election-year dilemma
Sep. 14th, 2004 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioWell, except, I don't support Kerry. I don't support Bush either, and he'd be the worse choice of those two. I support Michael Badnarik, who comes closest among those running to my beliefs about government.
There are those who say that voting for a minor-party candidate is throwing my vote away. Actually, though, a vote for a minor-party candidate does more than a vote for a candidate you don't believe in. Every vote for a minor-party candidate helps that minor party get closer to the spotlight, which could (eventually) help break the stranglehold the Republicans and Democrats have on the American public's attention. By voting for the person I believe in, I (1) express what I really believe, which is supposed to be the point, (2) help keep the Libertarians on the ballot and voter-registration cards in PA, and, if enough others do the same thing, (3) get at least a few other people saying "so just what are Libertarians, anyway?". Not voting for a minor-party candidate because he can't win creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The alternative is to abandon those principles because "this year really matters" and vote for the least-bad viable candidate, which is Kerry. I disagree with Kerry (and his party) on many things, which is why I can't give him my first-tier support, but the thought of Bush appointing any more judges to further savage our civil liberties is frightening. Am I obligated to compromise my principles to try to prevent that outcome? But if I do, am I not just responding to scare tactics? So far as I know no one has recently won Pennyslvania by even a four-digit number of votes, let alone the few hundred that led to the Florida fiasco or the single vote that I represent. By voting for Kerry, am I not saying that minor parties are interesting as parlor games but not when it really matters? Where are those principles now? As the old joke goes, we've already established what I'd be; now we're just haggling over price. [1]
I've considered looking for a voting partner in a non-swing state. That doesn't help minor parties in PA, but it at least lets me help my candidate at the national level. I didn't support Nader, so I'm unfamiliar with how the vote-sharing scheme worked last time. How do you establish trust? Mind, I'm not convinced that this would be appropriate, but it's an option I'm open to.
With Nader in the race, I am not assuming that any other minor-party candidate will get any attention. But again, there's that self-fulfilling prophecy thing; if no one votes for them because of that, they certainly won't get any attention.
So I welcome further thoughts on the matter. What factors am I failing to consider? I ask that you take as given that I don't support Kerry; let's not do that debate here. This is about the proper application of principles in a messy world.
[1] A man in a bar asks a beautiful woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. She says ok, in that case she would. He then offers her $20 and she says "what do you think I am?!" He responds: "we've already established that; now we're just haggling over price".
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-15 08:21 am (UTC)I agree with you here. It's one of the reasons I gripe about the media stuff -- I think the predominant style of presentation is not conducive to serious thinking. But you're right about it not being just a contemporary phenomenon. My parents (and grandparents) were and are, with rare exceptions, all yellow-dog Democrats. Until just a few years ago, I was too. Then certain things happened and I began to think about things I'd never considered before. To my (initial) horror, I realized that these thoughts were leading me to stop voting Democratic. The first time I voted for a Republican, I felt so weird. But I got over it. ;)
I also would like to see the Libertarian Party gain prominence, though I don't consider myself a libertarian in every sense of the word. But I would like the option.
On that note, there's another option I'd kinda like -- in the Soviet Union, voters had the option, if they did not like any of the candidates on the list, of crossing off names with the aim of *excluding* particular people from the election. For most of Soviet history, this option was theoretical and meaningless; those exercising it tended to attract unwelcome attention from the authorities (despite the official policy of secret balloting), and for most posts there was only one candidate anyway. In the late 1980s, however, as elections began to be opened to smaller parties and independent candidates, people began utilizing the crossing-off option. I remember seeing TV footage of an elderly woman shaking her ballot at the camera before she put it in the box and exulting as she pointed out all of the Communist Party candidates she'd crossed off. In theory, I would like this option. In practice, I think it might present problems since it does create the possibility of having all candidates excluded, meaning that it might take unreasonable amounts of time and effort to fill offices. Nevertheless, I know I would take a lot of pleasure in crossing off certain names.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-15 10:24 am (UTC)I like the idea, and I've seen it work in smaller-stakes settings (clubs and the like). It would work well for primaries, I think. It probably has no hope of working for a general election -- all the Democrats and Republicans will just scratch off each others' candidates.
The implementation I'm most familiar (for a local branch of a club, so we're talking really low stakes) is this: you mark any candidates you like "not acceptable" and rank the rest; anyone who garners one-third not-acceptables is dropped and the rest are run by preference ballot. This sort of thing might have caused the Democratic primary to come out differently, as the lower-powered folks lik Kucinich might have stood a chance.