Voting is Complicated
Or Why I Dislike Voter Guides
When preparing to cast an informed and prudent vote, I, like most concerned citizens, study the stances each candidate takes on the vital issues of the day. I want to know where they stand, why they stand there, whether they’re swaying, and what direction they propose to step. I want to see that they’re standing tall, proud, like an actor auditioning for a role in Glee, and not uneasy, like the fans of the Texas Rangers. As some issues are more important than others, I also pull out my trusty scale and weigh the heaviness of each issue before making my decision. In short, I follow the basic path laid out by the typical voter guide.
The thing is…I really dislike voter guides, especially those that lay out simplistic criteria for morally correct voting. I avoid those guides that tell me how I must vote as a good citizen or as a good person or as a good whatever. These voter guides may be accurate as far as their assessments of the issues go, but if they direct me to make a choice based strictly on the issues, which most seem to do, then they fail to consider everything I should be considering when making an ethical decision.
When I vote, I’m usually voting for a candidate, a person, and not on the issues themselves. So while I want to know where candidate x stands on foreign and domestic policies and on all the issues therein, this knowledge by itself isn’t sufficient for me. I also want to know the strategies and tactics the candidate plans to take in addressing issues, whether the candidate is trustworthy with power, and whether he or she has the competence to effectively legislate, judge, or govern. And even if I find a quality candidate who has every desire to do the right thing, this dream public servant may face circumstances, such as an oppositional political party, that prevent him or her from fulfilling those desires.
Furthermore, a number of voter guides point out that a candidate’s position on negotiable matters such as the economy shouldn’t motivate my vote as much as his or her positions on a few (emphasis on few) non-negotiable issues. I get the thinking of this analysis, but it likewise fails as a sure guide. Let’s say I’m looking at two candidates for the U.S. Senate, one of whom lines up much better on the “non-negotiable” issues than the other, but who also has a preposterously poor economic philosophy that would ruin (further ruin?) the country if implemented. Now the issued-focused voter guide will tell me to support this candidate because he or she is right where being right counts the most. This seems sensible at first, and may work as a short term strategy, but if the candidate’s economic views prove a disaster for the state of the union, then a victory may transition into long term loss for candidates of his or her stripe.
Social conservative opponents of President Obama often call him the most pro-abortion president of all time. They viewed his victory over McCain as a tragedy for the country, and they hope that tomorrow brings hope for the future. What allowed Obama to become president? Yes, he may have lost to McCain had more people voted with the designs and desires of social conservatives, but he also may have lost had the economy not tanked or had the Iraq War proved well-founded and more successful. It’s reasonable to conclude that events during Bush’s presidency that had nothing to do with abortion lead to the election of the strong abortion rights advocate Barack Obama. Moral of the story: where a candidate stands on some issues will have consequences for other, unrelated issues.
Prudent voting isn’t as simple as finding the candidate who is best on the issues I find most significant. I cannot simply weigh the gravity of the issues without also considering what each candidate desires to do about them, whether he or she has the ability to act on them effectively, whether the circumstances will allow the candidate’s will to be done, and what the long-term consequences of his or her overall plans are likely to be. When I vote, I vote for people of varying talent acting in a complex political arena. Voting strictly on the issues risks being an exercise in nominalism.
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Furthermore, a number of voter guides point out that a candidate’s position on negotiable matters such as the economy shouldn’t motivate my vote as much as his or her positions on a few (emphasis on few) non-negotiable issues.
Kyle, I think you are a little behind the times! :)
While Republican operatives spent millions distributing voter guides in 2004, 2006, and 2008 telling Catholics about non-negotiable issues they have been scarce as hen’s teeth this year. It is hard to dismiss a whole second tier of “negotiable” issues when your major concern this year is an even lower tier matter of consensus on an issue but a disputation over the interpretation of legislative language (i.e. abortion in the health care bill).
Hence the silence.
Archbishop (soon to be Cardinal) Burke recently reiterated the position that a Catholic may not vote for a pro-choice candidate.
There is a fair amount of wiggle room in the statement, although I am not sure Archbishop Burke left it there intentionally. I doubt that there is a politician who “favors absolutely the right to choice.” But in any case, unless you start parsing the statement for loopholes and exceptions that I rather doubt Archbishop Burke intended, it seems to me it would bind Catholic voters in many situations to vote for a third-party candidate who had no chance of winning rather than a major-party candidate (usually a Republican) who could actually win and effectively fight for the pro-life cause.
Since almost all pro-life candidates would permit abortions in cases of rape, incest, or risk to the life of the mother, all those who are pro-choice would have to do is secretly make sure there were third-party candidates who advocated more restriction on abortion than the pro-life major party candidates, and it seems to me Archbishop Burke’s advice, if taken, would oblige Catholics to throw their votes away on candidates that had no chance of winning.
David,
I have always been suspicious of those who make such comments as Burke’s out to be an endorsement of the Republican platform. It seems to me that a genuine Catholic voting practice as articulated here would lead to voting for 3rd party candidates more often than not.
I am not of the mind, however, that this always amounts to “wasting” one’s vote. In Canada, the left-wing New Democratic Party has never held power federally, but they have been hugely influential in building Canada’s social safety net (yeah!) and maintaining the legal vacuum on abortion (boo!). The threat of a third party can often force positions onto the “real contenders” that they wouldn’t take on themselves.
I, for one, have “wasted” my vote often. I live in a riding where (Liberal candidate) Bob Rae will be elected by a large majority until he retires. I hope that my vote, since it can’t possibly help or stop Rae, will at least add to the popular vote of another party so that the main contenders start to take some of that party’s positions more seriously.
The key issue is whether we are faced with a dichotomy or not. Canada is parliamentarian, and therefore one can win without winning. We are not parliamentarian so any vote not providing the threshold of victory is wasted. Necessarily, when you constrict choice in a dichotomy you are effectively endorsing the other choice.
Could enough people “wasting” their votes change the system? There is talk of the Tea Party as a third party. Better a Catholic Centre party if you ask me.
Could enough people “wasting” their votes change the system?
In a word, no. The last successful 3rd party that I’m aware of would be the Socialists. They were able to gain a number of offices. With our entry into WWI, they were for all practical purposes suppressed. Bernie Sanders is the only national representative of them today. There may be others out there, but I’m not aware of them. There are examples of isolated independent candidates succeeding, but that is more often by the power of their personality rather than a particular platform.
Generally the only way to reform the two major parties is through the primary process by effecting what candidates are nominated. That is where the Tea Party did their work within the Republican Party. More often, if a signficant minority is being neglected it is because appeasing them would interefere with bases of both parties.
I suppose you are not “wasting” your vote if you vote for a candidate that has no chance of winning in order to make a statement. But you are definitely shooting yourself in the foot if you have, say, a pro-choice Democrat, a moderately pro-life Republican, and a staunchly pro-life candidate from a Right to Life Party who can’t win, but who can take enough pro-life votes from the Republican to hand the election to the pro-choice Democrat. This seems to me very much analogous to John Paul II’s statement about a legislator opting for the most pro-life bill possible even if it permits some abortions. If the legislator has three choices, a pro-choice bill, a more restrictive bill the allows for some abortions, and a bill that totally prohibits abortion, surely John Paul II did not intend that the legislator should support only the pro-life bill if it has no chance of passing. The whole exercise, presumably, is about trying to limit abortions, not about making a statement with a vote.
On a tangent: The best political ad of the campaign. Meg Whitman, GOP candidate for governor of my state of California had an ad saying how great California was 30 years ago when she moved here. Well, Jerry Brown was governor then. heh. The Brown campaign made this ad in response, it’s priceless :D