Unlike many libertarians, I'm a believer in voting for major party candidates. Voting is, of course, expressive behavior. On the other hand, so is not voting. Voting is basically a free rider/collective action problem, and if libertarians think these can be solved via private initiative, they have an obligation to demonstrate that it is so.
Besides, not voting seems like a way of trying to shuck responsibility for having a preference. Most of the libertarians I know who do not vote are for Obama, or at least, against McCain. But by not voting for him, they can disclaim responsibility for any results. The problem with voting for the winning candidate is that you can never see the counterfactual, so almost by definition, libertarians are going to end up regretting many of the results of their choice. If you pretend not to have had a choice, you don't have to admit that you willed, in some sense, the bad outcomes.
I'm not voting because I forgot to register. But that doesn't absolve me from whatever happens next, because I wanted Obama to win. I may not have effected the outcome, but I did believe it was preferable to the alternative. Now if he's even more of a cluster**** than I expect, I'll have to admit I was wrong.
(Of course, I can always say McCain would have been even worse, just as many disappointed Republicans argue that Kerry would have been even worse. And it's possible that they're right; until we invent inter-multiverse transport, we'll never know.)
All of which is a long way of saying that unless you really cannot generate any preference at all between McCain and Obama, you should probably vote. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. But that's civil society for you.
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Voting is, of course, expressive behavior. On the other hand, so is not voting.
Yes. Not choosing is always making a choice. The notion that this ever isn't true is one of the hallmarks of bad faith.
As I've said on my own blog, I would like very much for each ballot item to have a line for "I choose to endorse no candidate" so that those who have principled opposition to their choices are counted, and are separated from those who are just too disinterested or lazy to vote.
I agree that not voting is expressive. But it expresses what I wish to express. What's wrong with that?
13 minutes from the time I parked the car to the time I voted. I've waited longer for a beer at the ballpark. I don't think that qualifies as a "pain."
Just to say we in Europe will be praying for you on this day, of all days.
In Kenya, they get it:
Ndio Tunawezi -- 'Yes, we can' in Swahili
Ndio Tunawezi, America,
Ndio Tunawezi
My stance has always been that if you don't know enough about the candidates to care about your preference, then don't vote. I know it's cool to Rock the Vote, but I'd rather the people choosing based on Palin's stylish glasses or the Obama mood they're in today didn't tip the scale away from the people who really did research and voted an informed decision. If you don't really know, and don't really care, leave the process to those who do.
Meanwhile, Freddie,
Glad to see you still posting here, and my compliments on your blog.
To me that's the third party votes. Voting Green or Libertarian says "I don't endorse either of the major candidates, and I don't expect my guy to win, but I wish to express my preference that candidates be more Green or more Libertarian." That said, Bob Barr kinda freaks me out, so I'm afraid I won't be voting Lib this go 'round.
Another good reason to make a choice between the two major party candidates is to support the two party system. It is good for voters to be forced to make coalitions with those with whom they disagree - especially in a country as large and diverse as ours. In all of the popular alternatives where voters divide into lots of "purist" parties, the voters may get to choose politician they actually agree with, but then the politicians choose the coalition. Since I don't trust or believe any politician, that doesn't work too well for me.
Well, Megan, I don't know if you're trying to lay a guilt trip on libertarians for not wanting to play along with the "jelly and ham" vs. "peanut butter and cheese" choices, but I did in fact vote. I voted for Bob Barr. My vote counts and I'm happy to be counted among the Barr voters. I'm not shucking responsibility. I'm voting my conscience with the choices I had in front of me.
Yes, in a coerced McCain vs. Obama scenario, I PREFER Obama. But I also PREFER being shot in the leg as opposed to the chest.
Now, you can say that this is a cop out all you want. I don't care. I vote on context. In 2004, I voted straight Democratic because the context made me want to vote that way. In 2006, I had a mixed ticket. I voted Democratic for the House, GOP for the Senate...and I really disliked Rick Santorum. I also knew he was going to lose.
Now, this time, I voted AGAINST that same Democratic House Representative I voted FOR in 2006 because I want a Republican back in that seat considering that Dems will have an enlarged majority in the House AND a Democratic President (most likely).
We all have our ways. This is my way.
The election just kinda sneaked up on you?
There hasn't been enough coverage to remind you?
Voting is basically a free rider/collective action problem, and if libertarians think these can be solved via private initiative, they have an obligation to demonstrate that it is so.
This is a total red herring.
Compare to building a lighthouse. A lighthouse is a public good by the traditional definition, so the standard assumption is you can only build it through a collective institution and pay for it with taxes or equivalent financing. But, clever economists have figured out an alternative to these sorts of problems. Let's say you need a thousand citizens of the port town to kick in a hundred bucks apiece to build the lighthouse. All you need to do is pledge that if not enough people kick in to complete the project, everyone who did will be refunded double their money. Now the dominant strategy is to contribute, and the lighthouse gets built.
Now, that's not perfect and we can nitpick all kinds of flaws in this strategy. The point is to illustrate that solutions to collective action problems exist, BUT that a high level of involvement and control is necessary. That is, if I'm just a citizen and the town leadership is not aware of the clever plan, the best I can do is inform them of it, I cannot orchestrate it myself. Similarly, since the state controls voting, if a solution to the collective action problem exists, the state must implement it, the private sector cannot solve a problem it is prohibited from applying itself to.
I don't get voting as a free rider/collective action problem at all. If you have an actual preference, then anybody voting against your preferred candidate is trying to make things worse in your estimation. So rather than "We all have to chip in to build the lighthouse" you're saying "I don't care whether you're helping to build the lighthouse or trying to burn it down, as long as you're doing something."
I voted, and I did not vote for either of the major candidates because they are incompetent buffoons. Neither party has a good understanding of what it takes to succeed in a 21st century world: they are stuck in 20th century concepts, both in foreign policy and in economic affairs.
Now, I was originally intending to vote for John McCain, and I'd still rather have him as President than Barrack Obama, but McCain has worked enormously hard to lose my vote since the Convention, specifically in his VP choice.
I voted for Mankiw. :P
How do you forget to register? I mean, really.
You forgot to register?
I literally slumped in my chair reading that. It's so damned disappointing. All the more so in the middle a post that's lecturing your readers about their civic responsibilities.
"I may not have effected the outcome ..." I'm pretty sure you mean affected (i.e., influence). You probably would have remembered to register if your vote would effect (i.e., bring about) the outcome.
Remember, if at first you don't get what you want, will harder!
Megan, many people don't really understand the issues or the candidates very well. They are rationally ignorant about them (since their vote has barely above zero percent chance of determining the outcome). I don't think we should encourage such people to vote. Ban them from voting? No, no way. Very strongly and actively discourage them from voting? Probably not. But pushing them to vote isn't beneficial.
I've enjoyed the blog during the financial crisis. I will not be a continuing visitor, however, learning that you couldn't trouble yourself to be a registered voter by Nov. 4. Just what, exactly, are you invested in, other than the sound of your own voice?
if you needed to prove you're not really an adult whose views are worthy of respect, but rather an adolescent with a bullhorn, forgetting to register while lecturing others about the importance of voting is a pretty good start. don't get me wrong, your vote doesn't matter in DC because we all know how it's going to turn out. but way to live up to the slacker/grad student/hipster stereotype! all into politics except for, you know, the remembering to register.
Part of me wants Obama to win. But it's hard for me to vote for a tax increase on my hardworking parents (and I want the European vacations to continue).
So I shall not vote.
Now I understand why Megan peddles recipes for bland, inedible sludge. Because she never actually eats it herself!
I am schocked and appaled to see Megan use a racist term "shuck", such as in sintagm shuck and jive, and do it on a great day like this, no less.
"I'm not voting because I forgot to register. But that doesn't absolve me from whatever happens next, because I wanted Obama to win. I may not have effected the outcome, but I did believe it was preferable to the alternative. Now if he's even more of a cluster**** than I expect, I'll have to admit I was wrong."
No, you will have to admit that you are weak minded and didn't have the courage to stand up to the cult of personality that was no doubt infecting your friends and collegues. It would have taken some real guts in your circles to have supported Bar or McCain. Guts you don't have Megan. You can't even stand up to this paper hanging Peronist Obama, how would you ever stand up to a real authoritarian?
if you needed to prove you're not really an adult whose views are worthy of respect, but rather an adolescent with a bullhorn, forgetting to register while lecturing others about the importance of voting is a pretty good start.
Megan reminds me of the girl in my 6th-grade class who lectured everyone about animal rights and vegetarianism, but somehow failed to notice that she was wearing leather shoes and a leather belt. She was just as insouciant when her idiocy was pointed out to her.
Though maybe I should give Megan a break. It's just so easy to forget over and over again, especially when you're a political blogger at a major magazine! And coverage of this election has been so light that you could almost forget that it was happening.
Hey, I just had a thought! You know what would we should have? If we had people standing outside of libraries, food stores, banks, and the like encouraging people to register, it'd be much easier to remember. We could call it a "Voter registration drive." Oh, and it'd be great if TV stations and radio stations and newspapers helped to spread the word about deadlines and such. And these days, with that whole Internet thing, we should definitely have a website. Preferably with the forms readily available so you can just print'n'submit.
Since we don't have any of that, forgetting is totally understandable. You've got my sympathies, McArdle.
"I'm not voting because I forgot to register."
You've been talking about this election for months, how did you forget? I know you've often said you're ill, is it something serious?
Otherwise it kind of makes you sound a little ditzy. I know that's a sexist term, but I'm using it to intentionally be "shocking" and because I think it might come to people's mind.
"All of which is a long way of saying that unless you really cannot generate any preference at all between McCain and Obama, you should probably vote."
If you have no preference you should go with a third party candidate or write-in if that's an option. Considering your views you can go for the Libertarian if you dislike the main two in equal portions.
(For me this is a strange election in that I think they are both likeable as people, but somewhat annoying as politicians)
Don't know exactly the circumstances of Megan's failure to register, but I'm wondering if it had something to do with her move from NYC to DC. I know it was a while ago, but I don't know what registration rules exist in The District.
Well, anyway. Pary that The One does not mess up too much. Or if he does, the Dems get the treatment they got in the 1994 Congressional elections.
the other Geoff [November 4, 2008 10:20 AM] wrote that the third party candidates are equivalent to "I explicitly choose none of the above".
I disagree.
If I were someone in a position to influence the nomination for one of the major parties next time, I would look as a third party candidate vote as a voter I didn't get but couldn't have gotten by any reasonable choice, but I would look at a "none of the above" vote as one that I _could_ have gotten with a more appealing candidate.
-dk
Hey! Get off Megan's back. So she didn't register. It's not like she's Sarah Palin or anything. There is really no reason to vote in the general election in DC anyway. It's not like we didn't know who was going to win as soon as the ballots were printed.
I think alot of your scorn is from voters who now realize that they wasted 40 minutes of their life doing something that has only symbolic meaning. Just think, in the time you wasted standing in line at the community center you could have gone to 7 o'clock mass and been to work on time.
Folks, votes are counted not weighed. No one is going to say "Well, this little cluster of Obama votes was really from libertarians disgusted with the GOP, who don't really support Obama socialism." No, they all count and encourage President Obama and his supporters to push through the programs that won them the votes. The only votes that are going to count as "libertarian" are those for Bob Barr and Ron Paul. So if 2/3 of you libertarians leave the reservation, then you just contribute to the further marginalization of your principles.
I think the very fact that large numbers of people are crying or celebrating or whatever says something negative. Either the government is too damn big and intrusive (such that the outcome of the election really is that important) or the people doing the emoting are overly invested in what are, after all, mere mortals, and politicians at that.
Either way, I'd prefer an apathetic citizenry who don't have to worry about what the government might do if the "wrong" candidate winds and who choose to invest their spiritual energy in something actually productive like raising children or feces-themed "art."
If you don't like the major party candidates, then not voting is the surest expression of your political desires. I long for the day that "none of the above" is an actual option for those who despise the present alternatives on offer from the major parties. Absent this option, abstention is the clearest indication of dissatisfaction with what we are offerred.
No libetarian thinks that McCain will be a worse choice than Obama, the assertion is absurd on its face. There may be those calling themselves libertarian who will prefer Obama, but they should do the movement a favor and stop using the term. They obviously don't know what it means.
Hmmm. You might be interested in talking to this fella.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube
You couldn't be bothered to register to vote for the single most important election in your pathetically short lifetime?
Who the FUCK did you blow to get that position, bitch?
You couldn't be bothered to register to vote for the single most important election in your pathetically short lifetime?
It's quite remarkable how each election--at least since 2000--is the most important of our lives, much like how each matriculating class at a given university is is the most academically brilliant ever.
Just once, I'd like to hear a university president declare, "You people are the dumbest class since 1993. We've had a 30-year upward trend and now this. I mean, wow, what the hell happened here?"
Rob Lyman,
You are the smartest Rob Lyman I know.
Unfortunately, you are the dumbest person named "Yancy" I know. :)
Bobby, let me ask you a question:
Two wars. An economic meltdown that we can't decalre another war to get our asses out of. China is on the verge of bankruptcy and calling in our loans.
How much more important did you need? Maybe the Second Coming?
Idjit.
Two wars. An economic meltdown that we can't decalre another war to get our asses out of. China is on the verge of bankruptcy and calling in our loans.
So? Is one of the candidates going to cause the desert to bloom while the other turns our nation into a fire-blackened wasteland (a la The Lion King)? What makes an election important is the differences between the candidates; the choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum is unimportant regardless of the circumstances.
The candidates have differences, to be sure, but most important election for my roughly 75 year life expectancy? Yeah, that does strike me as a tad overwrought.
Voting is basically a free rider/collective action problem
No. To a libertarian, voting is not a "problem" of coordination. In a context of a system that will interpret a vote as a license to initiate aggression, voting is a problem of conscience. A vote empowers and affirms those who will initiate yet more coercion against us. Therefore, the libertarian is morally bound not to vote for any candidate whom he honestly believes would increase state coercion targeting the innocent.
Two wolves and a lamb are voting on what's for dinner. Should the lamb vote for wolf1, or wolf2? If wolf1 promises a clean death, but wolf2 promises another week before the slaughter, which is better? The problem is not how to coordinate the vote to get some mythical "correct" outcome. The problem is the system as a whole, to begin with. If the lamb has a right to life, "what's for dinner" should never be voted on. If it is true that the wolves will kill and eat the lamb anyway, at least let them be forthright about that, and not attempt to obscure their culpability within a system of smoke and mirrors. No, "we" are not eating "us".
Do not ask for my complicity when you tax me, Megan McArdle. I will not give it to you, and neither will I give it to your chosen instrument. Of course I will submit to you and your candidate and his police -- I am not a fool. But I do not accept your yoke willingly. Do not try to tell me that I should.
Frankly, the rest of us are fine with that.
You work at the Atlantic and you 'forgot' to register?! Classic...
My thought is I will not vote for the wrong solution. If one guy says 2+1 = 5 and another says 2+1 equals 4 I will award either one with the right answer -- my vote.
Their solutions are both wrong so why should I grant them my vote. They probably don't want -my- vote anyway.
And if I could actually go and select a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE I would be happy to do so. I think it would make a great statement about the miserable nature of our political situation to have a sizable portion actually go out and take time to tell both candidates who were selected by a combination of media, special interests, and vocal minorities in the primary process that the citizens they chose to place on a pedestal are not worth our votes.
that should read - I will award "neither" one with the right answer -- my vote.
When one sees both candidates as fairly objectionable, voting for a third party candidate makes more sense if one has no possibility to influence the election. Here in California, as well as in DC and New York and Utah and Wyoming, there's no chance of influencing the outcome, so expressing a preference for the Libertarian or Green candidate sends a stronger message to the two-party establishment than voting for one of the two.
I'm a yellow-dog libertarian. I voted for Browne, Badnarik, and now Barr. I voted for Bill Redpath for Senate.
I will not reward McCain with my vote, because I do not agree with his policy prescriptions. Obama is just completely untenable, as he is specifically anti-libertarian. He is a Constitutional Law scholar, and has expressed a desire to completely subvert the Constitution for collectivist goals. I don't see how any libertarian would be able to get past that. If there is anyone who would fully exploit and exacerbate the expansion of Executive power under Bush, it is Obama. That Obama will likely have a very Democratic Congress is even more troubling from a libertarian perspective.
My voting rationale is simple. I vote for the person I agree with on policy the most. That's it. Personal traits and electability have no impact on me. My vote doesn't count anyway, why waste it on someone I don't agree with?
"No libetarian thinks that McCain will be a worse choice than Obama, the assertion is absurd on its face. There may be those calling themselves libertarian who will prefer Obama, but they should do the movement a favor and stop using the term. They obviously don't know what it means"
THANK YOU
Any "libertarian" that votes for more gov't, or Obama in this case, is NOT a libertarian. That goes completely against the core values of libertarianism. In any case, we will have a President Obama on Jan. 20th... not by my doing though. The only thing I can say now is that I hope I am completely wrong about everything that I've always believed in otherwise the next 4 years will be hard for me to deal with.
Voting only for a "major party candidate"?
Now there's a lame rationalization if I ever heard one.
You should vote for the person you feel is best qualified to carry out the positions and policies you support. Period. Anything else, and you lay the power of numbers and "mandates" into the hands of people pre-disposed to misinterpret and spin, and eventually marginalize anyone without a "major party" mindset.
Better that the major parties know that there are many minor parties with potentially pivotal roles to play in close elections. It gives the majors some incentives to not run roughshod over them.
Which pisses them off and is no small inconvenience; another bonus.