You’re Not Convincing Anyone

If you’re following this election, you probably have strong feelings about one or both can­didates. Odds are, you’ve tried to convince friends and family to vote one way or another. If that’s you, then you’ve probably had the follow­ing conversation:

Voter A: You should vote for Candidate X be­cause he/she is the lesser of two evils, and we need to make sure the other candidate doesn’t win.

Voter B: I could never vote for Candidate X. He/ She is a disgrace to the party and I won’t cast a ballot for a candidate that I despise.

My point here isn’t to say that anyone should vote for Hillary because Trump is evil, or that people should stay home in protest if they think the party system has failed the public this elec­tion cycle. I’m not here to convince you one or the other is correct. I’m here to emphasize the divide between these two statements, and how they demonstrate fundamentally different con­ceptions of voting. I’m here, most of all, to tell you that if we’re operating on completely differ­ent principles, the argument itself is an exercise in futility.

Voter A believes that the act of voting is funda­mentally a chance to impact the election in a material way. The goal is to influence the out­come of the election, and to improve the odds of electing one candidate or another. In that sense, it’s a strategic decision. Voter A might prefer Jill Stein, but he’ll vote for Hillary Clinton instead if he believes that his vote won’t help Stein, who is doomed, but might help Hillary, who could potentially win. If a certain candidate is judged as incomprehensibly terrible, Voter A will bite the bullet and vote for a candidate he dislikes, or even hates, in order to decrease the likelihood of the terrible candidate being elect­ed. He’ll give up his favorite candidate as a lost cause if need be, if he believes a vote cast for that candidate is a wasted vote. This strategic, “lesser of two evils” mentality is driving a signifi­cant number of Trump and Hillary supporters to vote, many of whom may dislike their candidate, but truly revile the opposition.

Voter B believes that the act of voting is a deci­sion about identity rather than outcome. In this conception, voting for a candidate is a personal matter, an ideological statement. Obviously this voter would prefer that the candidate he sup­ports wins the election, but he won’t hesitate to vote for a lost cause if that cause is a candi­date who he feels represents his beliefs. If there is no such candidate, he may not vote at all, no matter how politically engaged he is. Voter B might hate Hillary and merely dislike Trump, but he won’t vote for a candidate he dislikes just to hurt a candidate he hates. He’ll vote for Johnson, material impact on the election or not. Or, if he hates Trump and merely dislikes Hillary, he may vote for Stein. For this voter, the ballot he casts has significance beyond its meager impact on the candidates’ odds of victory; it is a statement of where he stands, of what he believes. This “voting as a statement of identity” mentality mo­tivates many of those who vote for third party candidates, or write in their preferred choice, or stay home on a particular election despite vot­ing in previous cycles.

Voters who feel deep allegiance to a political party—proud Democrats who would never think about voting red, born-and-bred Republicans who can’t stand the idea of voting blue—seem to fall between the cracks here. Their existence may pose a problem for this concept of dividing voters. Take a die-hard Republican who detests Trump but will vote for him anyway—it seems this voter is voting on identity in one sense, but against it in another. But we can resolve this is­sue by comparing this voter to one who iden­tifies with a candidate despite not identifying with one of that candidate’s positions. It seems that this person is simply a different subset of Voter B.

My point here isn’t to demean either concep­tion of voting. On one hand, voting is a profound statement of belief that says magnitudes about our values, and shouldn’t be thrown away tacti­cally as though it were without significance. On the other hand, it is crucial that we elect capable presidents who will work to fix America’s prob­lems rather than add to them, and so how can we prioritize immaterial value statements over meaningful impacts? I see logic on both sides of the divide. I only hope that others can now see it as well, and have some compassion for those who think and vote differently, however frustrat­ing it may be.