Yves here. This post really pissed me off, so I thought it might be fun for similarly pissed off readers to dissect it. The fact that it begins by arguing that protest voting is “bad for the democratic process,” as if what we have in the US is a democracy as opposed to an oligarchy, is partly relevant. So it also sees all third party votes as bad because they may act as spoilers.
I noticed two things: the author does not consider that the protest vote is a form of self-inflicted punishment, as in something you do not to gain that (only here it may) cost you. Here the serious thought is that if you cast a protest vote against the Dems by not voting, leaving the top blank, or voting for Jill Stein, you are helping Trump. It’s not like the voters considering one of those actions haven’t heard that argument a zillion times and don’t care. Many students expressed their opinions that they would rather have Trump than continue to strengthen the sale of the Democratic Party. Or they might want to get the Greens up to a high enough national percentage to qualify for a debate position one day or get more media attention and get different policy views in the debate, and they won’t be victimized again by “But ZOMG is helping the Hair Furore.”
In addition, there are some voters who find support from both sides of the genocide in Gaza and now planned for Lebanon unacceptable, and out of conscience they cannot vote for either of the two major parties. As yet another reminder of the slaughter, I recently received this note from a Lebanese friend who is also an American citizen:
yes my bro #6 he collided with a friend while he was driving up a mountain up north min part of his head was blown off his head and all his bikes broke and he died instantly. 4-5 cars full of families trying to escape the war were hit by an arrow, he stayed at the end, they killed everyone, they can’t find him. to the fighters, they started blowing up buildings and bridges, infrastructure and innocent people. , n the American government behind it all , unfortunately , they want puppets of their Israeli army to control the region and build a railway from India to the Emirates to Haifa to the EU and control all gas exports to the EU it with Israel n against the resistance, they want the opposition to go at any price, their puppets of the west n created by the west N Brit’s found them to do their bad work to control and create enmity between the Arab countries n they have done a good job n at the end of it Iraq Syria n Yemen n now Lebanon and Gaza
I doubt he will vote for Team D or R if he votes at all. And he has many companies.
By Daniel F. Stone, Associate Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College. Originally published on The Conversation
Most Americans are unhappy with one of the two presidential nominees. As of October 4, 2024, the poll showed that 46.5% had an unfavorable opinion of Kamala Harris and 52.6% felt they disliked Donald Trump.
Some of these unhappy voters are considering voting for a third party, or not voting at all. They may think of those actions as a form of protest against the two-party system that dominates the United States, or against these two parties.
For example, in the September election 3.5% of Michigan voters said they planned to vote for a candidate other than Harris and Trump.
At first glance, these choices may seem perfectly reasonable: If you don’t like a candidate, don’t vote for that person. But my work as a scholar of cognitive biases — the systematic errors people make in their thinking — makes me fear that this option does not best serve the interests of those voters.
Instead, protest voting can actually harm the democratic process, which may lead to the election of a candidate that the majority of the electorate as a whole, and the electorate protest in particular, the majority of whom they do not like. There are several reasons why voters protest and make this mistake.
How Much Does One Vote Matter?
It is clear that any one vote is very unlikely to change the presidential election. And some might say that if one vote doesn’t really matter, voters can vote however they want, or not bother voting at all. Here’s a reason for the misconception:
Let’s say there are 10,000 voters in the state who feel unhappy about both candidates. But they probably don’t love one person more than they love another. Maybe they don’t agree with some of Harris’s views but they fear Trump. Or maybe it’s the other way around. They don’t have to agree on why they’re unhappy with the candidates either – some who are unhappy with Harris but prefer him to Trump may think Harris is too far left, and others may think he’s not far enough left.
Now let’s say that all the voters of the state – those who are happy to vote for one of the big two – are very divided. Maybe the gap is 5,000 votes. So, if 10,000 disaffected voters vote for one of the two major parties, they can swing the election.
Again, these unhappy voters have a choice – they like one of the major voters better than the other. So while each disgruntled voter wants to keep their hands clean and not vote, they would like every single one of the 9,999 disgruntled voters to stand up and vote in favor of their choice.
Parents teach children the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – and many people believe in it and try to act accordingly. In this case, following the Golden Rule means that if you’re an unhappy voter and you’d like other unhappy voters to hold their noses and vote for a major candidate they don’t like as much, you should be willing to do the same.
But not all unhappy voters think this way. Others are misled by their reasoning and choose to protest against voting even when their values indicate that they should not vote.
Boycott Error
One of the reasons one might think that a protest vote makes sense is because of the assumption that boycotting something they don’t like is an effective way to contribute to positive change.
Boycotting a person or organization you have a problem with is usually reasonable. For example, if there’s a restaurant in town that has a reputation for being racist, or just slow to take out food, don’t go there. Maybe it will close and make room for another business that works better. Or perhaps it will make some changes in hopes of expanding its customer base.
But when you vote, whether on Election Day or before, boycotting active candidates will not help. One of them will win whether you like it or not. Boycotting in this context is an example of the misuse of a heuristic – a rule of thumb that is often useful, but not always useful. Boycotting here doesn’t help you achieve your goal of ending or promoting something you don’t like.
Omission versus commission
Another reason why people choose a protest vote is because of the situation where people choose to make mistakes of doing nothing – inaction – over making mistakes that involve taking action – commission. People feel less guilty when they did not act directly to support a bad outcome. But both doing and doing nothing can be mistakes, and both can bring undesirable consequences that create negative consequences.
Omission bias may help explain why some people are reluctant to get vaccinated against serious diseases: If they choose to get vaccinated and the vaccination leads to a health problem, that would be an operational error. Not being vaccinated can also lead to health problems, but that would be a mistake of not doing anything. People tend to choose the latter.
Likewise, voting for a candidate you’re not satisfied with may sound like a commission error. Not voting, or voting for a third party, risks an error of omission – an error that is often thought of as trivial. But choosing the possibility of more than one omission of commission does not guarantee that you are not making a mistake – it turns your mistake into a more attractive one.
False Equality
The last reason people choose to opt out or choose to support a third-party candidate is that they resist the perception that they don’t like one candidate more than another. Instead, these people say that the two main options are equally bad.
But regardless of your actual values and policy preferences, that’s probably not true. The two candidates have very different views on a wide variety of issues, and have different records of what they have done – and not done – while in office.
People who claim that two different candidates are fundamentally the same are abusing another mental shortcut: the human tendency to think in categories. Grouping different things into the same category can make thinking easier, but it can ignore big differences.
Some people think of a 1 in 10 chance and a 1 in a million chance as both being in the “probability” category. But they are very different: If you flip a coin repeatedly, one is roughly how likely you are to get heads three times in a row, and the other is how likely you are to get heads 20 times in a row.
Seeking the Most Desired Outcome
During the 2000 presidential campaign, I remember a friend saying that he was not voting for Democratic candidate Al Gore because he thought that Gore and Republican candidate George W. Bush were equally bad. But after winning – in part due to third-party voters voting for independent Ralph Nader – Bush withdrew the US from the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global carbon emissions, invaded Iraq, and passed tax cuts in favor of the wealthy.
All of those were actions that Gore almost never took. The two candidates were far from identical, and although my friend had not seen it before, he should have known.
The US will have a new president on Jan. 20, 2025: Trump or Harris. A third-party winner is not a real option.
In some states, voters can rank the candidates in the order of their choice, clearly stating their preference without wasting their vote on a candidate who cannot win. People who believe it would be good to have multiple choices with a realistic chance of winning can work to implement such a system – known as preferred voting – in their communities, or seek to use other methods that may ultimately produce viable options in the future. . But it will not happen during this election.
Whether you like it or not, you are faced with two choices: Vote for one or vote for the other. And please vote.
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