Strategically Voting Evil

Some of my friends in the Green Party keep telling me that “voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil.” Yes, that’s true, but it may nevertheless be the right thing to do. Let’s not oversimplify. I’ll explain why people in swing states should vote for Biden, even though he’s horrible, and even though I myself am not voting for him. I’m mostly echoing Chomsky’s doctrine, but in different words; I hope to reach some people who have not been persuaded by Chomsky.

I’ll start by agreeing that Trump and Biden are both horrible. They are both racists, liars, warmongers, preservers of inequality and poverty, etc. (And all the wars are based on lies; they are mass murder.)

But are these two candidates equally horrible? Or is one of them a lot worse? It’s your responsibility to study them both enough to form an opinion about that, for reasons I’ll explain in a few moments. If you simply say “they’re both horrible, and I don’t need to think about which is worse,” then you are evading responsibility in ways that I’ll presently explain.

Next, I’ll talk about this basic principle, which I seldom hear:

Truth and good ideas spread with unpredictable speed, but usually they spread slowly.

Here is an illustrative example of that principle. My Green Party friends like to say that “if only people would listen, then the Greens would win.” But that’s a pretty big “if.” Yes, if more people knew what is really going on, if more people heard an explanation of progressive ideas, then the Green Party (or the MPP or another party like them) would win. And yes, the truth is spreading. But it’s not spreading fast enough.

I’m writing this in August 2020, and from my present vantage point it looks essentially certain the truth won’t spread fast enough to elect a Green as US president in November 2020. It looks essentially certain that either Trump or Biden will win. But the spreading of the truth may speed up, so I find it conceivable — not likely, but conceivable — that the Greens could win in 2024.

Admittedly, my discussion here is based on my own estimation, my own guess, regarding how fast ideas will spread. I could be wrong. I like to believe that I “have my finger on the pulse of the nation,” but most people like to believe that about themselves. If your own estimation is very different from mine, you’ll disagree with some parts of this essay, but you may still agree with some other parts.

Also, my analysis here is based on what I think is likely to happen, not on what I wish would happen..

About voting Green. Assuming my estimation is correct, is there any use in voting for the Green Party in 2020?

• It won’t get the Green candidate elected.
• You can spread progressive ideas. You can tell people “I believe in the Green Party. Let me tell you about the Green Party.” But actually you can say that even if you don’t vote Green. You can stand on a street corner and hand out Green Party leaflets, and not just on election day.

But yes, voting Green can have a few benefits (and that’s why I voted Green in 2012 and 2016):

• You can “keep your hands clean.” You can feel good about yourself. You can feel pure, and holier-than-thou. Chomsky calls this “voting as a form of individual self-expression.”
• If enough people vote Green, it may get mentioned in the newspapers. That adds very slightly to the leafleting I mentioned a moment ago.
• If the Green Party gets over 5% of the popular vote, then it will get federal matching funds in the following election. (They didn’t even come close to 5% in 2012 or 2016, but maybe next time will be different.) With that money, they can spread their ideas more effectively.

And so, if (like me) you live in a “safe state,” I urge you to vote for the Green Party or one of the several other parties like it. A “safe state” is one where the overwhelming majority supports one of the two money parties, and so it’s a certainty that that party will win all the electoral votes of that state. Your vote won’t matter.

However, even while voting Green in a safe state, you can still affect the voting in swing states. You can urge people in those states to vote differently from you, as I am now doing. You can even send money to the campaign of one of the money party candidates (though I’m not “strategic” enough to do that).

About swing states. But if you live in a “swing state,” then your vote really might get counted, and then the situation is different. A “swing state” is a state that might go either way — Republican or Democrat. Check the polls a week or two before the election, to see whether your state has changed in its safe/swing status. Of course, the very notions of “safe state” and “swing state” are predicated on the fact that ideas usually don’t spread fast. If you think the whole world will have a sudden change of heart, then forget my whole analysis.

Now, if you happen to believe that Trump and Biden are equally horrible, or nearly so, then it still makes sense to vote Green (or whatever party you prefer).

But if you are in a swing state, and if you agree that one of the two horrible candidates is substantially more horrible than the other, then you ought to vote for the less horrible one. That’s what I call strategic voting.

Why? What would happen if you don’t follow my recommendation? What would happen if you are in a swing state and you still vote Green? Then you are sending a message to all the oppressed people of the world that you don’t carewhether their oppression is great or very great; you don’t want to dirty your hands with that distinction. That includes oppressed people here in the USA. Telling them you don’t care about them is not going to help you recruit them to your party in the next election.

If you decide Trump is the lesser evil, and you vote for him, I will disagree with your opinion, but at least I’ll respect your action.

In my own opinion, Trump is worse. I won’t go into details on foreign policy or domestic policy. But climate is my big issue. In my opinion, the climate problem is far worse than the newspapers have been saying; we’re rocketing toward apocalypse.

• Biden would do a little, far too little, to slow our destruction, but perhaps he would slow it enough so that we could do something more.
• But Trump is slashing environmental regulations as fast as he can. He’s doing that to get a few more short-term profits for his friends. He doesn’t understand that that will soon bring about the extinction of the human race, including those friends of his. This is the reason that Chomsky has called the current Republican Party “the most dangerous organisation in human history.”

And some people claim that reforms won’t suffice, that we need a revolution. Often I agree, and I’ve written about that elsewhere. But revolution requires that we live long enough to spread the relevant ideas. I think that’s more likely under Biden.

I have a few friends who advocate voting for the greater evil. They want to make the world worse, because then they think the revolution will happen sooner. I disagree with their reasoning. The ends really don’t justify the means, because we rarely get the ends that we intend. More often, we just end up with a continuation of the means. If you elect a fascist in hope of triggering a socialist revolution, you may just get a fascist dictator who is difficult to overthrow.

So please, don’t oversimplify. Vote strategically.

ERIC SCHECHTER, Senior Contributing Editor, Citizens Outreach  • Eric Schechter is an American mathematician, retired from Vanderbilt University with the title of Professor Emeritus. His interests started primarily in analysis but moved into mathematical logic. Schechter is best known for his 1996 book Handbook of Analysis and its Foundations, which provides a novel approach to mathematical analysis and related topics at the graduate level. In retirement he has become a full-time political activist and radical educator. His conversion to anti-capitalism in recent years transformed Eric’s life. By temperament a progressive and iconoclast, his study of social and environmental conditions, domestic and international, rapidly led him through various stages from standard liberalism to a far more radical critique of the corporate status quo, which he regards as unreformable.  * Eric’s main blog—Eric’s Rants—is at http://leftymathprof.wordpress.com

2020 Aug 15, version 1.01.