{"id":581,"date":"2012-10-03T02:17:30","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T02:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=581"},"modified":"2014-02-09T05:04:36","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T05:04:36","slug":"steele-response-part-1-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2012\/10\/steele-response-part-1-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it Evil to Vote for a Lesser Evil? Steele\u2019s Response to Stolyarov – Part 1 – Article by Charles N. Steele"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Charles N. Steele
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
October 2, 2012<\/big><\/span><\/div>\n
Recommend this page<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n
\n

Mr. Stolyarov gives a thoughtful reply<\/a> to my contention that given a choice between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Romney is the lesser of two evils.\u00a0 I respond, but find I must do so in two parts.\u00a0 Mr. Stolyarov makes two kinds of arguments in his reply to me; one is a philosophical one on the ethical nature of voting and the second an empirical one about Romney and Ryan.\u00a0 In this note I address Mr. Stolyarov\u2019s philosophical argument.\u00a0\u00a0 I ask many questions here \u2013 please note carefully that most of them are not<\/em> rhetorical.<\/p>\n

Mr. Stolyarov\u2019s philosophical argument concerns the moral responsibility one bears in voting: \u201c[E]ven a true incrementally lesser evil is still evil and does not warrant one\u2019s support. One key consideration in casting one\u2019s vote is one\u2019s share of moral responsibility in what would transpire if one\u2019s candidate of choice (even half-hearted choice) gets elected.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first glance this seems a reasonable argument \u2013 after all, wouldn\u2019t we think that, for example, German citizens who supported Hitler\u2019s regime<\/a> bore a good share of responsibility for its crimes?\u00a0 And in general, if people vote for candidate A over candidate B, it\u2019s reasonable to think they bear some responsibility for empowering A\u2019s platform over B\u2019s.\u00a0 But the more I contemplate it, the less I understand the nature of \u00a0this \u201cmoral responsibility\u201d voting, for three reasons.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>When we vote, we vote under conditions of uncertainty about what the candidates will do should they win.\u00a0 Two reasonable people might differ in their expectations over what opposing candidates might do if elected, even if the candidates are truthful.\u00a0 And candidates are often less-than-truthful about what they will do if elected; sorting out what is and isn\u2019t true is not necessarily straightforward.\u00a0 Consider a presidential election between A and B.\u00a0 If candidate A wins the election and what subsequently transpires is counter to what the voter in good faith expected, what is the voter\u2019s moral responsibility?\u00a0 Further, we also don\u2019t know and will never know what B would have done.\u00a0 Does that matter?\u00a0 Might not a vote for what proved to be A\u2019s bad policies have prevented B\u2019s worse ones?<\/p>\n

In many cases these issues are small, but not always.\u00a0 And certainly in times of major institutional transitions, or economic crises, or other important changes, they are likely to loom large.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> If one votes for a candidate who wins, does one then share responsibility for everything<\/em> the candidate does?\u00a0 When we vote for candidate A, we get the \u201centire package.\u201d\u00a0 We can\u2019t limit ourselves to voting for her\/his positions on some issues but not others.\u00a0 Suppose one agrees with candidate A on fiscal policy, but disagrees on foreign policy, and conversely supports B on foreign policy and opposes his fiscal policy.\u00a0 In order to decide between candidates, our voter must judge which issue is more likely to be of central importance in the next term, as well as which one is more important for the voter\u2019s overall vision of what should be done.\u00a0 For that matter, the voter might think that B\u2019s fiscal policy is a more serious flaw than A\u2019s foreign policy, but also believes institutional barriers (e.g. Congress) will largely block B\u2019s fiscal policy while nothing would block A from pursuing the bad foreign policy, and hence reasonably vote B.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> How much difference does one\u2019s vote make, anyway?\u00a0 The quote from Mr. Stolyarov suggests that if candidate A wins, a person who voted for him shares some responsibility for what transpires.\u00a0 But suppose A wins with a very large margin of the vote.\u00a0 In that case, there\u2019s nothing the voter could have done to stop what transpires.\u00a0 What is her\/his responsibility then?\u00a0 Conversely, suppose instead A loses, so nothing transpires from the vote and presumably no moral responsibility attaches to the voter.\u00a0 How does anything differ in these two cases, with respect to the voter\u2019s culpability?\u00a0 I can\u2019t see that the voter has behaved differently in the two cases; shouldn\u2019t moral responsibility be the same?\u00a0 Perhaps not, but the why not?\u00a0 And how would the responsibility differ in either case had the voter instead stayed home and not cast a ballot?<\/p>\n

Similarly, in every presidential election in which I\u2019ve voted, I voted in Montana.\u00a0 In none of these was the vote close enough for mine to have mattered, but that\u2019s irrelevant.\u00a0 Montana\u2019s three electoral votes simply do not matter for the national outcome, so no matter what happened, my vote had no connection at all to what subsequently transpired.\u00a0 Does this mean that I\u2019m exempt of all moral responsibility when I vote in a presidential election?\u00a0 Why or why not?<\/p>\n

These three points involve \u201cdisconnects\u201d betweens one\u2019s vote, the outcome of an election, and what subsequently transpires.\u00a0 It strikes me that these disconnects weaken the moral responsibility a voter holds.<\/p>\n

Mr. Stolyarov does address some of my concerns (particularly those of point 2) when he observes \u201cIt may therefore be justified to vote for an imperfect candidate who could do some incremental good, but not for a candidate who would commit incremental evil \u2013 in the sense of reducing liberty compared to the situation that existed prior to his election.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear, then, that Mr. Stolyarov is not committing the Nirvana fallacy.\u00a0 But I still find his point quite problematic.\u00a0 It is not always obvious what constitutes \u201cincremental good\/evil\u201d on net, or how we identify an overall reduction in liberty.\u00a0 Let\u2019s simplify this case by assuming there\u2019s only one voter and no uncertainty about what candidates will do if elected, so that there are no disconnects between the vote cast and the political consequences.\u00a0 Again, the voter faces a choice among presidential candidates, but now her\/his vote determines the election and s\/he knows exactly what political consequences will transpire.<\/p>\n

If A\u2019s positions on issues X and Y reduce liberty, and his position on issue Z increases it, how is the voter to weight A\u2019s net effect on liberty?\u00a0 (Assume for sake of argument there are no other issues.)\u00a0 Is A automatically disqualified because of his position on X and Y?\u00a0 Or could his position on Z conceivably be sufficiently beneficial for liberty to outweigh the harm done on the first two?\u00a0 I would think so, and I suspect Mr. Stolyarov agrees.\u00a0 (Again, I should note that in some cases any reasonable person should be able to weigh these relative harms and benefits and get the same answer.\u00a0 But in some real world cases reasonable persons might strongly differ.)<\/p>\n

But also, doesn\u2019t it matter against whom A is running?\u00a0 If candidate B is worse, much worse, on all three issues, should not the voter choose A over B, regardless of whether the net outcome from A is positive?\u00a0 (I would think so.) Alternatively suppose instead candidate B drops out of the race to be replaced by C, and C is superior on all three issues.\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t that lead our voter to reverse himself and support C?<\/p>\n

This seems quite sensible to me, but Mr. Stolyarov seemed to rule it out:\u00a0 \u201cThere is no doubt in my mind that Mitt Romney would commit numerous incremental evils \u2013 and there is no justification for supporting him in any way, even if his transgressions could be predicted with certainty to be less severe than Obama\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0 It should by now be clear why I find this position problematic.<\/p>\n

On this point, Mr. Stolyarov agrees with my earlier assertion \u201creal progress in expanding liberty will come from economic, technological and social processes, NOT from electoral processes. If elections and political processes do anything in this regard, it will be simply to respond to and formalize advances made by civil society.\u201d\u00a0 But he then concludes: \u201cBut if this is the case, then there is no point supporting anything other than the very best available option in any election.\u201d<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t see how that follows.\u00a0 In our one voter example, suppose candidate A will take the nation slowly towards a totalitarian state, and B will take it very rapidly.\u00a0 Would it not be preferable to choose A over B, to buy time for countervailing processes to act?<\/p>\n

All of these examples suggest \u2013 at least to me \u2013 that a voter might reasonably and morally vote for a candidate who will minimize damage to liberty, even if the voter has only reasonable expectation<\/em> of this.<\/p>\n

Mr. Stolyarov does<\/em> have another point worth noting in this matter.\u00a0 He suggests we vote for the best candidate, even a third party candidate who has no chance of winning: \u201c[A] single person can send a message by refusing to play along with the two-party system. If enough of us begin to think this way, then the libertarian voters will become a force to reckon with, a credible threat to the two main parties that unsatisfactory candidates will be disfavored no matter what. As an added bonus, if enough people in general begin to vote based purely on their conscience, then the whole \u2018lesser of two evils\u2019 trap would disappear, the two major parties would need to rapidly evolve or would disintegrate, and government could become truly representative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe so.\u00a0 I certainly hope so.\u00a0 But note that this is a strategic argument and quite different from the argument about a voter\u2019s moral responsibility.\u00a0 I find the moral argument to be unhelpful in this discussion.<\/p>\n

In part 2 of my response I will try to make the case that Mitt Romney is indeed the lesser of two evils when compared to Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

Dr. Charles N. Steele is the Herman and Suzanne Dettwiler Chair in Economics and Associate Professor at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.\u00a0His research interests include economics of transition and institutional change, economics of uncertainty, and health economics. \u00a0He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1997, and has subsequently taught economics at the graduate and undergraduate levels in China, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United States. \u00a0He has also worked as a private consultant in insurance design and review.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Steele also maintains a blog, Unforeseen Contingencies<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles N. Steele October 2, 2012 Recommend this page. ****************************** Mr. Stolyarov gives a thoughtful reply to my contention that given a choice between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Romney is the lesser of two evils.\u00a0 I respond, but find I must do so in two parts.\u00a0 Mr. Stolyarov makes two kinds of arguments in his reply to me; one is a philosophical one on the ethical nature of voting and the second an empirical one about Romney and Ryan.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[76,1345,1336,1258,28,69,84,40,703,1267,30,59,74,73,29,1346,25,843,1344],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-candidate","tag-charles-n-steele","tag-charles-steele","tag-democrat","tag-election","tag-freedom","tag-g-stolyarov-ii","tag-gary-johnson","tag-gop","tag-libertarian","tag-liberty","tag-mitt-romney","tag-president","tag-republican","tag-strategy","tag-united-states","tag-vote","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2085,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions\/2085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}