Third-Party Voting
Posted by
tgirsch
Over in the comments here, commenter LarryE and I have been engaged in an often-heated debate about whether and when it makes sense to vote for a non-viable third-party candidate in a close election. I argue that in our current electoral system, at best it makes no difference at all, and at worst it’s exactly counter-productive. He disagrees. It’s a good read, and I’m interested in learning if anyone else has strong opinions one way or the other.
My brother in law and I had this fight. he said it’s cowardly and a waste of a vote because they can’t win. i said by that rationale, everyone who voted for kerry wasted their vote.
Comment 5/30/2007
“i said by that rationale, everyone who voted for kerry wasted their vote.”
Fortunately, not enough people “wasted” their votes.
Comment 5/30/2007
Part of the question is, what exactly does it mean for a vote to be wasted or not wasted?
Unless the election is only one vote apart, an individual vote has no effect on the outcome.
The invidual voter does gain or lose anything based on which candidate they choose.
So at neither the individual or societal level is there oppurtunity cost that results from the so called ‘wasted vote’.
Comment 5/30/2007
Uncle:
Except that Kerry had a realistic chance at winning, while no third-party candidate had a snowball’s chance in hell.
Stormy:
Wouldn’t that be an argument against bothering to vote at all? You’ve just made representative democracy disappear in a puff of logic!
Comment 5/30/2007
Tgirsch, as a somewhat biased observer, I have to say that LarryE kicked your butt in that thread. I only mention this because the vast majority of the time I am more swayed by your comments than those of your opponent(s).
Comment 5/30/2007
Ted,
I’d have to disagree, but only insofar as LarryE also failed to make a persuasive point.
The two of them together argued quite successfully for removing winner-take-all elections and primaries, but neither was convincing as to what to do in the current system.
In general, I think the parlimentary system is less good at making useful legislatures, but much better at getting desireable legislators. That is to say, ‘wasting‘ fewer votes, while yeilding do-nothing, deadlocked parliments.
Comment 5/30/2007
I should explain what I mean by wasted votes.
Consider that each candidate has some particular value of desirability to each voter. (For completeness, let’s define the value of a non-vote as zero, allowing for negative values for “bad” candidates.) Sum the value given by each constituent to the winning parties. A system wastes votes when it tends to produce sums smaller than possible. The vote of a single constituent is wasted when the value he gives the winners is substantially smaller than it would be in a sum-maximizing result.
Note in particular, that this metric is undefined (rather, trivially zero) for a two-candidate election, so it really needs to be applied to the general election and primaries in toto.
Parlimentary systems reduce vote-wasting by having more distincting winning parties. Instant run-off voting and the like reduce the metric by selecting more optimally.
Comment 5/30/2007
>Parlimentary systems reduce vote-wasting by having more distincting winning parties. Instant run-off voting and the like reduce the
>metric by selecting more optimally.
As per Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, there is no opitmal voting system. Replacing plurality voting with IRV just trades one set of problems with another. In particular, IRV has a big problem with non-monotonicity (it’s possible to lose because too many people voted for you).
As a more practical matter, IRV tends to favor candidates with small but enthusiastic supporters over those with broader but less enthusiastic support. Case in point: there are six candidates, A, B, C, D, E, and F. A through E are each the first choice of 20% of the voters. F is everyone’s second choice. F is clearly the most popular candidate, but under IRV rules, he’s the first candidate rejected.
Comment 5/30/2007
err s/distincting/distinct/
Comment 5/30/2007
>Wouldn’t that be an argument against bothering to vote at all? You’ve just made representative democracy disappear in a puff of
>logic!
Only if one assumes the reason individuals vote is to influence the government.
Comment 5/30/2007
Stormy,
Point taken. I think my comments stand with respect to many real cases, though not all of them. *Shrug.* Still an argument for changing to something else.
Comment 5/30/2007
Ted:
Your opinion is duly noted.
You’ll forgive me if I disagree. I still have an open challenge, which at different times I addressed to both you and LarryE, and which neither of you has bothered to answer. Pleasse point to any time in modern American history when voting for a third-party candidate actually produced tangible, productive results, in keeping with the desires of those who voted third-party.
Again, my logic seems pretty straightforward to me: if you have any preference at all between two viable candidates, and the candidate you prefer (or, if you wish, despise less) has a reasonable shot at winning, then voting for the less-than-ideal-but-viable candidate has a much greater chance of making a difference, and thus makes much more sense, then voting for a third-party candidate who’s certain to lose. This logic holds unless you can demonstrate that the two main parties actually adjust their policies based on what the third-party vote looked like.
I suspect that if the major candidates changed their positions to be more in line with the third-party guys, it would generally scare away more voters than it would attract, so I’m guessing that doing so would actually be counterproductive.
Only if one assumes the reason individuals vote is to influence the government.
Well, if by “influence the government” you mean “help decide who gets to run it,” then I think it’s a reasonable assumption. Of course, I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I went to vote because my car was due for an oil change, or because I wanted to buy life insurance… Maybe you have an imaginative reason for voting that doesn’t involve influencing government, but I can’t conceive of one. Even the ill-founded “I wanted to make a statement, maaaan!” is still an attempt to influence government.
Comment 5/30/2007
Tgirsch,
I think you’ve overstated your claim. There exists some value to an expression of dissatisfaction. It may not be large, but it’s non-zero. Given this, there exists some small degree of difference between viable candidates that is acceptible, that is to say, that is insufficient to warrant not voting third-party.
If your options are Zombie Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh hooked on painkillers, maybe it just doesn’t matter enough and you might as well vote for Edwards.
Comment 5/30/2007
Tgirsch, a couple of points. First, I do not have comprehemsive knowledge of all elections in modern American history. Second, why the arbitray limit on modern and American? Third, the fact that something has not occured is not proof that it can not occur. Fourth, why the restriction that results must be “tangible, productive results, in keeping with the desires of those who voted third-party”? I would expect the results to be subtle, and to occur over a period of time.
In counter point, can you cite examples where a third party candidate with a monothematic platform received a significant percentage of the vote and one or both of the major parties did not adjust their platforms accordingly? If not, your contention is as theoretical as mine.
Comment 5/30/2007
Ted -
Thanks. You obviously are a supremely insightful person.
Tgirsch -
I don’t remember you directing your challenge at me, but perhaps you did and I just misunderstood the intent of a question. However, strictly off the top of my head, I’ll offer a couple that seem at least at first glance to fit:
- Norman Thomas never came close to winning a single electoral vote but has been called “the most successful presidential candidate in history” because almost his entire platform, highly radical when he introduced it, later became law and much of that a standard part of the American political and cultural scene. (Most of it, admittedly, in watered-down but still-recognizable form. Social Security and Medicare, for two examples, fit that description.)
- When conservatives started running aggressively, they often had little if any chance of winning. There was the time when William F. Buckley ran for Mayor of New York. Despite having a name recognition many candidates could not even dream of, he could barely scrape together 25% of the vote. By your lights he should have gotten no votes at all - but it was on a string of such (what I call) “successful losses” that the right wing built its base.
- I ran for Congress three times as an independent in the early ’80s. The incumbent was a moderately liberal Democrat running in a moderately conservative Republican district. At the outset of the second campaign, word was out that a couple of local environmental groups were thinking of endorsing me. To head that off, he made specific promises to those groups to support and become active on certain issues of concern to them. To his honor, he kept his word - but the point is that he had not been involved in those issues before and his promise would not have been made had I not run.
That, in fact, has been the history of 3rd parties in the US. As I said before,
[m]ost new ideas enter our political arena through 3rd parties which garner enough support to threaten the position of one of the majors, which then has to adjust to meet that threat.
That is, 3rd parties usually do not win elections. What they can do and have done, however, is to draw enough votes that whichever major party is at least nominally closer is forced to respond in order to avoid losing a later election because of it. Winning, that is, is not the only measure of success. Norman Thomas forced the Democrats to move left. More recently, conservatives forced the GOP to move right. I forced one member of Congress to become more involved in issues I campaigned on.
And no, voting for 3rd parties only when it would make no difference to the outcome doesn’t work because it removes that pressure to change.
Finally, nah, our exchange wasn’t heated. It’s just that on this particular topic we each think the other is full of it. LOL Besides, I remember getting into an argument with a colleague at work. In reaction, I said we were being silly and he replied “I don’t know - I think it’s just that we agree on so much that we have to make the most of where we don’t.”
Comment 5/30/2007
Stormy -
I agree there is no perfect system, although I think there could well be an opitmal one, since optimal really means “the best that can be achieved in a given set of circumstances.” At the same time, I make no claim to knowing what that optimal system would be. I just know that what we have now isn’t it and I know there are clear improvements that could be made.
I do, however, disagree that instant runoff voting has a “big problem” with non-monotonicity. The argument that you could “lose because too many people voted for you” is based on a mathematical construct of what in the real would would be an extremely unlikely set of circumstances. I would say that instant runoff is one of those clear improvements over what is usually done in the US and the “big” problem actually represents a tiny risk that I’m more than willing to take.
Those of us who endorse 3rd party voting are often hit with the old accusation of “making the perfect the enemy of the good.” Actually, in this case it would more accurately be put “making the perfect the enemy of the lesser evil,” but never mind - the point here is that I think your criticism of instant runoff voting better fits the description.
Comment 5/31/2007
Tgirsch -
Two footnotes: First, I see now where I didn’t respond to your challenge; I hadn’t gone back to read the previous thread and so hadn’t seen your last comment.
I, as you would expect, find much to disagree with there both in logic and conclusion but I said my previous post would be my last, and so it will be. Suffice it to say that an argument that depends on a full embrace of the very two-party system you say you hate and which informs those two parties that they can safely ignore the concerns and interests of those who lie outside the range of their relatively narrow debate on any number of issues - which is precisely what insisting on lesser of two evils voting does - is one I find quite unpersuasive.
And two, if you can renew a challenge, so can I: I ask again, since you insist no one should vote for a “non-viable” candidate, did the 10% of Connecticut voters who voted Republican in the 2006 Senate race “piss away their votes?” I live in a blue state, so safely blue that Bush didn’t even campaign here in 2004. Did anyone who voted for him in this state “piss away their vote?” The House incumbents around here routinely get 65%-70% of the vote. Do those who vote for their opponents “piss away their vote?” After all, in none of these cases did the loser have any reasonable or even plausible chance of winning. Or does the logic only apply to 3rd parties?
Comment 5/31/2007
>I agree there is no perfect system, although I think there could well be an opitmal one, since optimal really means “the best that
>can be achieved in a given set of circumstances.” At the same time, I make no claim to knowing what that optimal system would be. I
>just know that what we have now isn’t it and I know there are clear improvements that could be made.
Arrow’s impossiblility theorem takes five simple properties that one would intuitively want in a voting system and shows they are in fact contradictory. So I mean that all voting systems are non-optimal in that they all suffer from at least one major flaw.
>I do, however, disagree that instant runoff voting has a “big problem” with non-monotonicity. The argument that you could “lose
>because too many people voted for you” is based on a mathematical construct of what in the real would would be an extremely unlikely
>set of circumstances. I would say that instant runoff is one of those clear improvements over what is usually done in the US and
>the “big” problem actually represents a tiny risk that I’m more than willing to take.
That’s only because in most real world situations, there’s one candidate who’s clearly ahead of the rest. It’s easy to design a voting system that works in those situations. Indeed, our current first past the post method works fine in those situations. The problems with IRV, as with every voting system, occur in situations when things are really close. And even if such events are rare, they still need to be considered as they’re the only times your selection of a particular voting system makes a difference.
Comment 5/31/2007
>Well, if by “influence the government” you mean “help decide who gets to run it,” then I think it’s a reasonable assumption. Of
>course, I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I went to vote because my car was due for an oil change, or
>because I wanted to buy life insurance… Maybe you have an imaginative reason for voting that doesn’t involve influencing government,
>but I can’t conceive of one. Even the ill-founded “I wanted to make a statement, maaaan!” is still an attempt to influence
>government.
If your goal is to decide who gets to run the government, then yes, voting is, at the individual level, a rather irrational means of accomplishing that goal.
Comment 5/31/2007
Off the top of my head, I’d say that the relative success of the Wallace candidacy in 1968 helped to invigorate the right wing of the GOP, and to convince the party establishment to accommodate their electoral strategies to the Wallace constituency. I’d have to go back to my books to see exactly how scholars trace the through-line from Wallace 1968 to Reagan 1980, but I’ll be surprised if many of them consider it irrelevant.
Comment 5/31/2007
“the Wallace candidacy in 1968 helped to invigorate the right wing of the GOP”
The Wallace people were mainly southern democrats who bolted their party to support Wallace. I’m sure there were some Republicans who supported Wallace, but the Wallace party was mostly breakaway democrats.
Comment 5/31/2007
Ted and LarryE:
I think much of our disagreement on third-party voting stems from the fact that we’re asking a different question. I ask “Why?” and you ask “Why not?” My answer to your “why not” question has to do with likely outcomes. The outcome you expect (well, Ted seems to expect, anyway) is that third-party votes will gradually and subtly change the politics of one or both of the two main parties in the direction of those third-party policies. I think this outcome is highly unlikely, and that the third-party votes would simply be ignored seems like a much more likely outcome. I also think that a much more likely outcome is that the third-party candidate will siphon votes away from the viable candidate whose platform most closely resembles his, thus helping the viable candidate whose platform least closely resembles his.
Concerning the examples that LarryE gave, I’ll waffle and sort of concede them. I still have questions about the order of cause-and-effect there. When third parties do come to prominence in our system, it happens because public opinion is shifting in a way that the two main parties aren’t reflecting; my contention is that one of the two main parties would shift to match this even if the third-party didn’t garner significant attention. But I understand that you’ll disagree with me quite strenuously.
Concerning Brooklynite’s Wallace example, the result of this wasn’t really to shift big-party politics this direction or that, but to essentially switch around the two big parties. The new GOP that resulted looked an awful lot like the old Democratic party, and vice versa.
As to why the “modern” restriction, it’s just that politics are a lot different in the age of national television than they were before. Prior to that nationalization, politics were a lot more localized, and the power of the two major parties (whoever they happened to be at any given time) was not so concentrated as it is today.
And I quarrel with LarryE’s characterization that I “embrace” the current two-party system. I’m simply pragmatic about it: it is what it is, and we have to work within what we have. It’s hard to win a game by quitting the game. Frankly, a big part of why the Left habitually gets its ass kicked isn’t because of unpopular policies, but because the Right is a lot better at strategic voting, while the Left (at least recently) is much more susceptible to splintering. The only reason the Democrats won in 2006 is because the Iraq war caused the Right to splinter in similar ways.
I’m strapped for time now, but I’ll have more on this later.
Comment 5/31/2007
Tgirsch wrote:”…third-party votes will gradually and subtly change the politics of one or both of the two main parties in the direction of those third-party policies. I think this outcome is highly unlikely, and that the third-party votes would simply be ignored seems like a much more likely outcome.”
In the last New York Senate campaign, despite the fact that she was an incumbent and favored to win, Hillary Clinton tried to get her name on the Green Party ballot as well as the Democratic (I don’t believe she made the Liberal Party). This is significant, I believe, because the Greens are not among the New York power broker parties, but truly independent. If that is any indication, then third parties, if they stand the chance to garner a certain number of votes, may not be simply ignored, but do exert a kind of influence. The third parties aren’t hampered by the “big tent” mentality, and don’t have to worry about offending certain elements, and can stick to their guns without compromise. They become proponents of radical, fringy ideas like universal sufferage, the 40-hr workweek and child labor laws (as had been mentioned above). They can also become influential in other ways (albeit rarely) such as the Communists and the Scottsboro Boys trial. The issue was considered so incendiary that no mainstream or moderate organization would go near it…the Communists didn’t have to worry about public opinion, and were able to help with legal defense.
Comment 5/31/2007
Janusz:
It’s not that I think third parties have no influence on the political discourse. That’s plainly false. It’s just that I don’t think that influence comes from people voting for them on election day. The “radical” ideas they’ve supported that have stuck have done so because those ideas had merit, not because of any particular clout that those parties have. I seriously doubt the Democratic party looks and says “Wow, 2% of the people voted for Nader; maybe we’d better shift our party politics in that direction…”
Fred:
The Wallace people were mainly southern democrats who bolted their party to support Wallace.
And when they “bolted” from the Democratic party, which party accepted them with open arms? Oh yeah, that’s right: the GOP did. In other words, they were Democrats, but they became Republicans. As I said, the two parties essentially switched sides on racial issues.
Stormy:
If your goal is to decide who gets to run the government, then yes, voting is, at the individual level, a rather irrational means of accomplishing that goal.
I’m still waiting for your better way to decide that. I’m also still waiting for your reason as to why you would vote, then, if not to influence government.
LarryE:
I ask again, since you insist no one should vote for a “non-viable” candidate
Well, for starters, that’s not what I “insist,” and that’s essentially the answer to your question/challenge. I’ve already spelled out several circumstances in which it’s not a wasted vote to vote for a non-viable candidate. What I do argue is that you should never vote for a non-viable candidate any time there’s more than one viable candidate, unless you genuinely and truly have absolutely no preference whatsoever among the candidates with a viable shot at winning. As it turns out, my exception to third-party voting turns out to be a very narrow one: it’s a problem to me only in those circumstances when an election is close (in your district) and when a “principled” vote for a non-viable candidate would actually benefit the greater of two evils.
In an election that’s not even close, there’s no harm at all in voting for the candidate you truly like the best irrespective of his or her chances of winning, because in those cases there’s only one candidate with any shot at winning anyway. And, in fact, that’s the time to make a statement vote: when a candidate expected 35% of the vote but only got 20%, that will get his or her attention.
But when you’re in a tight election (like 2000, for a real world example), where a vote for Nader is as good as a vote for Bush from a practical perspective, voting for Nader is clearly counter-productive, since Bush’s policies are worlds farther from Nader’s than Gore’s could ever have dreamed of being. And Bush is what we got. Getting 48% instead of 50% may have gotten Gore’s attention, but at what cost?
Mark my words: politicians are counting on attitudes like yours a lot more than they’re counting on attitudes like mine. Outside of her loyal base, a candidate doesn’t care whether or not a voter votes for her, just so long as that voter doesn’t vote for the other guy. The entire Karl Rove strategy that worked so brilliantly in 2000, 2002, and 2004 was to get the conservative base to show up in force, while helping convince the moderates to do one of three things, with no real preference among them: (1) vote Bush; (2) vote third-party; or (3) don’t vote at all. Rove doesn’t just love your cynicism of our two-party politics (and trust me, he does love it); he’s actively counting on it and planning for it.
Arguing that liberals ought to vote for whichever splinter candidate they like best, irrespective of his or her chances of winning, while the conservatives continue to strategically coalesce around single, viable candidates, is the electoral equivalent of bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Again, this all goes out the window if you really and truly have no preference at all between the two major parties (which I’d find difficult to fathom), or if you are simply unconcerned with results.
Do I sometimes have a bad taste in my mouth when I vote, because a candidate is far from ideal? Sure. But I don’t look at it as voting for the least of evils, as you seem to. I view it as voting against the greater of evils. If the only effective way to keep the proverbial baby-rapist out of office is to vote for the thief, you bet your ass I’ll vote for the thief.
Comment 5/31/2007
The question, in essence, comes down to this: why is the strategy of the know-nothing party going to produce a change in politics faster/more completely than the strategy of the Christian Coalition - i.e take over form within. I have never heard a good answer to that from any Green.
As for voting for your conscience, well, feel free, but don’t whine when the rest of us point out that your conscience is faulty. If you vote for a candidate that you know has not even a theoretical chance to win and thus help elect the worst option, well, I don’t think much of your conscience.
Comment 5/31/2007
“And when they “bolted” from the Democratic party, which party accepted them with open arms? Oh yeah, that’s right: the GOP did. In other words, they were Democrats, but they became Republicans. As I said, the two parties essentially switched sides on racial issues.”
You have spewed this garbage before. You are not any closer to the truth than you’ve been before. The switch of conservative democrats to the Republican party was more complicated than your simpleminded approach.
Comment 5/31/2007
Fred:
Hey, you’re the one who’s always so quick to throw out the “Those racists were Democrats!” line. When prompted by that, it’s only fair to point out that yeah, they were Democrats, but now they are Republicans. What have you done for me lately, and all that.
(And no, I’m not saying that all, or even most, Republicans are racists; what I’m saying is that given the current party platforms, racists are exponentially more likely to prefer Republican policies over Democratic ones.)
Comment 5/31/2007
“racists are exponentially more likely to prefer Republican policies over Democratic ones”
Which policies of the Republicans are racist? It is the democrat party which promotes racism through its affirmative discrimination policies.
Comment 5/31/2007
Damn. I keep trying to leave this behind and keep getting sucked in again. After this and the two shorties that follow, I will not comment again on this thread unless I am specifically and by name asked to.
that’s not what I “insist”
Quoting you:
whether and when it makes sense to vote for a non-viable third-party candidate in a close election. I argue that in our current electoral system, at best it makes no difference at all, and at worst it’s exactly counter-productive
Or, as I’ve noted before, it’s only okay to vote for “non-viable” candidates if it doesn’t make a flipping bit of difference. But you don’t “insist” that’s it’s never okay because sometimes it genuinely doesn’t matter. That’s a distinction without a difference.
So okay, if you’re going to nitpick, we’ll say it this way: You insist that voting for “non-viable” third party candidates, depending on the circumstances, is either stupid or pointless.
Consider the options; for the sake of expression, “you” means you and “I” am the third-party voter:
1. The election is close. Voting 3rd party helps the greater evil and therefore I am stupid to do so.
2. The election is a runaway for the lesser evil. I can cast a pointless vote for a 3rd party, pointless because that lesser evil doesn’t need me. It can safely ignore me.
3. The election is a runaway for the greater evil. I can vote for a 3rd party, but again it makes no difference to the outcome and so is pointless. But, you say, “when a candidate expected 35% of the vote but only got 20%, that will get his or her attention.” Completely illogical: If the losing lesser evil wants to become “viable,” it has to politically move away from me and toward the greater evil until it attains that viability, at which time you will, yes, insist that I vote for the lesser evil, even though it is now more evil than when it was okay for me to not vote for it. (I do think the “get their attention” argument can have validity in a two-way race, ala the Democratic New Hampshire primary in 1968, but that’s clearly not what we’re talking about here.)
So no, you did not answer my challenge, in fact you didn’t even really address it, since I specifically asked if those who voted for the third-place finisher in the 2006 Connecticut Senatorial race “pissed away” their votes and more generally to what extent ever voting for a “non-viable candidate” is not doing so. Admittedly, you have strained to formulate a narrow and precise set of circumstances in which the description would not apply but since it still leaves you in the same place - such a vote is either stupid or pointless - that hardly constitutes an answer to the challenge and certainly not to the specific question.
As for Nader, I’m just tired of the fatuous and self-serving attempts from Democrats to blame George Bush on him instead of anything, anything at all, that Al Gore or the Democrats did or didn’t do. (And, of course, overlooking the fact that Gore actually won the election: He won the popular vote and would have won the electoral vote but for GOPper shenanigans in Florida, something else the Nader-haters ignore. But better and easier to slam Ralph Nader than to take on the GOP.) If you want to get off into a different argument on that, maybe we can do that sometime. But not now.
Instead, consider this scenario: A three-way race among GE (Greater Evil, more to the right), LE (Lesser Evil, more to the left), and PG (Pretty Good, to the left of LE).
Final result: GE 46%, LE 44%, PG 10%. You would scream that PG’s voters “elected GE,” at least in part. I would say that LE can win next time by becoming a little more like PG, that is, attracting some of PG’s voters.
Or this final result: LE 46%, GE 44%, PG 10%. You would likely say that next time, PG’s voters must vote for LE or god forbid, GE will win. I would say that PG has gotten enough support to threaten LE’s position and that LE needs to become a little more like PG in order to protect that position.
In both cases, what I am asserting is exactly what has been the role of 3rd parties in US history. Now, you say
my contention is that one of the two main parties would shift to match this even if the third-party didn’t garner significant attention.
But in heaven’s name and all that is cold-bloodedly logical, why would they? Why, why why, if there is no political price to be paid, no threat to their position, if they see no cost to ignoring those interests, why would they change? Now, can political parties be forced to respond by massive social disruption, ala the Depression, ala “the ’60s?” Yes - but the subject so far has been electoral politics. If we’re going to start bring those other kinds of factors, we have to reframe the question and start from the beginning.
if you really and truly have no preference at all between the two major parties (which I’d find difficult to fathom)
You found it quite easy to fathom earlier:
you’re just not paying attention
willing to invest five whole minutes of attention
It was just laziness, “indifference,” and stupidity. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that this all began because of a question about people who don’t vote grousing and my contention that there is a difference between those who just don’t vote and those who have despaired of changing anything relevant to their lives that way. I would say telling people to vote for what you believe in is one way to move those non-voters to involvement - but telling them they have to vote for the lesser evil and that if they don’t like the candidates in the general, vote in the primary (which does indeed tie you ever more closely in the two-party straight-jacket) is a sure way to fail to do so. Because whatever else can be said about it, continually voting for the lesser of two evils is the surest path to ensuring that’s the best you’ll ever get.
Finally, dragging in Karl Rove and waving the boogeyman around, claiming he “loves” me, strikes me as scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel desperation, no better than “why do you hate America?” or, reaching back a few years, “you’re a communist.”
That’s it. I’m done. I’m outta this.
Comment 5/31/2007
Janusz,
Note that NYS pretty much doesn’t count in this discussion because it’s possible to vote for both the (using the notation in the preceding comment) LE candidate and the PG party. NYS explicitly realizes that you want to do this, and thus allows PG parties to benefit from an LE vote. It’s why we actually have about 10 parties on the state-wide ballot. More states should do this.
Comment 5/31/2007
Stormy
I looked up Arrow’s theorem on Wikipedia (I know, that’s hardly dispositive.), and it’s got a perfectly good and obvious rebuttal. The crux of it, is that Arrow’s theorem, though correct, is not necessarily right. That is to say, his axioms are questionable.
According to my reading, it amounts to the realization that given a particular preference of many voters, some minority voters become “wrong” in the sense that their effective weight becomes negative. This seems a perfectly natural result. Imagine that the participants of this board were the only voters. Imagine how well Fred’s desires would be met.
Comment 5/31/2007
“Imagine how well Fred’s desires would be met.”
My desires are already met. I get you obsessed with me and you keep entertaining me with your inanities. Thanks.
Comment 5/31/2007
LarryE:
The section of my writing that you quote doesn’t lessen my point — it underscores it. Lookie there, see those little words “in a close election?” See ‘em?
“[tgirsch claims] it’s only okay to vote for “non-viable” candidates if it doesn’t make a flipping bit of difference.”
And you would divorce third-party voters from all responsibility for what that difference actually is when it does make a difference. Voting third-party can indeed “send a message,” as you like to claim, but I suggest you weigh the cost of sending that message. Actions have consequences, you know. In a non-close election, by all means, send the message. But don’t risk electing the absolute worst possible candidate just because the other viable candidate isn’t good enough for you. Why you refuse to acknowledge that it’s a bad idea to help the worst candidate get into office just because the other viable candidate isn’t good enough for you is genuinely and really and truly beyond me. That’s precisely what you’re arguing, by the way. Unless, of course, that you’re arguing that voting third-party doesn’t make a real difference even in close elections, in which case, why bother doing it?
You insist that voting for “non-viable” third party candidates, depending on the circumstances, is either stupid or pointless.
No. What I argue is that it’s stupid if you do it in a close election. In that circumstance, it isn’t so much that it’s pointless, and more that it’s counterproductive, in that it’s likely to move you farther from your goals rather than closer to them.
I’m just tired of the fatuous and self-serving attempts from Democrats to blame George Bush on him instead of anything, anything at all, that Al Gore or the Democrats did or didn’t do.
Of course, if you could show me where I (or anyone else here at Lean Left) ever argued that it was somehow all Nader’s fault, or that Gore was perfect, or that the Democrats didn’t do anything wrong, you might actually have a point there. But since I didn’t, you don’t.
What I do claim is that the Nader vote, if it made any tangible difference at all, actually helped GWB, which is not what most Nader voters would really want.
But in heaven’s name and all that is cold-bloodedly logical, why would they?
To try to gain an advantage over their competition. If politicians see that a particular issue is gaining a lot of popular support, they’re going to try to coopt it, even without the help of a “political price” paid because of some third-party candidate. In any case, you’re trying to have it both ways now. A minute ago, you were arguing that it makes more sense for the guy who lost to move toward the guy who won, which in most cases would be away from the proverbial third party guy you’re so enamored with. Now you’re saying that the “political price” paid by the guy who loses will move in a good direction because the third-party guy screwed him? Which is it?
You found it quite easy to fathom earlier
No, I didn’t. Those condescending quotations are actually really good evidence of my inability to fathom that anyone who pays even a little bit of attention would truly have no preference at all. If you care about abortion, education, health care, social security, the environment, gun rights, GLBT rights, church and state — any of these, in either direction, then there are huge differences between the parties. I honestly can’t fathom that anyone would (A) not know this, or (B) not care at all about any of those issues. If those quotes weren’t clear expressions of frustration, then I guess I need to work on my writing style.
[This mess] all began because of a question about people who don’t vote grousing and my contention that there is a difference between those who just don’t vote and those who have despaired of changing anything relevant to their lives that way.
Speaking of distinctions without differences…
I would say telling people to vote for what you believe in is one way to move those non-voters to involvement
Involvement, maybe. Productive involvement is another matter entirely.
Bottom line is that you’re right: In a perfect world, we’d have more than two viable choices, and we’d never have to “hold our nose and pull the lever.” But we don’t live in that perfect world. In our system, the way it exists today, you’re going to get a president/senator/whatever from one of the two major parties, whether you play along or not. Choosing option C is flat idiotic if there’s a real difference between A and B, and either A or B is assured victory.
You want to start a grass-roots movement to get instant runoff elections and other electoral changes that could actually make third-party politics relevant? I’ll be right there with you. But without those changes, it would take orders of magnitude more third-party voting on election day to make a real difference than what we have today (you’d probably need to double Perot’s support). In the meantime, as long as keeping Republicans out of office means voting for Democrats, I’ll vote for Democrats. (That is, as long as the Democrats continue to be the ones who more closely represent my political views.)
Because whatever else can be said about it, continually voting for the lesser of two evils is the surest path to ensuring that’s the best you’ll ever get.
What about Kevin’s point, about changing the party from within. It’s what the Christian Coalition did with the GOP, after all.
dragging in Karl Rove and waving the boogeyman around
Truth hurts, dude. I suspect if you asked Rove point blank, he’d confirm pretty much everything I said in that vein.
Comment 5/31/2007
First of the two shorties.
Stormy -
I mean that all voting systems are non-optimal in that they all suffer from at least one major flaw.
But that still equates “optimal” with “flawless,” which is exactly what I was contesting.
Arrow’s impossiblility theorem
The problem is, the argument itself has flaws. Consider that as I understand it, one of the conditions set down was that the presence of a third candidate should make no difference in the preference for the other two candidates. Again using 2000 as an example, if Nader had not been in the race, that should not have affected voters’ preference between Bush and Gore.
In addition to wondering why that condition is relevant to a voting mechanism, I have to note that the condition was violated by that same 2000 election. In the actual election, Gore won the popular vote. But according to exit polls, when people were asked what they would have done in a two-way race, Bush won the popular vote.
How could that happen? I don’t know that the polling got that deeply into it but one plausible idea is that it resulted from some portion of Nader’s vote going to Bush plus some of Gore’s vote consisting of people who turned out only because the prospect of a Nader spoiler role prompted them to do so.
However it could have happened, the point remains that Arrow’s premise is seriously flawed because it’s incapable of dealing with the fact that a 3rd party can change the nature of the dynamic between the other two candidates simply by its presence on the ballot - if only by affecting who will turn out to vote. Flawed premises do not produce reliable results.
Comment 5/31/2007
Second of the two shorties.
Kevin -
My conscience is not here for your judgment and does not require your approval.
Comment 5/31/2007
ARRRgghh! First, I want to say that I re-wrote this twice and still thought for a good 10 minutes about sending it. The only reason I’m posting anything is that, as per my last post, I was asked things. But this conversation is shifting from heated to nasty and it’s become unpleasant for me because I find myself wanting to reply barb for barb and return insult for insult - and I really, really dislike doing that with people I agree with most of the time. (If you were wingnuts, it’d by Katie bar the door.) I want out. So what I’m going to do is not even read this thread for a few days, when things have cooled and when it’s too far along in cyber-time to bother with further reply.
Okay, I got asked, so here’s the answer:
Lookie there, see those little words “in a close election?” See ‘em?
Yes. I see them. And the only rational way to read them is to say it means that it’s okay to vote for “non-viable” candidates if and only if the election isn’t close. That is, if such a vote can be pretty much guaranteed in advance to have no impact on the outcome. Envisioning, as you apparently do, some great gulf between that and “doesn’t make a flipping bit of difference” involves a flight of fancy far beyond normal capability.
It’s worth recalling here that I have not said one should never vote for the lesser evil. Not once. Not even by implication. What I have said was, and which I still say, is that it’s never “pissing away” your vote to vote for what you believe in. By no stretch of logic are that and “never vote lesser evil” the same thing.
Why you refuse to acknowledge that it’s a bad idea to help the worst candidate get into office … is … beyond me.
Maybe it’s because you’re apparently ready to settle for lesser evils for the rest of your life. I’m not. I can’t guarantee my way will lead to major improvements. I can guarantee yours won’t.
you’re trying to have it both ways now … Which is it?
Oh, please, you can’t be that dense. The case of “the guy who lost [moving] toward the guy who won” was specifically and obviously in response to your case of a candidate who went from a big loss (35%) to a really big loss (20%) because of a third party. That is, it wasn’t a close election and even getting all the support of the 3rd party would not bring victory. The other cases were close elections, where getting the support of the 3rd party or at least some portion of its supporters would make a clear difference in the outcome. Surely you can tell the difference. Or maybe not:
Speaking of distinctions without difference
If you can’t see a difference between indifference and despair and how you have to deal with them, well, that explains a lot here.
changing the party from within. It’s what the Christian Coalition did with the GOP
You keep saying you want to break away from the two-party system and then turn around and encourage greater acceptance of it. Wasn’t it you who said you have only contempt for people who talk about how they want to change something but never do anything about it? As for working from within, people tried that with the Democrats. They were called McGovernites. I expect you heard of them. They were forced out of the hierarchy and were told in so many words in the 1980s that the Democratic Party didn’t want them. As for the Christian Coalition, we persistently forget that it was less its work within the GOP than its repeated threats to bolt the party, to go independent - in effect to become a third party that would have threatened the GOP’s position - that generated the groveling.
Yes, intraparty work can be a good thing and I respect the people who have the stomach for it. But it is not the only way nor even, I maintain, the most effective way because those insurgents will have influence inside the party only to the extent that they can point to a constituency outside it.
Truth hurts, dude.
I’ve actually never found the truth to be painful. I have, however, found sophomoric bullshit fear-mongering irritating.
Some years ago I used to give a talk on “The Individual in Government” to a polisci class. It was an overview of a number of ways an individual could be involved in political activism, including both electoral and non-electoral means. One time, due to a scheduling confusion, I would up sharing the class with a very conservative GOP committeewoman. I decided to focus on the non-electoral means, trying to present us as two alternative styles of activism, hers from inside the party structure, mine from outside it. Despite my best efforts to make our styles complementary, she insisted on making them antagonistic, saying her method was “right” and mine was “wrong.” You remind me of her.
Comment 5/31/2007
LarryE,
(And I know you said you’d not get to this quickly, which is fine.)
Thanks for trying hard to remain civil. You mostly have. I think Tgirsch is too used to talking to actual idiots and has gotten into the habit of assuming that of his opponents. Boo on him for incivility, but I find it understandable.
Mostly, you two have been talking past each other, while mostly agreeing about what the problems are. Really, you’re arguing over what to do about being shit outta luck, which is a pretty hairy matter, and one not very succeptible to rationality. (And here I mean that rationality is really the most important feature of the response.)
Finally, what does “it’d by Katie bar the door” mean?
Comment 5/31/2007
LarryE:
But according to exit polls, when people were asked what they would have done in a two-way race, Bush won the popular vote.
Yeah, and according to exit polls, both Gore and Kerry won handily. You’ll forgive me if I don’t put a lot of faith in exit polls.
Maybe it’s because you’re apparently ready to settle for lesser evils for the rest of your life. I’m not.
Here, in a nutshell, is our disagreement. You refuse to settle for the least of evils, even if that means living with the greatest of evils. That’s the part that I simply don’t get.
The other cases were close elections, where getting the support of the 3rd party or at least some portion of its supporters would make a clear difference in the outcome.
Asked and answered. I’ve already stated back in comment #12 (this is #38) that in most cases, adopting the positions of the fringe third-party candidate would repel more voters than it would attract. You’re assuming (falsely, in my opinion) that “getting the support of the 3rd party or at least some portion” would be a zero-cost proposition (or, at the very least, a negligible cost proposition). I say that’s highly implausible. And in the cases where the 3rd party position isn’t a liability of sorts, then the third party isn’t needed to push the prominent candidate in that direction. In fact, it’s a no-brainer.
They were called McGovernites. I expect you heard of them. They were forced out of the hierarchy and were told in so many words in the 1980s that the Democratic Party didn’t want them.
I’ll repeat: How do you win a game by quitting it? Somehow, I fail to see how “Waaaah! They don’t want us! They won’t listen to us!” will ever be productive.
I have, however, found sophomoric bullshit fear-mongering irritating.
It may surprise you to learn that I do, too. Problem is, sophomoric bullshit fear-mongering has worked exceptionally well for the other side, and I’m tired of bringing a knife to a gun fight. You can have all the principle in the world, but if you don’t have political influence, you’ve got bupkis. Whether we like it or not, politics is a nasty game. It’s a mistake (by liberals) to pretend that the political landscape is any different than it actually is, just as surely as it’s a mistake (by conservatives) to pretend that the situation in Iraq is any different than what it actually is. Wishing things were different doesn’t make them different. In this case, at least, it’s not a false dichotomy. You really do have only two realistic choices. Pretending that this isn’t true won’t help anyone (except maybe the people you like the least), and ignoring the potential consequences of each of the two realistic choices winning seems indefensible to me. Life isn’t the Kobayahsi Maru; we don’t get to rig things so that we can have our cake and eat it, too.
Look, I’m not saying my political strategy is perfect; far from it. All I’m saying is that if yours has ever accomplished anything good in my adult life, I sure as hell haven’t seen it. Actually, your proposed strategy reminds me of a quote from Spaceballs: “Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb.”
Let’s punish our side for not being good enough by (indirectly) rewarding the other side.
I don’t know how many different ways I can say this, but it bears repeating: I’m not questioning your intentions, but there’s an old saying about good intentions and the road to hell… At some point, you have to go with what works, and I’m not even a little bit con[vinced] that 3rd party voting “works,” at least not as intended.
Dan M:
Boo on him for incivility
On this, I agree with you, I’m afraid. I’ve not been as civil as I should be. But when reason fails, what’s left? I’ll freely admit that my tone comes from the fact that I’m wholly incapable of comprehending LarryE’s point of view. When given a choice between two (and only two) realistic possibilities, that someone would choose option three, with absolutely zero regard for any possible differences between the two realistic options, completely and utterly confounds me. Given a scenario where the choice is between “bad” and “worse,” that someone would choose “neither,” even when there’s a very real chance that choosing “neither” has the same effect as choosing “worse,” is incomprehensible to me.
Of course, I suppose we could just agree to disagree, while the much-more-strategic GOP laughs all the way to the bank. It’s really not that I have a problem with idealism. It’s more that I have a problem with people who wholly and utterly and completely eschew pragmatism.
Comment 6/1/2007
*takes a deep breath*
I’m beginning to sound REALLY redundant here, but if there’s anything at the core of our disagreement here, it’s this:
Given a choice between two realistic options, one bad, and one terrible, where you’ve got a solid degree of certainty that you’ll be stuck with one or the other, I fail to see why anyone would abstain from choosing or choose an unrealistic option, especially when either of those [actions] has roughly the same effect as choosing the terrible option.
Aside from that, while both Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 were far from ideal, I wouldn’t characterize either one of them as “bad,” which makes the 3rd party choice even more mystifying to me. The difference between Bush and Gore was, in my mind, considerably larger than the difference between Gore and Nader. If you concede that fact, a preference for Nader’s policies is only relevant if Nader had a realistic shot at winning.
Put even more simply, LarryE favors idealism, while I favor pragmatism. As someone more eloquent than I am put it:
(Note that she writes this in defense of a Hillary candidacy, which I do not support, at least not yet; given a choice between Hillary and, say, Rudy, however, the former first lady starts to look pretty appealing…)
Another example:
Trying, as LarryE did earlier, to end on a note of agreement, he and I are largely in agreement on policy goals, and (apparently, anyway) strongly disagree about how to achieve those goals.
Comment 6/1/2007
Fred:
Which policies of the Republicans are racist?
I’m probably taking this more seriously than it deserves to be taken, but here goes:
It’s not so much that the policies of Republicans are inherently racist, and more that the probable effects of those policies are appealing to racists. Republican education “reform,” for example, has a disproportionately negative effect on ethnic minorities as opposed to other groups. Social Security reform is another example, and even the very affirmative action policies that you decry work in this context. The policies are more directly harmful to the poor than to this particular race or that, but we cannot ignore the fact that, like it or not, a disproportionate number of the nation’s poor belong to ethnic minorities.
And this ties in with the larger discussion here. Opposition to things like affirmative action is very much like third-party voting in this regard: the people who do it seem to have little (if any) regard for the practical impact of the actions/policies they’re supporting. Principle is all well and good in the ivory tower, but it’s all for naught if it doesn’t have a positive impact when the rubber hits the road.
If every American, irrespective of race, religion, or social standing, truly did have equality of opportunity from childhood through adulthood, or if every new generation truly started from scratch, without inheriting baggage (good or bad) from the one that came before, I’d be all in favor of scrapping affirmative action. But I don’t know of anyone — not anyone — who would seriously argue this is the case.
Comment 6/1/2007
“My conscience is not here for your judgment and does not require your approval.”
Then stop making moral arguments. The actions of Nader voters resulted in the election of perhaps the worst President this country has ever had. It has resulted in civil rights being denied, the environment being attacked, potentially life saving research being denied funds, a reactionary Supreme Court that invents the notion that a law meant to protect you from pay discrimination is invalid if your boss can hide that discrimination from you for 6 months, and a horrible war. Real people have been damaged by these actions, and we knew that real people would be damaged by them even if we didn’t know just how awful it would be.If you are going to insist that you should be free to vote for your conscience and insist that the lesser of two evils is an untenable moral compromise, then you should not be surprised or act offended or pretend that your moral choices are somehow above discussion or reproach.
To be blunt: f*ck idealism. Idealism that is not paired with realism is just mental masturbation, only more useless and dangerous than the real thing. Elections aren’t games and the damage they can do to real people can be enormous. When you refuse to take action to help them or minimize the damage they are gong to suffer, then you are making a morally bad choice.
Third party voters sound like the old Marxist notion of religion. Oh, vote for the 3rd party and while things will get worse in the short run, eventually we will all reach nirvana! Oh, put up with the horrors of the modern earth and God will reward you, eventually, even if it is only when you die. In both cases it is pie in the sky, bye and bye; but never pie here, never pie now. And that is not acceptable.
Comment 6/1/2007
“I can guarantee yours won’t.’
And just to get off our collective high horses — this is not historically true. Civil rights legislation came from not third parties but from voters forcing the Democrats to take the correct position. The environmental movement co-opted the Democratic party, not through the use of a third party but through organization within the Democratic party. The anti-war people of the 60s didn’t end the Vietnam war with a third party, they ended it with the Democratic party — the party that started the war, just to give you an idea of how far parties can be made to move. The Christian coalition took over the GOP not through a third party but through organization within the GOP. The movement that coalesced around Reagan didn’t move the GOP to the far right by the use of a third party, they worked from within the GOP. The only possible except that I can think of is Wallace — but even then, the former Dixiecrats didn’t become a real force in the GOP until they worked within the GOP to establish the Southern Strategy.
In modern times, real change has come form working within the two party system, not from without it.
Comment 6/1/2007
Kevin, I don’t agree that “real change has come from working within the two party system. not from without it.” I believe that civil rights legislation came about due to societal changes. In other words, the political system responded to external pressures not the other way around. The environmental movement in fact has its own political party, and in any event, was exerting force before the Democratic party became environmentally sensitive. The anti-war people functioned most effectively outside of the political mainstream. (Was it McGovern that ended the war with his one state electoral college win, or was it the massive public protests?) You mention the Christian coalition - which is an example of a group of people who first united and formed a powerful political force and then used that force to sway a political party.
My point is, in every case you cited, I believe you have cause and effect reversed. A political party did not effect these changes on society - society effected them on the Party. Which, by implication, demonstrates that political policy (at least in your examples) lags societal will and only changes as society demonstrates the strength of that will. (We need to maintain the differentiation between the collective conscience of party members and the policy put forth by its elected representatives.)
One method of demonstrating strength of will is to coalesce behind a third party candidate. Not with the specific intention of getting that candidate elected, but rather to establish a voting block associated with a specific cause with the hope that the cause will then be co-opted by a major party.
Looking at it another way, your emphasis is on minimizing damage in the short term, whereas LarryE’s emphasis (I hope he would agree) is on maximizing long term potential. It is fine to debate the relative merits of each approach, but assigning moral superiority to either position is rather presumptuous - in my opinion.
Comment 6/1/2007
Ted:
My point is, in every case you cited, I believe you have cause and effect reversed. A political party did not effect these changes on society - society effected them on the Party.
Methinks you confuse what happened with how it happened. Yes, social changes drive political parties and not the other way around, but I don’t think Kevin was arguing otherwise (I certainly wasn’t). All of these changes came about because one of the two parties shifted its policies, and those shifts (except maybe Wallace) had nothing whatsoever to do with people voting third-party on election day. To put it more simply, I think you’re confusing simple political activism with “third party” politics. It was political activism, exerted almost exclusively within the two-party system that drove the major parties to change; third-party politics had very little (if anything) to do with it.
It is fine to debate the relative merits of each approach, but assigning moral superiority to either position is rather presumptuous - in my opinion.
Again, I disagree. What happens when the rubber hits the road makes a difference. What good “long-term potential” could possibly be worth 8 years of a Bush presidency, and what evidence is there that what happened in 2000 and 2004 actually enabled any such potential? It’s also a mistake, in my opinion, to think that minimizing short-term damage and maximizing long-term potential are necessarily mutually exclusive. People can and should do both. And the way to do that, in my opinion, is to elect the best of the realistic/viable candidates and then hold that candidate accountable.
Comment 6/1/2007
Tgirsch, no, I am not confusing anything. My point is, as I stated, that sometimes society leads and political parties follow. Not from political activism (in the sense of people working within a party to change it), but rather from recognition that the public has moved on and the party needs to change to catch up.
You and Kevin seem to focus on presidential elections. I do not. There are elections that occur that do not involve George Bush. Neither I, nor LarryE (to the best of my recollection) indicated that a third party candidate in those two specific elections was worthy of a vote. If you can claim intimate knowledge of all elections in this country during the “modern” period – national, state, and local, then perhaps you are justified in taking the position that you know better than they how people should vote, in every instance. Short of that, you might consider remaining open to the possibility that circumstances could exist where voting for a third party candidate might not be immoral.
Since you claim to be the pragmatist in this debate, how do you square your “hold the elected candidate accountable” approach to long term change with the astronomically high re-election rates for incumbents? I would claim these high re-election rates indicate that holding elected officials accountable is, for the most part, a pipe dream. Why? Maybe becasue they know that you and Kevin will vote for them not matter what.
Comment 6/2/2007
“My point is, in every case you cited, I believe you have cause and effect reversed. A political party did not effect these changes on society - society effected them on the Party. Which, by implication, demonstrates that political policy (at least in your examples) lags societal will and only changes as society demonstrates the strength of that will. (We need to maintain the differentiation between the collective conscience of party members and the policy put forth by its elected representatives.)”
That’s not what is at issue, though. Of course society changes before politics does: politics is a fun house mirror of society. Our political system is designed to be reactionary, though, so the question becomes how do you best take the work you have done in making society agree with you and turn it into policy changes. And on that score, working within the system wins hands down.
“Since you claim to be the pragmatist in this debate, how do you square your “hold the elected candidate accountable” approach to long term change with the astronomically high re-election rates for incumbents? I would claim these high re-election rates indicate that holding elected officials accountable is, for the most part, a pipe dream. Why? Maybe becasue they know that you and Kevin will vote for them not matter what.”
Nah — incumbents win because of the structural advantages of incumbency. Outside of changing that, primaries can be effective. Specter was primaried and suddenly became much ore willing to give Bush what he wanted. Jane Harmon was and she suddenly became a critic of the Bush foreign policy. Primaries put Tester into a position where could become a US Senator as a war critic and a critic of the Washington consensus. After Lamont won his primary, the tone of 2006 election took on a much more anti-Iraq feel. Sometimes you don’t have to fire a person to get them to do a better job.
None of this is perfect, of course, but I guarantee that politicians pay even less attention to people who vote agaisnt them than vote for them.
“Short of that, you might consider remaining open to the possibility that circumstances could exist where voting for a third party candidate might not be immoral.”
In theory, sure, its posible that voting for a third party candidate doesn’t have the result of putting the worst person in power. IN practice, at a national level, though, I can only think of two situations where that is true: Bernie Sanders and the DFL.
Comment 6/2/2007
Ted:
Not from political activism (in the sense of people working within a party to change it), but rather from recognition that the public has moved on and the party needs to change to catch up.
True enough, but this has absolutely nothing — I mean zip, zilch, squat, nada — to do with third-party politics; still less to do with voting for third parties. And for the majority of this discussion, that’s what we’ve been talking about. I stand by my agreement with Kevin’s examples. Societal changes changed the “big two” parties, but they did so from within those parties, not by exerting some kind of external pressure through a third-party. This demonstrates not only that change from within is possible, but that it’s actually much easier to achieve than through external, third-party pressures.
At some point, you have to be accountable for the results of your actions. And in the recent cases I can remember, voting third party has resulted in worse consequences than voting for “the least of evils,” as LarryE likes to put it. You can pretend that’s somehow “taking the high road,” but when the results are as disastrous as they’ve generally been, I simply can’t see it. Voting for Nader served only to harm Nader’s agenda, at least for the last six years.
And you’re right, it’s not just about presidential politics, although I never meant to suggest that it was. I’ve been talking about Nader because he’s one of the best high-profile recent examples. But you’ll see that I also cited someone discussing the Minnesota governor’s race in 2006, where the exact same road to hell was paved with the exact same good intentions, and with nearly the same disastrous results.
I also know what I’m talking about more closely than you might think. An acquaintance of mine ran for Congress in Oregon as a Libertarian, and he did it with no intention of winning; he did it with the intention of hurting the Republican candidate by siphoning away votes, and it worked. The people who voted for him hated the Democrat more than they hated the Republican, but by voting for the Libertarian, they essentially helped elect the Democrat — they guy they liked by far the least of the three. (How do you fix this? IRV — If my first choice can’t win, give me a second choice. That way, you can cast your primary vote for the third-party guy, and if the election is close and your first choice isn’t in it, you can instead shift your vote to the “least of evils” and prevent the giant asshat from winning. Then everybody — maybe even LarryE — can be happy.)
Comment 6/2/2007
Apparently, the conversation was able to carry on without me.
Okay, I’m going to try to sum up things here, as I see them.
This all started over a question of people bitching about things without having voted. I made a distinction between people who just don’t vote and those who have despaired of voting being able to accomplish anything meaningful to them. Tgirsch, it appears to me, can’t envision that anyone could be in such a state for any reason short of, at best, laziness if not stupidity. But having met just such people (which is why I was once invited to give a talk “explaining why people should ever bother voting for someone”), I reject that contention based on experience.
Then there is 3rd party or “non-viable candidate” voting, which is, Tgirsch says, “pissing away your vote” at best and destructive at worst. Rather, you must vote for the lesser evil to guard against the greater one.
I said before, and I say again, it is never “pissing away your vote” to vote for what you believe in. That, I say, is to denigrate the very idea of voting. I still wonder if by this standard those who voted for the GOP candidate in the 2006 Connecticut senatorial race, who despite being of a major party was still “non-viable” and only got around 10% of the vote in a 3-way race, “pissed away” their vote. And BTW, no, saying they didn’t because their “lesser evil” won won’t fly because they could not have known that in advance: The race was not a runaway.
On another point, I said before that we have been talking about electoral politics and that if we want to start bringing social factors from outside that arena, we have to restate the question and start from the beginning. Which is why the references to the civil rights, environmental, antiwar, etc., movements are, in this context, beside the point: They existed and grew outside the electoral process and only entered it when they were already forces to be reckoned with, in fact came into play because they were forces to be reckoned with. Equating that with using 3rd parties to become such a force is invalid, as is equating “hasn’t recently” with “cannot.” I already acknowledged that social disruption can move the major parties to respond. I also noted, again, that such is not what we’ve been talking about.
Here it’s appropriate for me to repeat something else I have already said. I never said, not even by implication, that one should never vote for the lesser evil. (For example, in 2004, had I lived in a tossup state, which I did not, I would have voted for Kerry despite real misgivings about him.) I said it was wrong to demand that you must do so - which is what has been demanded here. (Yes, I know - must do so except when doing otherwise can’t affect the outcome. As I said, a distinction without a difference.)
Related to that, I said Tgirsch is prepared to settle for the lesser of two evils “for the rest of [his] life,” which is exactly what would result from his demand. Not just one election in isolation, which is how he has been addressing the issue, the rest of his life. If that lesser evil can take your support for granted, it has no incentive to improve - and so, as I’ve already said, the lesser of two evils is the best you will get. Such “pragmatism” ditches the hope for things to get better and replaces it with the mere hope that it will get no worse. I’m not willing to do that.
A couple of quick points to end:
- Re the McGovernites, they did not “quit the game” and they did not, contrary to the snide description, go “Waaaah!” They were, as I specifically noted, forced out of any positions of influence and, again, told in so many words that the party neither wanted nor needed them. Curiously, in some minds, this, apparently, represents a failure of the McGovernites and not of the lesser-of-two-evils Democrats who were busily chasing the GOPpers to the right - and who assumed those constituencies would still vote Democratic because hey, where else are they going to go? To some “non-viable” alternative where they can “piss away their vote?”
- The argument that adopting any 3rd party positions in order to draw support will lose more support than it gains is nothing more than sheer presumption. In fact, if it was true, then neither party could dare to adopt any position that lay outside the existing debate and both would collapse toward the middle (because that’s the only place any votes could be gained) until the kind of dramatic difference supposedly routinely found between the two could not possibly exist.
What’s more, no one said you had to adopt all the positions of the 3rd party. The point is to address those voters, address at least some of their concerns.
You want an example? Here’s one: national health care. Repeated polls have consistently shown a clear majority of Americans support some form of it. But it’s not on the national agenda. Suppose in one of those 46-44-10 splits I suggested, the 3rd party had made national health care a major part of its campaign. Can it really be argued it would be damaging rather than helpful to one of the majors if it started talking about the subject?
Here’s another: Polls also say a majority of Americans are convinced that “big corporations” have too much power, too much influence over the government and the economy. But that is really off the table, not even broached indirectly, in the “serious,” the “viable,” national political debate. On the other hand, it was one of the centerpieces of Nader’s 2000 campaign. During that campaign, I told Gore supporters who whined about Nader that they had to stop acting like those votes were Gore’s by some kind of divine right, get off their flaming butts, and give Nader supporters a reason to vote for Gore, a reason that had to extend beyond “he’s not Bush.” Say something about the issues they are concerned with. Are we really to think that if Gore had brought a little economic populism, a little talk of economic democracy, to the campaign it would have hurt more than helped? (Recall that in 1988, when Dukakis decided the election was lost, abandoned his careful centrist rhetoric, and started delivering a more populist message in line with his actual thinking, he started dramatically gaining on Bush to the point where it was estimated at the time that had it continued and the election been another week away, it would have become a tossup.)
(Sidebar: Something else I disagree with is the contention that Gore was closer to Nader than to Bush. Not on the issues that drove Nader voters, he wasn’t.)
- Finally, I have questioned others’ logic and strategic effectiveness. But contrary to the assertion, I have not made any judgments about anyone else’s morals or conscience. However, mine have been repeatedly questioned, my position labeled “morally inferior” to the other. I say again: I do not require your approval. Nor, frankly, am I interested in it.
Comment 6/3/2007
Dan M. -
That was supposed to be “it’d be Katie bar the door,” not “by.” Perhaps that added to the confusion.
“Katie bar the door” is an old expression, mostly Southern, that means “get ready - all hell is about to break loose.”
Comment 6/3/2007
LarryE:
Before letting this dead horse stay dead, a few minor points.
I said it was wrong to demand that you must do so
I don’t think I ever argued that you “must” do so; just that not doing so is stupid and counterproductive. To use the common hypothetical, if voting for Nader because Gore isn’t good enough winds up getting you Bush, then voting for Nader is stupid and counterproductive, from the perspective of the Nader voter’s stated interests.
I said Tgirsch is prepared to settle for the lesser of two evils “for the rest of [his] life,” which is exactly what would result from his demand.
So what? When the only realistic alternative is consistently getting the worst of two evils, why is this a bad thing? And again, I personally didn’t view either Gore or Kerry as “the lesser of two evils.” Neither would have been my first choice of candidate, but neither one was so offensive to me that it made me think less of myself for voting for them.
Let me try to re-phrase my frustration with your position. Think if it in terms of World War II. There were essentially two sides: the Axis, and the Allies. The Allies were far from perfect; but as compared to the fascist threat posed by the Axis, it was a much better alternative. Based on this, it seems to me to make sense to take sides and prevent that greater evil from winning. Whereas you seem to be arguing that if you have reservations about the Allies, you should stay out of the fight and wait for the dust to settle, even if staying out of it means the Axis win. That just doesn’t make sense to me.
Repeated polls have consistently shown a clear majority of Americans support some form of [national health care]. But it’s not on the national agenda.
A couple of things. #1, It’s getting there. And #2, the clear majority of Americans that support it do so only in the abstract. When you start getting down to the specifics of how such a system will work, and how it will be paid for, it’s suddenly quite difficult to get anything close to a majority to support it. That seems to be changing, and I hope it does. But we’re not there yet.
Suppose in one of those 46-44-10 splits I suggested, the 3rd party had made national health care a major part of its campaign. Can it really be argued it would be damaging rather than helpful to one of the majors if it started talking about the subject?
It depends. If the 44 candidate supports a modest national health care plan, and the 10 candidate supports an extensive national health care plan, but the 46 candidate supports no national health care plan, then the vote of the 54% who support some sort of national health care has effectively been split, and national health care loses. How, exactly, is this helpful?
But the more realistic option is that neither the 46% nor the 44% candidate wants to do much with national health care, meaning that the issue is a loser at the ballot box. Voting for the 10% guy who supports it still doesn’t get you health care, but does get you everything that’s bad about Mr. 46%. So, again, just what did voting for Mr. 10% accomplish?
Polls also say a majority of Americans are convinced that “big corporations” have too much power, too much influence over the government and the economy. But that is really off the table, not even broached indirectly, in the “serious,” the “viable,” national political debate. On the other hand, it was one of the centerpieces of Nader’s 2000 campaign.
Yeah, so how’d that work out for you? Throwing all that support behind Nader sure did manage to emasculate corporate power in the last six years. So thanks for that. You’re right: Gore was far from perfect on that count. So instead, we got a president who’s manages to be far, far worse on that issue. That’ll teach those stupid Democrats!
But contrary to the assertion, I have not made any judgments about anyone else’s morals or conscience. However, mine have been repeatedly questioned, my position labeled “morally inferior” to the other.
Really? “Repeatedly questioned?” Where, and by whom? Kevin conscience in comment #25, but that comment isn’t addressed to anyone specifically that I can tell — it’s a general commentary on the hazards of “voting your conscience” with no practical concern for the impacts of such a vote. He addresses the subject once more, in comment #41; the only other mention of it is in an exchange with Ted. If that constitutes your morals and conscience being “repeatedly questioned,” then you’re a lot better at hyperbole than I am.
As for your position being labeled “morally inferior” to the alternative, the closest I see to that is also in comment #41; but frankly, now that you mention it, I think it is morally inferior, insofar as it strives toward a pie-in-the-sky ideal while ignoring the negative impacts in the here-and-now.
Now, I’ll freely admit to personally having questioned your judgment, but that’s another matter entirely, and I don’t see what that should be off limits in public debate.
Comment 6/3/2007
T -
I really only came back here to note that I have put up some posts at my own site “to more fully express my notions about political action in general and electoral politics in particular.” The first one is here; the others follow.
As for your comment, if your questions are actually intended to be questions, ones to which you want an answer, say so and I’ll address them.
Frankly, though, I don’t think they are; I think they’re just rhetorical devices, just like taking my responses to your comments, cutting them in half, ignoring the context, throwing the pieces up as if they were complete statements on some other unspecified point, and making snide remarks about your own creations.
And it was you who called my position morally inferior: At #44, you disagreed with Ted’s statement that “assigning moral superiority to either position is rather presumptuous” and immediately repeated your same criticism of me. That is, you said one can assign moral superiority to one position and yours is better than mine. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re so eager to shoot darts that you failed to recognize the meaning of your own words, but I am. Or I was, anyway.
Bluntly, at this point you’re just being an ass, apparently less interested in discussing or even arguing than in scoring points any way you can find. And that’s a damn shame.
Comment 6/3/2007
LarryE
I make no apologies for discussing the morality of voting. These elections are important and they help and hurt real people. Discussing them without a discussion of the morality of the choices is dishonest in the extreme.
Comment 6/3/2007
at this point you’re just being an ass
Meh. Pot, meet kettle. You’re the one who’s developed a persecution complex just because we don’t see things your way, and aren’t afraid to say so.
And you’re right, I missed comment #44. One more whole additional piece of persecution. I guess twice does, technically, count as “repeatedly.” Mea culpa, for whatever it’s worth.
But as long as we’re discussing the morality of the position now, yes, I think that the argument that one should vote for what you believe in, even when the consequences of doing so are likely to result in the opposite of what you believe in, is indeed morally flawed. Consequences matter. I’m sorry you don’t agree.
Comment 6/3/2007
So now I’m stupid, unconcerned with consequences, morally inferior with a questionable conscience, and have a persecution complex. Thanks for confirming the accuracy of my last judgment, including the direct acknowledgment that you didn’t even understand your own words and the indirect one that your “questions” were actually just rhetorical devices to which you didn’t actually want answers: You truly are an ass.
Clearly, you’re satisfied if things continue to get worse, just more slowly, effusively congratulating yourself for your “pragmatism” as they do, like someone who welcomes getting skin cancer because it’s “not as bad” as lung cancer. But there are still those who aim for health rather than merely slower death. Too bad that, petrified by fear rather than prompted by hope, you are not among them.
Comment 6/3/2007
You truly are an ass.
Again, pot meet kettle. It’s not my fault you’re incapable of separating criticism of your position with criticism of your person. My tone may not exactly have been sugar and spice, but I don’t think I ever called you a name in this thread. As to the other criticisms, I’m sorry, but I stand by them.
And frankly, every complaint you’ve had about my argumentative style, you’ve been guilty of the same things. I’m a puppet of the two-party system who ensures that the “least of evils” is the best we’ll ever get, remember? But oh, wait, being condescendingly critical of someone else’s position is only a bad thing when I do it. Excuse me, it’s so easy to forget that.
Comment 6/3/2007
Tgirsch, if it is true that voting for a third party candidate (under above-specified conditions) is immoral, then I assume that running as a third party candidate under those conditions must also be immoral, yes? After all, to encourage immoral behavior must itself be immoral. So, by extension, in your eyes it is only moral to run for office as a member of the two party system (that you dislike) or as a third party candiate when 1)the third party candidate knows he has a high probability of winning, 2) when the results of the election is a foregone conclusion, or 3) when he knows that if elected, either of the two major candidates would act in a similar fashion (no greater evil). Is that a reasonable summary of your position?
Also, moving to the primaries, I assume it is immoral to run in a primary if you know that if you win the primary, you have less chance of winning the general than does your primary election opponent. Which leads to the interesting irony that in Connecticut in 06, the Democratic anti-war candidate was immoral for running because, had Lieberman not ultimately run as a third party candidate, the anti-war candidate would have enabled a Republican win, thus weakening the overall anti-war position in the Senate (simply by increasing the number of Republicans). So to run as an anti-war candidate was immoral.
And of course this logic holds for both parties, because as we all know, your lesser evil is a Republican’s greater evil.
Comment 6/4/2007
Tgirsch, I thought about this some more. Frankly, I am amazed at the position you have taken on this subject. All kinds of extensions to your “go with the lesser evil” postulate have been running through my head.
If voting for a non-viable candidate is immoral because it facilitates the election of a greater evil candidate, I wonder if a similar standard applies to the lesser evil candidate’s campaign. Take gay marriage for example. Openly endorsing gay marriage will most likely cost a candidate more votes than it adds, so the lesser evil test tells me it is immoral for the lesser evil candidate to endorse gay marriage. The same would seem to hold true for any progressive issue, before support for said issue reaches a critical mass.
An overly pragmatic approach to campaigning has resulted in the typical campaign of today, where most candidates are unwilling to definitively establish a position on all but a few key issues. This is accepted practice, and has become so, in my opinion, because the voter enables it. Wouldn’t it be great if a politician was shunned by his electorate because he refused to reveal his position on issues, rather than because a helmet does not fit, or he blows the punchline of a joke, or he cries because him spouse is attacked? I understand I am far away from your initial position, and I understand you will disagree, but I see a very clear link between insisting voters abandon their convictions and take a pragmatic approach in the voting booth and politicians doing the same in their campaigns.
Other concepts, like a pragmatic ACLU, the political power associated with a landslide victory (the so-called voter mandate), the inability of the electorate to hold a second term President accountable, voter choice in the upcoming Russian Presidential election (ie vote for candidate A or candidate A1 or don’t vote in protest)… I’ll forgo them at this time, but they linger in my mind.
Comment 6/4/2007
Ted:
if it is true that voting for a third party candidate (under above-specified conditions) is immoral, then I assume that running as a third party candidate under those conditions must also be immoral, yes?
Actually, I’d say even more so. To use the Nader example, I blame him for what happened in 2000 a lot more than I blame the people who voted for him. Look, I understand the desire to drive certain issues that are being ignored by both parties, but at the end of the day, results matter. Splintering the vote does nothing to advance your agenda, and serves only to empower your worst opponents.
If third parties consistently hurt both of the two major parties equally, that would minimize my objection. But it never seems to work that way, and as such is highly counterproductive.
So, by extension, in your eyes it is only moral to run for office as a member of the two party system (that you dislike) or as a third party candiate when 1)the third party candidate knows he has a high probability of winning, 2) when the results of the election is a foregone conclusion, or 3) when he knows that if elected, either of the two major candidates would act in a similar fashion (no greater evil). Is that a reasonable summary of your position?
I’d actually add an option 4 — when the non-viable third-party candidate drops out before the general, and throws his or her weight behind one of the viable candidates. This isn’t unlike what happens during the primaries — candidates with no realistic shot at winning still make a run, and their presence serves the useful purpose of bringing up issues that the main candidates might not have otherwise talked about, and thus shift the debate. But in the end, these non-viable candidates step aside, and generally throw their support behind whoever does win the nomination.
Finally, I think your Connecticut ‘06 scenario is fundamentally flawed. Had Lieberman not run, Lamont would have won handily — without Lieberman’s entry, you would have had a liberal Democrat in Connecticut rather than a neo-conservative Democrat (billed as independent). Further, in the very narrow scope of the war, a Republican in the seat was unlikely to be any worse than Lieberman on that particular issue.
(What’s interesting about CT is that in 2006, even the national GOP abandoned their own candidate, because they knew he wasn’t viable. They instead strategically threw their support behind Lieberman, knowing that he could win, and that he would be preferable [to them] than the other viable alternative. From the opposite side, in 2000 the GOP funded pro-Nader ads in battleground states, in hopes of helping to splinter the liberal vote. That sort of pragmatism has consistently worked quite well for the GOP. It’s too bad liberals and Democrats are unwilling or unable to use the same kinds of strategies to their own advantage.)
as we all know, your lesser evil is a Republican’s greater evil.
Yes, although again, I don’t view it quite the same way you do. I view it not as voting for the least of evils, but as strategically voting against the greatest of evils.
And as redundant as it sounds, I feel the need to continue repeating myself on this. You and LarryE both keep pointing out the fact that I play within the two-party system as though this were evidence that I secretly like the two-party system, or that my actions serve only to perpetuate it. And I disagree with that assessment. Pretending the two-party system doesn’t exist isn’t going to make it go away, and refusing to play at all seems to only tighten the grip of the two-party system more than playing along does. (It just makes those who abstain irrelevant to the process.)
All kinds of extensions to your “go with the lesser evil” postulate have been running through my head.
The slippery slope? Really, that’s the best you can do? I expect that sort of all-or-nothing logic from the quasi-libertarians like SayUncle and Number9, but not from you.
Wouldn’t it be great if a politician was shunned by his electorate because he refused to reveal his position on issues, rather than because a helmet does not fit, or he blows the punchline of a joke, or he cries because him spouse is attacked?
Yes, it would be. And it would be great if everyone got a pony, too. Look, politics is a nasty game, and no amount of wishful thinking is going to clean it up. I don’t disagree with much of what you say on this; where I disagree is in what to do about it. If voting third party actually advanced the goals of the third parties in question, I’d be all in favor of it. But in practice, it has precisely the opposite effect, and those effects matter. I’m not going to ignore probably effect just on the basis of a dreamy, pie-in-the-sky “wouldn’t it be nice if” scenario.
Finally, I think that your “pragmatic ACLU” scenario is flawed in two ways: first of all, action committees and lobbying organizations aren’t at all like electoral politics, where you only get one win-or-lose chance every two, four, or even six years. They can continue to fight and throw their weight around even after they lose a particular battle, whereas after losing an election, a candidate generally doesn’t have much weight to throw. Secondly, progressive organizations have been a lot more pragmatic than you might think, generally to the benefit of the progressive movement. Imagine if the ACLU opposed all “civil union” laws, on the basis that they’re not as good as their ultimate goal, full recognition of same-sex marriage. Imagine if the abolitionist movement of the mid 19th century had refused to compromise, willing to accept nothing less than full emancipation, full suffrage, and full integration of all negro slaves into the American population. From the other side, imagine if “pro-life” advocates rejected any abortion ban that stops short of a complete and total ban on all abortions. They’d get nowhere. Insisting on all-or-nothing, which is what you and LarryE seem to be arguing for (it’s the effect even if not the intent), mostly gets you nothing. Progress is generally made in small steps, not in quantum leaps.
Those issues that LarryE holds so dear, and which drive him away from the two main parties? There’s nothing that prevents him from continuing to fight for what he believes in on those issues. And as much as he may want to downplay the differences between Democrats and Republicans, those fights are a lot easier with Democrats in power than they are with Republicans in power. Strategic voting might not taste right to you, but as long as the other side is doing it so reliably and effectively, we’ve got little choice but to match them.
Comment 6/4/2007
[…] As regular readers are well aware, my marathon debate with LarryE (which started here and continued here) went from bad to ugly, and violated all the rules about disagreeing without being disagreeable (I accused him of having a “persecution complex”; he at least twice described me as being “truly an ass.” Really? He’s just now figuring that out? Anyone who has read my writing with any regularity over the three or four years I’ve been blogging ought to know that about me, but I digress…), doesn’t mean that we can’t share a little linky love. Our disagreement was largely about prudent and effective electioneering, and he discusses his views on them in Kevin T. Keith-like detail in a series of four posts: […]
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