Last week the New York Times published an op-ed by its columnist Charles M. Blow entitled “The Folly of the Protest Vote,” which took millennials to task for supporting Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein or simply choosing not to vote. Exhorting millennials to vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, Blow said the “lack of enthusiasm” for Clinton among young people could have a “devastating impact” on Clinton’s prospects. Blow concluded his op-ed by stating, rather condescendingly, that “protest voting or not voting isn’t at all principled. It’s dumb, and childish, and self-immolating. I know you’re young, but grow up!”
That is one great example of wrongheaded thinking. Isn’t it amazing how a columnist’s and a newspaper’s extreme devotion to a particular candidate can affect their thinking? In fact, a decision to vote for a third party or to not vote at all is the best way in which people can send a powerful message to the major party candidates and parties and to the political establishment.
Consider the drug war, for example.
Blow’s op-ed was inspired by a talk he recently delivered at Morgan State University in Baltimore, which is one of the nation’s historically black universities. During the Q&A session, a young woman asked Blow to address young people, “particularly young African-Americans,” who were casting a protest vote for a third party candidate or not voting at all.
In an interesting coincidence, Morgan State was where FFF held a one-day conference on the drug war about a year ago. At the conference, which was attended by more than 100 students, the speakers, which included two African-Americans, emphasized the horrors of the drug war — the violence, corruption, destruction, and, of course, the racial bigotry that is inherent in this decades-old failed and immoral federal program.
Now, let’s assume that young African Americans, not only at Morgan but across the country, are sick and tired of the war on drugs and want it ended.
How are they supposed to register their discontent and their preference? By voting for Trump or Clinton? That would be patently ridiculous given that both of them are ardent supporters of the drug war. Despite the fact that the war has been waged for decades, without success and with significant adverse consequences, they want to keep waging it into perpetuity.
So, let’s assume that young African-Americans follow Blow’s and the Times’ advice and go and overwhelmingly vote for either Clinton or Trump.
What are the chances that either Clinton or Trump is going to call for an end to the drug war after the election?
Nil! No chance at all. Whoever is elected is going to assume that the people who voted for him or her did so because they agreed with their political philosophy and policy prescriptions.
On the other hand, let’s assume that 20 percent of young people vote for third-party candidates who favor ending the drug war. Even though their candidates lost the election — and even though they might never have had a realistic chance to win — the fact that so many voters voted for such candidates sends a powerful message to the candidate who does win — and to the entire political establishment — that it’s time to toss the drug war into the dustbin of history.
The same thing can be said about people who don’t vote. When large numbers of people don’t vote, they are saying that they don’t like the system itself and choosing not to sanction it with their vote. What better way to send that message to the political establishment than by not voting at all?
Let’s consider another example. Let’s assume that many young people are just sick and tired of the entire welfare-warfare state paradigm — and its out-of-control spending, debt, taxation, and inflation — to which both Republicans and Democrats are wedded. Suppose they don’t like the enormous amount of money that is taken out of their paychecks to fund Social Security, Medicare, foreign aid to dictators, and other welfare-state programs and decide that want to replace America’s system of mandatory, state-enforced charity with one based on the concept of voluntary charity. Or suppose that many young people are opposed to the U.S. national-security state’s perpetual bombing, assassination, and killing campaigns in the Middle East and want all U.S. troops to be brought home now.
In other words, what if young people are opposed to the welfare-warfare paradigm itself — the system to which both Trump and Clinton and Blow and the Times and other liberals and conservatives are wedded. How do they register that opposition by voting for Clinton or Trump, given that both major-party candidates are ardent supporters of the welfare-warfare state way of life? Wouldn’t an overwhelming vote for either of them just encourage them to believe that people support what they stand for? Isn’t the best — indeed, the only way — to send a message of opposition to the entire welfare-warfare state paradigm is with a protest vote for a third party or by not voting at all?
Blow’s and the Times’ think that young people just need to “grow up” and vote for the lesser of two evils. But what they just don’t get is that for lots of young people — and for that matter, for plenty of older people — ideals and principles still matter. For this group, voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil, especially when both major-party candidates stand for evil things. For people who value principles and ideals and oppose evil, it’s entirely rational to either sit at home Election Day or vote for a third-party candidate whose philosophy and policies are more to their liking.