As the first post in the series, I want to broach the idea that an alternative candidate to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney can positively impact the upcoming election and politics thereafter. This is the general theme of the series, and so it will be significantly expanded on in the upcoming days.
As far as I can tell, the vast majority of voters do not believe that a third party or independent presidential candidate can have any positive effect on an election. Most of them believe that since an alternative candidate cannot win, there is no reason to vote for him/her. Based on this belief, they refuse to even seriously consider an alternative candidate for President. Many people argue that one should only vote for a candidate “with a chance to win.” But this is generally not people’s voting philosophy. I never hear people tell Texas Democrats that they should not vote for the President because the Republican is practically guaranteed to win the state. Nor have I ever heard a Republican voter registered in the District of Columbia say that she will vote for the Democrat because only Democrats win elections in the District. No one suggests that we should not hold presidential elections in all of the non-battleground state because they would be a waste of taxpayer resources. Yet when the question of supporting an alternative candidate arises, the very same idea underlying the preceding unheard-of statements becomes a valid basis to reject off-hand political alternatives.
One explanation for this is that we have been trained to believe that the Democrat and Republican options represent meaningful choice to all voters. Let’s assume that that may not be the case for all voters. If so, that may go some way to explain why more eligible voters do not vote for a Democrat or Republican than vote for either party candidate. Accepting the idea that votes for alternative candidates are wasted, millions of eligible voters who do not have any faith in the major parties choose not to waste their time voting for one of them. Millions of others vote for a Democrat or a Republican despite disagreeing with them because they believe that have no other viable options. That is consistent with the fact that polling consistently shows that the majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country yet support the candidates responsible.
At bottom, people’s voting behavior reflects their acquiesce of the elitist notion that voting matters, but it should be independent of control. Matt Stoller highlighted this recently when juxtaposing two separate pieces by Peter Orszag:
“This cycle, the award for cynicism in civics goes to Obama advisor turned millionaire banker Peter Orszag, who wrote an editorial for Bloomberg in June arguing we should make voting mandatory. Just six months before arguing for mandatory voting, Orszag wrote a column in the New Republic subtitled “Why we need less democracy”, arguing we need “depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions”, most likely in order to cut social spending programs on which normal Americans not in the political class rely. So on the one hand, Orszag wants everyone to vote, to participate in a system, but on the other, he wants those votes to not matter when it comes to preserving their own ability to buy food and medicine.”
The tension in Orszag’s columns should be obvious to anyone. Why vote if you cannot influence the policies of your country? Easier to answer is the question of why an extremely powerful elite like Orszag would advocate for mandatory voting while simultaneously arguing for “less democracy” – voter participation, forced or not, promotes the idea that our democracy is working.
Our democracy is not working because of the way people vote. Voting, by itself, does not equal democracy in any meaningful sense. If you take the polls even semi-seriously, and acknowledge the blatantly elitist economic policies of both parties, it does not make sense for voters to affirm those policies and re-elect failing politicians. As things stand, though, American voters almost certainly will, because American voters have accepted that they have no choice. The reality is not only that voters have a choice, but that the alternative choices—candidates—do not have to win to positively influence an election. It may even be the case that voting for an alternative candidate is the only way to use your vote in any meaningful way. This will be discussed more deeply in the following two posts in this series.
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