Justice

A presidential candidate's adviser earlier today asked supporters in one state to vote for a rival in order to deny the delegate leader another win. I have always thought that voting strategically--manipulating the process to promote a particular result rather than voting for your "best candidate"--was a perversion of the franchise. I was once criticized because I voted my conscience for a candidate with little chance of winning (a Green) because it robbed the Democrat of support in a close race. I found the reasoning flawed. I guess my question is what is best for a democracy--voting based on good faith evaluation of candidates or voting for the candidate closest to one's political view who is also electable?

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Others on this panel have

Others on this panel have more insight into this sort of problem than I do, but my inclination is to say that there's no one answer. It depends on the actual situation and slate of candidates.

Suppose one candidate, if elected, would be truly bad for democracy---would support all sorts of anti-democratic policies, and would have a good chance of getting them passed. Suppose the relevant alternatives are two candidates, neither of whom would support policies that undermine democracy, but one of them is markedly more to your liking on other issues. Then if you place highest value on preserving democracy, strategic voting may be exactly what your own values call for. If there's a real threat that a lot of votes for your preferred candidate would throw the election to someone who's truly undesirable by your own lights, it's hard to see how strategic voting could be a "perversion of the process"---the process is already perverse; you're just trying to mitigate that.

Here's the problem. To say that strategic voting is "a perversion of the process" calls for a premise something like this: a voter should always to support the candidate who, if elected would be best. But what's the argument for that? Elections have real consequences; they aren't just philosophical exercises. Think about a vote for the chair of a committee that does important business. Suppose there are three candidates, and everyone else has made clear whom they prefer. In your view, Candidate X would be very good indeed, Candidate Y would be acceptable, though barely, and Candidate Z would be a total disaster. As the votes are lined up, Y and Z are tied except for your vote. Candidate X, however, is well behind Y and Z. If you vote for X, there will be a tie between Y and Z, and a serious chance that Z will win in a run-off. If you vote for Y, Y will win, ensuring that the atrocious Z will not be the Chair. I have no doubt about what I'd do: I'd vote for Y.

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