The Dispatch published yesterday an article by Matthew Franck which makes the case for withholding one’s vote from the candidates in this year’s election. Here is the nub of the argument: “What we must consider … is not our role in the outcome of the election (which is negligible, and unknown to us when voting), but the effect on our conscience and character of joining our will to a bad cause.”
Here is a further argument.
Eight years ago, I published an essay for Public Discourse about why I could not vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. “Vote as if your ballot determines nothing whatsoever—except the shape of your own character,” the piece concluded. “Vote as if the public consequences of your action weigh nothing next to the private consequences. The country will go whither it will go, when all the votes are counted. What should matter the most to you is whither you will go, on and after this November’s election day.”
There is nothing in what I said then that I would now retract. I rejected the idea that I, as one individual, must treat my choice as confined to the binary of Clinton versus Trump, as though the weight of the outcome were on me alone. It is frequently the case that we vote for one major-party presidential candidate principally because we are against the other one—usually because we find “our guy” a less than optimal choice but “the other guy” strongly repellent. But when we conclude that both of them are wholly unfit for office, our habitual partisan commitments, and our fond hope that the one representing “our side” will be normal, or guided by normal people, do not compel us to cast a vote in that direction. What we must consider, I argued, is not our role in the outcome of the election (which is negligible, and unknown to us when voting), but the effect on our conscience and character of joining our will to a bad cause.
The last eight years have made me more certain I was right. In 2020, although the Trump administration had done some things I could applaud (Supreme Court appointments topping the list), I still found Trump himself wholly unqualified for an office he had never learned to respect or master. This was even before the insurrection of January 6, 2021, which, I have argued, constitutionally disqualified him. And Joe Biden? Please. He became my senator shortly before I entered high school, and I had long watched his career with consternation and loathing. I didn’t want to have to defend, even to myself, having cast a vote for either man, and once again I threw away my presidential vote on a hopeless write-in.
Franck makes this perceptive observation:
For at the end of the day, that is what voting is: a kind of investment. Not of our money, but of ourselves—our will, our intention, our passion, and our conscience. Of course, our investment can be a light matter to us, if we cast our vote in a throwaway mood, thinking “better this guy than the other guy.” Then we might cut our emotional losses when he disappoints us. “Live and learn.” Yet paradoxically, if it took a great effort to “screw your courage to the sticking place,” as Lady Macbeth put it—if, that is, you had to swallow hard to vote for a candidate, and he won—you may find your investment in him very heavy, and your felt need to defend him equally so.
As a resident of South Carolina, where I know my vote for president will make no difference in the election, it is easy to vote my conscience. However, it is arguably the right thing even in a swing state.
With regard to deontology: A vote is an authorization for an elected offical to act. To vote for someone who is unqualified and who has demonstrated a willingness to abuse power is to bear some culpability for that person’s misuse of power in office.
With regard to consequences: In the last several elections people have been pressured to vote for an immoral and unqualified candidate because of the perceived consequences the opponent’s victory. But it is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to stop someone else from doing wrong. Further, it is only when voters will not vote for candidates who violate their principles that they have any leverage with the party to put forward better candidates. For instance, if pro-life voters vote for Donald Trump (or Joe Biden) despite his recent attacks on pro-life legislation (or longstanding support for abortion), we will get more candidates opposed to pro-life legislation. If conservatives had withheld their votes from Trump in 2020, delivering him a decisive loss, Republicans would likely have a conservative running for president now. They would likely have a stronger position in Congress which, along with the Supreme Court, would have been able to be a stronger check on the Biden administration. Doing the right thing won’t necessarily bring good consequences in the medium term, but in that case it likely would have.
With regard to virtue: This is what Franck’s article focused on. How will my vote shape my character? What vices will it lead me to start to defend if I attach myself to a vicious candidate. Note that this works both ways in this election. There are some people who voted for Trump who have started to defend his moral defects as virtues. There are others who who voted for Biden out of concerns regarding Trump and have begun to shift their positions on abortion or other moral issues. To be sure that there are others who have not allowed their votes to deform their character or moral sensibilities, but this is nonetheless and important consideration—especially for those inclined not to leave the presidential line blank this year.
Dan Olinger says
My thoughts exactly. And like you I am comforted by the fact that my vote for president will truly make no difference in SC.