I Vote Evil! in Off Topic

ID:47791
 
Sep 7 2008, 7:15 pm
Keywords: politics
In the comments for my last post on McCain, Bootyboy said:

if you vote for the lesser of two evils, you're still voting for evil.

This is at least a more valid argument than Penn Jillette's argument that voting for the lesser of two evils is a spiral to the bottom (it's not, by logic it's a spiral toward the top).

Here is the problem with attempting to not vote for some form of evil, at least by my definition:

If the candidate agrees with me 100%, they can't possibly get elected (they can't even get anywhere near the ticket of a major electable party).

So if I only vote for people I completely agree with (as Penn Jillette argues I should), then I vote for no one (which Penn also thinks is the right thing to do) and other people who disagree with me have all the influence on who is elected.

I feel that Penn in this case (I'm using him because I know his arguments well on this subject) is missing a simple reality about politics:

Politicians and parties do respond when the lesser of evils is voted for.

As an example...if a generally conservative Republican candidate is also a clear supporter of gay rights and still wins a seat, the parties pay attention to that. They register the fact that being pro-gay is not a guaranteed electability killer, and they become more open to pro-gay candidates.

On the other hand, as has happened, if a pro-gay candidate runs and the gay lobby decides they aren't pro-gay enough so they trash them and perhaps run another candidate against them, the vote is split and the initial pro-gay person goes down to defeat and the more conservative gay-basher in the race wins, then the message to the parties is:

"Stay away from this pro-gay stuff, there's nothing but bad down that road; the gays themselves will cut your throat."

So if I want a pro-gay candidate (or, more realistically in my neck of the woods, someone who doesn't simply want to nationalize everything and turn it over to Greenpeace), then I have to vote for someone who at least believes in that, or I have no chance of getting better candidates in the future.

In this case, even a losing candidate can be helpful -- if someone comes close to winning even though they hold an unpopular view, that fact is influential as well.

Much as I love Penn, in my opinion, choosing not to vote because you are "waiting for the perfect candidate" not only is a childish form of avoiding participating in democracy, but is actually directly against your own interests and ensures you will never get that perfect candidate in a viable party.
#1 Sep 7 2008, 7:40 pm
Doesn't that mean only a small part of Americans would vote? That's ridiculous.
<pro-american sounding country musical rant>
Especially considering the men in uniform who have died over the past 227+ years for that very right, in a way.
</hick>
It's just like South park said, you'll always have to pick between a douche and a turd. There will never be a candidate you agree with 100%, not even identical twins are that similar.
#2 Sep 7 2008, 8:21 pm
Realistically speaking, the only person who agrees with me 100% is me, and even then not always.

Yes, while voting for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil, it's still a vote to lessen the evil. At one time you could only choose between racists and severe racists. At one time you could only choose between white men and other white men. The scope of a nationally acceptable candidate has broadened a lot because of people showing parties that candidates with views or qualities skewing in a certain direction are electable.
#3 Sep 7 2008, 9:19 pm
Politicians and parties do respond when the lesser of evils is voted for.

I think you have this backwards. Let's think of the final hurrah of Mr. Sculley at Apple. You had a hard core set of Apple fanatics that were willing to gobble up any piece of crap coming out there (see Hypercard, Newton, PowerMac)... but they did it because it was a "not a PC". When there was the final realization that this business model did not produce positive results, then actual shift in positions occurred. It's not to say that you have to like 100% of Apple's products; like you said, its's just naive to expect that.

Voting for the lesser of two evils only prolongs incorrect policy and strategy.

#4 Sep 7 2008, 9:23 pm
Lummox JR wrote:


Yes, while voting for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil, it's still a vote to lessen the evil. At one time you could only choose between racists and severe racists.

And by voting for the "less racist", lessens racism?

#5 Sep 8 2008, 6:39 am
Bootyboy wrote:
Voting for the lesser of two evils only prolongs incorrect policy and strategy.

Now that's just not true. Politics and Business models run completely differently. If enough people refuse to buy a product because it is crap, then the company does not make money, and is forced to change. If half the country decides not to vote because they dislike the people who are running, one of those people will still win. If anything, refusing to vote at all will prolong incorrect policy much longer than voting for the person with the most distance from that policy will. Think of it as evolution over periods of time.
#6 Sep 8 2008, 9:07 am
Bootyboy wrote:
And by voting for the "less racist", lessens racism?

Ultimately it did, yes. Voting for people who were at least willing to give lip service to equality and civil rights made those positions far less controversial than they would have been before. Real reformers don't become viable by magic; the public shows support for their positions by voting for people whose views trend in that direction.
#7 Sep 8 2008, 6:25 pm
I've voted for Libertarian presidential candidates more than once. I'm pretty certain I even voted for Ron Paul on his first go-round (1988). But two things have happened as I've gotten older, or perhaps one thing with multiple facets: I've become more conservative, and I've come to believe that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." (Obviously this works better as an aphorism than an iron-clad guide to life, but when in doubt, one could usually do worse than to refer to it.)

It may be true that "Voting for the lesser of two evils only prolongs incorrect policy and strategy," and yet throughout that painful prolongation -- not only in America but in many places -- things often seem to tend toward improvement in the areas where reasonable people would seek improvement.

Or as they say in Amway, "The system works if you work the system."
#8 Sep 8 2008, 7:07 pm
I think this whole thing relies on them knowing they're the lesser or two evils and why (specifically) people are voting for them.
It's also likely to work in the opposite way. 'I lost a lot of votes when I announced I'm anti-whale and pro-gay. I bet America still isn't comfortable with gay people'.

The less racist example is a bit flawed because that's where things were going anyway. It wasn't the same guy getting less and less racist, it was a new guy who had been raised in a slightly different time, living in a slightly different community, campaigning to a slightly different group of voters.
The social progression would have obviously been influenced by the politicians in some ways but the social progression would have definitely been the bigger factor.
#9 Sep 8 2008, 7:34 pm
Vexonater wrote:
Bootyboy wrote:
Voting for the lesser of two evils only prolongs incorrect policy and strategy.
Now that's just not true. Politics and Business models run completely differently. If enough people refuse to buy a product because it is crap, then the company does not make money, and is forced to change.

You are inverting the analogy. Apple was making moderate profits with crappy products because of incredible brand loyalty; the prevailing attitude being that "WinTel was evil". Because of the way corporate life works, if you're delivering profits, then Wall Street almost encourages you continue those practices. It was only when the profits were gone and Wall Street demanded change did they do a massive purge.

#10 Sep 12 2008, 9:40 am
Charles Spurgeon's choose-neither-of-two-evils only applies if it's possible to choose neither. In the case of an election, the only way that is possible is if a "Non-Confidence" ballot is added.

So, because there's no non-confidence option, choose the best candidate you can.

Of course, I'd be very pleased if non-confidence were added, since it'd mean that officials would try to get direct democratic opinion if non-confidence votes increased. If non-confidence turned out to be the dominant option (and thus a new election had to be held), that'd mean that much stronger polling and new candidates would be required.

However, there's also the intractable truth that people are very, very fickle, and odds are pretty good that as time goes on belief systems will become more and more diverse. In the far future, it is entirely possible that no one will vote anything but non-confidence because everyone is divided into so many shades of grey that colour TV would look like the devil's work.