties might vote our beliefs. If we vote our beliefs, even if our candidate gets only 2 or 3% of the vote, we can potentially deny either of the two major parties’ candidates a majority and the moral authority having a majority confers.