election-year dilemma

[cellio]

I'm feeling conflicted about November's election. I can just hear the majority of my readers now: "You doofus! You live in a swing state! It's a no-brainer; you have to vote for Kerry!"

Well, 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".

Comments

[jducoeur]

Well, I suspect that economic ruin is overstated. He'd introduce a fair amount of inefficiency, but his room for maneuver is limited. And it's unlikely that he would do as much damage as the record-breaking deficits that Bush is running. (I never thought anyone would come along to make Reagan look *responsible* economically.)

Kerry's only made one really irresponsible economic claim, with the offshoring thing. I'm annoyed by that one, since it's hyperbolic nonsense and doesn't fit the facts. OTOH, I don't think he's likely to *do* much about it -- his record isn't terribly protectionist. (This is why I desperately didn't want Gephardt to win the nomination: he's a confirmed protectionist, with the proven inclination to do major economic damage.)

Like I said, I care mostly about results, and that leans me towards paying more attention to records than to rhetoric. Kerry's record has tended to be fairly classic liberal, but not in the most dangerous ways: a tendency towards statist expansionism, but not too far towards the irrational left. And frankly, even in terms of statism he's better than Bush, who seems entirely comfortable claiming to be a conservative while overseeing an expansion of the state that overshadows that of most liberals' dreams.

That said, I agree that the split Congress/White House seems to be useful for reining in the worst instincts of each. If I could be *certain* that Bush would lose the White House, I'd be fairly sanguine about leaving them in charge of at least one side of Congress. And I don't much care about whether he's in office for one term or two, so long as it breaks the back of the extremist right and gives the moderates a chance to bring things back to sanity...