On not being obliged to vote Democrat, part 2
Continuing in this series …
The Paradox of Voting and the Bait and Switch
This was trailed in comments … basically, the second point I'd make is that when major party activists put the guilt-trip on minor party supporters[1], they engage in what looks like very fallacious reasoning. The point is that a minor party supporter has three options on election day:
First, stay at home
Second, vote for their minor party
Third, vote Democrat
And the thing is that the major party activist has to steer them between the Scylla and Charybdis of the first two choices, both of which might superficially look more attractive than voting for a candidate you don't support[2]. To do so, they need to make two contradictory arguments.
Obviously the problem to overcome in getting you to drag your ass[3] down to the polling station is the Paradox of Voting. Which isn't really a paradox; it could more accurately be titled "The Actual Extremely Low Expected Value Of Voting". This requires an appeal to your civic sense of duty; remember Martin Luther King, etc. In other words, they need you to see it as your duty to society to vote, or alternatively to see your vote as an important form of political expression.
However, once your ass is duly dragged and you're in the voting booth, the last thing they want you to do is your civic duty (which would be to vote for the candidate you think is the best; that's how voting systems work, strategic or tactical behaviour is a pathology of the system) or political expression (which also wouldn't have you voting for their guy). Once you're there, they want to argue in purely instrumental terms - you have to vote for the Democrats because if you vote for your minority party, you have no chance at all of being the marginal voter.
It looks inconsistent, because it is. Particularly in a midterm election, when you have a very small chance of being the deciding vote for a Congressman who in turn has a very small chance of being the deciding vote on an issue of importance (and given that this is the Democrats we are talking about, you have to take into account votes of importance where your congressman is the swing vote for the wrong side), the expected value of your vote is very small indeed, and the costs of it are the psychological toll on your own morale, plus the opportunity cost of whatever else you might have done with the time. Which will be the subject of part three.
[1] I'm using this term innaccurately to refer to anyone who doesn't support the Democrats, but who might be considering whether to vote for them on lesser-evil grounds, to avoid anything more cumbersome.
[2] Note that in many important cases (including many of the kind of close races where people really start putting the pressure on minor party supporters), the incumbent Democrat you are being exhorted to turn out and vote for might be absolutely atrocious. Because of the absurd lack of aprty discipline in US politics, where it is not even grounds for loss of seniority if someone actively campaigns for the other side, it is entirely likely that in the November election there will be people on "the Left" who are asked in the name of "save our precious healthcare reforms", to vote for Congressional candidates who did their level best to destroy Obamacare.
[3] note American spelling
The final footnote is the one that Anglo-colonial-without-revolution types forget, I think.
ReplyDeleteIn a Westminster system, your MP voting against the government would be a massive betrayal, involving either serious principles that conflict with the party leadership to a career-threatening degree, or sheer floor-crossing.
In the US, he's more like "a crooked weasel motivated solely by the interest group that will bribe him the most, with no loyalty to anyone".
Given how gerrymandered most congressional seats are, its only worth voting in a minority of seats anyway.
ReplyDelete"If voting changed anything they'd make it illegal".
As I posted on philos-l back in 1992:
ReplyDeleteThe only situation in which an individual voter can affect the outcome is one where there is a tie among the other voters. But in a large electorate this is unlikely to be the case. I want to do two things with my vote: express a preference and secure an outcome. But since my chances of the latter are so small, I may as well concentrate my deliberations on the expressive side. If I am a positive identifier with a particular party— and this is more important to me than my negative feelings towards another party—then even if my party is third I should still vote for it (if I vote). By doing so I secure one of my objectives (the expressive one) but run only a vanishingly small risk of incurring the cost of bringing about a worse outcome than if I had voted tactically. The rational voter should therefore vote for the party she prefers unless it is more important to you expressively to declare your hostility to the party you loathe most – in which case vote for the best placed challenger to that party.
since I did not even have an email account in 1992, that constitutes the single greatest act of pwnage ever
ReplyDelete... unless someone knows different.
The only situation in which an individual voter can affect the outcome is one where there is a tie among the other voters. But in a large electorate this is unlikely to be the case.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was working field for the Democratic Party, this line of reasoning was well known around the office, and assumed to be well known among registered voters.
The standard response was to use everything in our capacity to exaggerate the expected closeness of the election result.
I am running for the position of head writer of this blog on the platform of "More and more deeply nested footnotes on more of the posts!"[1]
ReplyDelete[1] In keeping with the theme of the platform, it can be referred to as either the Pedant's Plaform or the Pedestrian Platform.[2]
[2] A third possibility, the Pedophile Platform, was considered and quickly discarded.[3]
[3] So was a fourth possibility, the On-More Platform.[4]
[4] Once elected I will rename the blog D-cubed to indicate its new, improved nature.
marcel
The matter of the uselessness of the Democrats aside, I find the "vanishing chance of making a difference" argument unconvincing. This is essentially the same argument that is used to argue that one should choose the "defect" strategy in the prisoner's dilemma situation. The problem with it is that it assumes that "my" choice is independent of other people's choices. It is in fact the same choice. If "I" select to stay at home, so will they, thus materially decreasing the chance that my preferred party (again, this is a hypothetical situation, not involving the realities of the Democratic party) is elected.
ReplyDeleteSortition: But I vote hedonistically, which is just as well because instrumentally I accomplish two-thirds of three-fifths of bugger all, even in low-turnout stuff like European elections. Thus I refute you.
ReplyDeleteYes it's funny how the Democrats (or the UK Labour Party) have hysterics that "you'll let in the wicked Republicans/Tories" if you tell them on the doorstep that you're not voting for them and then fail to oppose the main part of their wicked policies.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, eight years of telling the Labour Party that I cannot vote for a party that breaks international law seems to be showing a few small signs of success.
Guano
I am pretty surprised by this. If you want to go for the "voting is a waste of time" angle, that's hard to argue with. But it is certainly the case that the collective efforts of campaign workers and voters do eventually translate into electoral victories. There is a marginal effort in there somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI think the only explanation for voting that makes sense is as follows: You vote because although your chance of changing the outcome of anything is small, it is applied over a group of people which is a large as your chance of effecting anything is low. Those two things cancel. So voting is a civic duty in that to the degree that you think you know what is best for people, you are helping a community that you identify with. From what I understand, this also appears to be the actual reason many people vote. (Even for Republicans it makes some sense if they want to help people they view as similar to themselves, just not dirty minorities, of course.)
This explanation serves both the purpose of motivating people to get to the voting both and, once there, voting strategically. That's not conclusive, of course. If you think voting for a minority party will help move the country's political system in your preferred direction, go for it. Of course, if this worked, it would be just as applicable to a middle of the road Democratic voter.
> But I vote hedonistically, which is just as well because instrumentally I accomplish two-thirds of three-fifths of bugger all, even in low-turnout stuff like European elections. Thus I refute you.
ReplyDeleteEither I miss your point or you miss mine.
If your decision of whether to vote or not is identical to that of all people who share your politics, then not going to the poll implies that your position loses, while going to the poll implies that you have a non-negligent chance of winning. Thus, hedonistically, and assuming you really have a preference between parties, it pays to show up.
Sortition, if we're going to describe our responsibility hedonistically, then any outcome is permitted, including voting for the Republican.
ReplyDeletedsquared, meanwhile, counsels contempt for majorities. The place to influence policy is within Democratic primaries, unless there is some plausible narrative about building a majority outside the political parties. No such narrative exists.
It's no mystery why Republicans sponsor Green candidates. People who vote according to dsquared's guidance have dedicated themselves to being outside the majority, and therefore ineffectual. One wants one's opponents to be ineffectual.
Leaving the vote (which I admit is low value) aside, the question of for whom you will work or donate has a different value, especially for minor races. E.G Don't give to the DNC,DSCC, or DCCC but give to specific candidates.
ReplyDeleteI got a call the day after Blanche Lincoln had voted against DADT (closure) from the DSCC and said, "I don't give money to you, the DCCC or DNC because you give too much money to people who vote against Democratic principles like Blanche Lincoln. I now give to specific candidates" The telemarketer said nothing for a beat then said, "I understand your position"
Your commentaries on US politics all read like they were originally written about Tony Blair and New Labour, and you wanted to share them despite being past their used-by date.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't really work though. Slavish devotion to MVT ain't the problem over here.
It's no mystery why Republicans sponsor Green candidates. People who vote according to dsquared's guidance have dedicated themselves to being outside the majority, and therefore ineffectual
ReplyDeletePart three will deal with this point; by way of preview, I don't agree that the Green movement has been ineffectual. After gay liberation, it's been the single biggest political success story of the left in the last fifty years, and it's done so almost entirely outside electoral politics.
women's lib?
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I didn't argue that the Green movement has been ineffectual. Nor, for that matter, would I argue that Nader was ineffectual.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans are opposed to the Green movement, just as they were opposed to everything Nader accomplished. But certain Green candidates serve Republican policy preferences, as Nader's candidacy did.
The Achilles heel in dsquared's argument is that it takes insufficient account of this part of Chris Bertram's: "...unless it is more important to you expressively to declare your hostility to the party you loathe most".
ReplyDeleteThe survival of the Labour government in 2005 may well be attributed to the fact that a plurality of voters were still shaking from the 1980s and regarded even Blair as preferable to the possibility of anything labeled Tory. In the US today, you might expect the same to apply, mutatis mutandis, so the question posed is why it apparently doesn't.