The Logic of Voting for a Lesser Evil—and Other Writings on the Morality of Voting

We are in the midst of another election cycle. And I’m far from the only person who thinks the available options are far from great. This situation, like other recent elections, raises difficult questions about such issues as whether people have a duty to vote, whether it is permissible to vote for a badly flawed candidate if the alternative is even worse, and how to balance competing issues in making voting decisions.

I’ve written about these kinds of issues in some detail, previously, and this post links and and summarizes some of those writings. It is not a post about which 2024 presidential candidate is best (or least bad), though I will likely write about that on a later occasion. It’s about how we should make such decisions. Unless otherwise noted, these pieces were all published right here at the VC blog:

1. “The Logic of Voting for a Lesser Evil“

This post was inspired by the 2016 election, but almost all of it remains relevant today. In it, I explain why it is both permissible and desirable to vote for the lesser evil in an election where all of the viable options are bad. I address a variety of counterarguments, including claims that voting for a lesser evil makes you morally complicit in that candidate’s wrongdoing, arguments that it’s better to cast a “protest vote” for a candidate that has no chance of winning, arguments based on the very low probability that your vote will be decisive, and more. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Imagine an election where the only options are Queen Cersei from Game of Thrones, and Sauron, the Dark Lord from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. If Cersei wins, she will kill many innocent people, and oppress others. But she will leave much of the population more or less alone (as long as they don’t openly oppose her or threaten her family in any way). If Sauron wins, he will kill far more innocent people, and make the survivors his slaves.

You can instead cast a protest vote for a vastly better alternative, such as Gandalf….. But, by assumption, these are purely symbolic options, because they have zero chance of prevailing. If the protest voter would otherwise have backed Cersei, the net effect of his decision to protest is to increase the likelihood of the worst possible outcome: the triumph of Sauron.

Under those circumstances, it seems clear that a person who ensures a Cersei victory has done a good deed. He or she will have saved large numbers of people from slavery or death, even though the Cersei regime would be a deeply unjust one.

The Cersei-Sauron hypothetical was obviously inspired by the contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton, and is an exaggerated version of that tradeoff. But I think it works for Trump v. Harris—and many other elections—as well.

Notice how my logic is different from that of those who say you can only vote for a candidate if he or she meets some minimal threshold of character or good policy. On my approach, it is morally justifiable to vote for almost any candidate—even a cruel despot like Cersei—so long as the only feasible alternatives are even worse.

Canadian columnist John Robson responded to my piece in the National Post, and I, in turn, posted a rejoinder.

2. “Justifying a Moral Duty to Vote is a Lot Harder than You Might Think.”

Many people, including some political theorists, believe we have a moral duty to vote. I disagree. Indeed, I think—in many cases—it’s better if you don’t vote, especially if ignorance and bias make it likely you will make a bad decision. Casting a ballot motivated by ignorance and bias is often worse than not voting at all.

3.”Is there a Moral Duty to Vote in an Election Where the Stakes are Unusually High?“

Even if there is no general duty to vote, perhaps we are morally required to do so in situations where the stakes of an election are unusually high. In this post, I explain why I disagree—at least with respect to most voters. There is, however, a limited kernel of truth in this argument. An excerpt:

There is a kernel of truth to the claim that you have a duty to vote if the stakes are high enough. But the resulting moral duty applies far less often than advocates of the argument tend to assume. And the same reasoning actually implies many people have a moral duty not to vote.

Let’s start with the kernel of truth. Imagine there’s an election for a powerful political office that pits Gandalf (the benevolent wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) against Sauron, the despotic dark lord from the same story. If Sauron prevails, millions of people will die or be enslaved, while Gandalf would rule justly if he manages to win. And all you have to do to ensure Gandalf’s victory is check his name on a ballot. If you do so, Gandalf wins; if not, Sauron does.

In this scenario, it seems like you have a moral duty to vote for Gandalf, at least barring some kind of extraordinary exigent circumstance. In a real election, of course, the odds that your vote will make a difference are far smaller than in this stylized example….

However, a large enough difference between the two candidates could potentially justify a duty to vote for the “right” candidate, even if the odds of casting a decisive ballot are very low….

But notice that the duty in question is not an obligation to participate in the process for its own sake. It’s a duty to help good triumph over evil in a situation where you can do so at little or no cost. If you have a moral duty to vote for Gandalf in these types of scenarios, it follows that you also have a moral duty not to vote for Sauron. Indeed, the person who votes for Sauron is more worthy of condemnation than the one who merely abstains. The former is actively helping evil win, while the latter “merely” chooses not to help stop it.

While Gandalf supporters may have a duty to vote, Sauron supporters actually have a duty to abstain from doing so. Ideally, they should stop supporting Sauron entirely. But they at least should not take any actions that increase the likelihood of his victory.

All of the above analysis assumes that the voter knows which candidate is superior and to what degree. But, in reality, we have widespread political ignorance, and most voters often don’t even know very basic facts about how government and politics work. Most are also highly biased in their evaluation of the information they do know….

Unless and until a voter becomes well-informed about the issues and at least reasonably objective in his or her evaluation of political information, she has good reason to question her judgment about which candidate is superior, much less by how much. Thus, she cannot conclude she has a duty to vote to help the “right” side win. She may instead have a presumptive duty to abstain from voting until she meets at least some minimal threshold of political knowledge….

Later in this piece, I not some possible exceptions to situations to the presumptive duty to abstain; there are unusual situations where ignorant voting really is better than no voting, and even unusual situations where ignorance leads to better decisions than knowledge (I expand on the latter possibility in greater detail in Chapter 2 of my book Democracy and Political Ignorance). I also address some other caveats and counterarguments.

4. “How to be a Better Voter“

Some steps you can take to be a better voter, building on a helpful article in Scientific American. I think a wide range of people can do these things. You don’t have to be an academic or policy expert to undertake the task. But I am skeptical that more than a small fraction of the electorate will ever be willing to put in the time and effort.

5. “Suffer the Little Children to Vote“

In this post, I make a tentative argument for letting children vote, so long as they show they have attained a level of political knowledge as high as that of the average adult voter -which is not that high a standard! I expanded on the idea here. I do note the crucial caveat that it may not be feasible to do this, because it’s possible government can’t be trusted to come up with an objective knowledge test for the children (though we do in fact impose such a test on immigrants seeking to become US citizens). Letting knowledgeable children vote is one of my least popular ideas (which is saying no little, given how many other unpopular views I hold!). But I remain unrepentant about it. My nine-year-old daughter is one of the relatively few fans of this policy.

My proposal should be differentiated from the idea of letting parents cast votes on behalf of their children, endorsed by Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance, among others.

6. “Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance,” in Hana Samaržija and Quassim Cassam, eds. The Epistemology of Democracy (Routledge, 2023).

Many of the most serious flaws of voting arise from the fact that most voters tend to be ignorant about government public policy, and highly biased in their evaluation of the political information they do know. In this article, I go over a range of possible strategies for mitigating this problem. Here’s the abstract:

There is broad, though not universal, agreement that widespread voter ignorance and irrational evaluation of evidence are serious threats to democracy. But there is deep disagreement over strategies for mitigating the danger. “Top-down” approaches, such as epistocracy and lodging more authority in the hands of experts, seek to mitigate ignorance by concentrating more political power in the hands of the more knowledgeable segments of the population. By contrast, “bottom-up” approaches seek to either raise the political competence of the general public or empower ordinary people in ways that give them better incentives to make good decisions than conventional ballot-box voting does. Examples of bottom-up strategies include increasing voter knowledge through education, various “sortition” proposals, and also shifting more decisions to institutions where citizens can “vote with their feet.”

This chapter surveys and critiques a range of both top-down and bottom-up strategies. I conclude that top-down strategies have systematic flaws that severely limit their potential. While they should not be categorically rejected, we should be wary of adopting them on a large scale. Bottom-up strategies have significant limitations of their own. But expanding foot voting opportunities holds more promise than any other currently available option. The idea of paying voters to increase their knowledge also deserves serious consideration.

I expand upon the foot-voting approach to mitigating political ignorance in more detail in my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. Sadly, neither this strategy for dealing with political ignorance nor any other is likely to be enacted in time for this year’s election! Any serious reform effort will probably take at least some years to have a significant impact.

7. “If You Don’t Vote, You Still Have Every Right to Complain.”

Feeling down after considering the above? This piece might make you slightly happier; even if you don’t vote, you are justified in criticizing the policies of the winners! I would add that the same logic shows that, if you vote for the winner on the grounds that she is a lesser evil, you are still justified in complaining about her policies. Vote for Cersei over Sauron, when necessary. But then condemn the evil she does. Just make sure not to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when she decides to purge her critics.

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