No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790).
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Mary Wollstonecraft
Year: 2016
Strange election. So . . . round up the usual suspects!
Immediately after Hillary dried her tears and conceded, out came the Tweets, then the analyses: the “third parties” are to blame!
Over the weekend, I focused* on one such election post-mortem. The basic idea is not altogether wrong: minor party efforts together may have cost the Democrat her Electoral College advantage this time around, just as Nader’s Green Party run spoiled Al Gore’s bid in 2000 and several past congressional races have been spoiled for the GOP by Libertarians.
Is there a problem here? Yes. But do not blame the minor party voters. It’s the way we count their votes that is “problematic.” The current ballot-and-count system turn voters most loyal to particular policy ideas into enemies of those very same ideas.
When we minor party voters turn away from a major party — usually because said party tends to corrupt or betray our ideas, or make only small steps toward our goals — our votes aren’t so much wasted as made poisonous.
Because the candidate least preferred may prevail.
But there’s a way out: On election day, voters in Maine showed how to cut through the Gordian Knot. Voting in approval for Question 5, Maine now establishes “ranked choice voting.”
Under this system, you don’t “waste” your vote when expressing a preference for a minor party candidate. You rank your choices and, if your first choice proves unpopular, your second choice (or maybe your third) gets counted. So you don’t “poison” your cause.
Republicans and Democrats have more than enough reason, now, to adopt ranked choice voting across the country.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* See yesterday’s links page to my weekend Townhall column for the basic references. But there were many, many articles on the Minor Party Effect, including a skeptical one by Sasha Volokh’s.
Questions Answered:
What is the effect of minor parties on major party outcomes?
What causes those effects, voter intent or something else?
Is there a way to prevent this, short of further sewing up the ballot access system to minor parties?
The Next Question:
What might our elections look like if people spent more time discussing issues and ideas … and less about class, culture wars, and sex crimes?
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Roy Blount, Jr.
English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.
Roy Blount, Jr., Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 93.
On November 14, 1918, Czechoslovakia became a republic.
Born on the same date 29 years later, American writer P. J. O’Rourke.
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P. J. O’Rourke
There is a heartfelt and near-universal refusal to understand the basic economic principles behind the creation of wealth.
P. J. O’Rourke, Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics (1998), p. 235.
“You start out not wanting to poison the outcome, and you end by poisoning your soul.” But there is a way out.
Click on over to Townhall.com, for one of the more interesting stories-behind-the-story of last week’s election upset. And then come back here, for more information and perspective:
- “Third-party voters played a key role in election results,” by Steve Benen, MSNBC, The MaddowBlog, 11/09/2016
- “Libertarian Vote Cost GOP Nine Congressional Races,” by Doug Mataconis, Outside the Beltway, November 17, 2012
- “Libertarians Nearly Cost Republicans the State Senate,” by Ari Armstrong, November 11, 2016
- “Libertarians Provided the Margin for Democrats in at Least Nine Elections,” by David Nir, Daily Kos, November 15, 2012
- “Ann Coulter: Idiots Who Vote Libertarian Will Cost the GOP the Senate,” by Caitlyn MacNeal, Talking Points Memo, September 18, 2014
- “Examining the Libertarian Vote in Depth,” by David Kirby and David Boaz, Cato Institute, December 11, 2006
- “Question 5 Fixes Flaw,” by Paul Jacob, Common Sense, October 20, 2016
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Asra Nomani
I don’t fear Donald Trump, and I don’t fear the policies he is talking about. What I fear is the extremist interpretation of Islam that is spilling blood on the streets of our world, from Orlando to Dhaka to Brussels.
Asra Nomani, CNN, November 11, 2016.
O, the Trump win was a thing to behold! Maybe you are like us here at Common Sense, and did not vote for the man. But you did not vote for Hillary Clinton, either.
So, are you to blame? Er, thank?
There were plenty of Jill Stein voters. And many more Gary Johnson voters — over four million, the largest return of any Libertarian Party candidate in the challenger party’s history.
At least one writer on the ostensible Left has argued that, had ALL of Stein voters “done their duty” and voted for Mrs. Clinton, and HALF of the Libertarian’s vote wised up and voted for the Anti-Trump possibility, Mrs. Clinton would have won. So, these folks blame minor party voters for a Clinton Loss . . . and its allegedly horrible flip side record, the surprising Trump Win.
Well, what do the Libertarians think of it?
As you can see: Not much. That is what. Here is Nicholas Sarwark, Libertarian Party chairperson, doubling down on what Gary Johnson said:
And they are right. How, exactly? Well, it is not just that Hillary/Tim voters took votes away from the Libertarians’ Gary/Bill ticket. It is also the case that, well, the responsible parties for Hillary Clinton losing are . . . Democratic Party voters!
Read the graph and weep, folks:
SO, WHY THE PRECIPITOUS DROP?
Could it be that Hillary Clinton was an awful candidate . . . even by leftist standards? And that is why so many Democrats could not even be bothered to go to the polls and vote for “their” sorry candidate?
The obvious answer is: Yes.
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Monarchy or Republic
On November 12, 1905, Norwegians established, by referendum, a monarchy — not a republic. Exactly 14 years later, to the day, Austria became a republic.
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Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
The monopolist . . . never has unlimited control; he merely has the choice within the laws of price of different “economically possible” price levels. He can select that price at which the combination of profit for each article, and the number of articles to be sold at that price, are likely to promise the greatest total profit, but he cannot exert his “power” in any other way than in conformity with the laws of price, for it is his behavior that establishes the “price law,” namely the conditions of the amount offered at a given price level, but never can he counteract the laws of price.
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, “Control or Economic Law,” Zeitschrift für Volkswirtshaft, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltung, Volume XXIII (1914): 205–71; John Richard Mez, Ph.D., translator.