Voting and the Holy Grail

"Why Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils Is a Waste of Your Vote" is the title of a well-reasoned essay at Reason.com (pun intended, as always), by Jeffrey A. Singer. In it, Dr. Singer makes the case that when you are voting against a candidate, and not FOR a candidate, voting for the lesser of two evils (aka one of the two major party candidates) is actually a bad idea:

...Choosing not to vote is always an option. But I prefer to express my opinion in a less passive manner. Not voting certainly provides the satisfaction of knowing that I did not sanction or legitimize the offerings of the two major parties. But that satisfaction is only personal and private. I want to more actively make my views known. Using the following chain of logic, I have found a positive way to express myself through, what I believe, is the most effective allocation of my vote in November: 

1) According to Professor Ilya Somin in Democracy and Political Ignorance,my vote has, on average, a roughly 1 in 60 million chance of being the decisive vote in the Presidential election. (It might be a great as 1 in 10 million in my relatively small state of Arizona. It would have a roughly 1 in a billion chance of being decisive if I lived in California.) 

2) If I vote for the lesser of evils and hold my nose, my vote is blended in with millions of others—there is no way to register my dissatisfaction with the choices the two major parties have given me. There is no way to separate those who voted for a lesser of two evils from those who voted because they actually LIKED the candidate. 

3) If I vote for the Libertarian party candidate, I am directly affecting the vote total of that candidate. Because that candidate will get fewer total votes than the major party candidates, when all votes are totaled up, I will have had a greater effect on raising the total percentage of votes for the Libertarian candidate. If the Libertarian candidate garners say, 5 percent of the vote as opposed to 1 percent, then my vote made a greater impact in making a statement than it would have if it was folded in with the 40 or 50 million voters who voted for a major party candidate. 

4) If the Libertarian candidate gets say, 5 percent of the vote, then that clearly means that 5 percent of the voters chose a candidate that they KNEW had absolutely no chance of winning, rather than choosing the lesser of two evils. What's more, they chose the candidate with the most pro-freedom, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights program. That sends a clear message.  

One other thing: What happens when the Libertarian candidate gets 5+% of the votes? I guaranty the major party who loses by less than 5+% of the vote will take note for the next election, and try to figure out how to get those votes they left on the table. That is what the Republicans did in the 1994 midterms, after Ross Perot basically stole the election from George H.W. Bush.

I am reminded of the following scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:



How often have we voted for a candidate as a "lesser evil", only to realize later that we "chose poorly"? One thing I have learned over the years is that even a "lesser evil" is still evil, still a bad choice. It is better to vote for a third party candidate than waste your vote on the two majors, where it will just get blended in with all those people voting stupidly FOR the candidates. If you don't have a third party candidate, even staying home is a better option, in my opinion.

"I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory will always lead to more evil."--Penn Jillette

Choose wisely.