Joel S. Hirschhorn: The evils of lesser evil voting

[babylonsister]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2052.shtml

The evils of lesser evil voting
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jun 6, 2007, 02:31


Condemn progressives for voting enthusiastically for Democrats and the inevitable response is something like “just imagine how much worse voting for Republicans would be.” Similarly, many true conservatives and Libertarians see voting for Republicans as a necessary evil.

With many progressives regretting giving Democrats a majority in Congress and many conservatives regretting putting George W. Bush in the White House, it is timely to refute lesser evil logic.

snip//


Lesser evil voting demonstrates the worst aspects of political compromise. This is the common cause of terrible laws. When citizens surrender so much of what they truly believe in, they enable compromise politicians to create bad public policy that, in the end, satisfies very few people and puts Band-Aids on severe problems. Lesser evil voters concede victory to the other side -- the side they view as the worse alternative because the people they vote for will not stand up for what is right and necessary. Think Iraq war. Even when their lesser evil side wins, they do not have the principled positions that would prevent awful compromises, often in the name of bipartisanship that is a clever way to justify our corrupt two-party mafia.

Lesser evil voters deride the alternatives of not voting or voting for minor candidates. The outcome should the “other” side win is deemed unacceptable. There is worse and there is worst. The core problem with lesser evil voters is that they are short-term thinkers. They fail to see the repeated long-term consequence of their style of voting -- a system over many election cycles that persists in delivering suboptimal results. The “good” outcome in the current election (from their perspective) is the enemy of the “better” solution in the longer term (from an objective perspective). The better solution is major reform that will never happen as long as lesser evil voting persists.

Understand this: Lesser evil voting is not courageous. It is cowardly surrender to the disappointing two-party status quo. Lesser evil voters should trade regret for pride by voting for candidates they really think are the best. Voters in this presidential primary season have some remarkable opportunities to transform fine minor candidates into competitive major candidates -- more honest and trustworthy people like Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich, for example.

Finally, the deadly decline of American democracy results in large measure from lesser evil voters electing lesser evil politicians. When virtually no elected public official is there because most voters have embraced his clear principled, trustworthy positions we get a government that is easily corrupted by corporate and other moneyed interests. We get what we have now. And if you are dissatisfied with that, then reconsider the wisdom of lesser evil voting. We will only get the best government by voting for the best candidates. Otherwise, we get what we deserve and what the power elites prefer.

[MH1]

1. BULLSHIT.

Does this guy deny the law of gravity, too?

If you want to do away with "lesser evil" voting you'd better be working on changing our current two-party-must system to something like IRV or ranked-choice voting, or at least requiring a majority to win, even if you do physical runoffs like Louisiana does.

I didn't see anywhere in this article that the author even discusses that. So, IMNSHO, he's either way too uninformed to be writing on the topic, he's an idiot, OR he has an agenda. Hmmm...Occam's Razor suggests?

[jgraz]

2. K&R -- Capital letters can't deny truth

What's wrong with requiring that our representatives actually represent us? Given your sig, perhaps you should wait to answer that until the Dems have caved on Net Neutrality...

[jgraz]

3. kick

:kick: