Should You Ever Vote Third Party in the United States?

It would seem that if there were ever a time that a third party candidate could make a decent run, it would have been in 2016. With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the Democratic and Republican parties nominated the two most disliked general election presidential candidates in history. By late April of this year, Hillary Clinton had an average net favorability rating of -20, while Trump’s was a remarkable -40; since 1980, no candidate for office at that stage had ever averaged less than -10, and most had never dipped below -5. Trump was able to claim the nomination of his party, despite having no political experience at any level, by claiming his disconnect from the world of politics to be a feature, not a bug. Clinton, the consummate insider, nearly lost a second nomination contest to Sanders, a man relatively unknown when the primaries began, and who was not even a formal member of the Democratic Party at that time. Beyond the presidential race, trust in Congress has been below 20% for years, and routinely flirts with the single digits. More Americans than ever are identifying as independents, which now constitutes the most popular partisan affiliation (albeit with some important caveats). Every indication suggests that a great mass of voters are sick of politics as usual, and sick of the Democratic and Republican parties.

And yet, all third party candidates combined together received less than 5% of the national vote, with Johnson getting 3.27% and Stein receiving 1.06%. When asked a month before the election, barely 30% of registered voters even recognized the names Stein or Johnson. Johnson’s polling average of 10% in October was not even close to the best a third party candidate has ever done — in 1992, Perot peaked at 37% in one opinion poll, averaged above 20% before temporarily dropping out, and eventually earned 19% of the popular vote. Despite perhaps the most favorable electoral environment of all time, third parties remain seemingly irrelevant.

Though the vote for third parties was small, it was not inconsequential. The number of votes Stein received in Michigan is five times greater than the margin Clinton lost by in that state; in Wisconsin, it was nearly double the margin, and in Pennsylvania, exceeded the margin by thousands. Had these Stein voters instead voted for the next closest ideological choice, Clinton would have won the electoral college and thus the presidency. Alternatively, if half of those who voted for Johnson (who split voters off from both the left and right), and all those who voted for independent conservative Evan McMullin, had instead voted for Trump, he would have not only won the electoral college vote but also the popular vote. Third party votes matter. Greatly.

Support for Stein or Johnson was rarely casual; those who advocated for them tended to do so vigorously. They used social media to appeal to their friends and family to “vote their conscience and not their fears”, conducted amateur research to demonstrate that the political system is rigged, and protested in front of each party’s national convention. Much of what motivates these activists is real and important. Washington has suffered from paralyzing legislative gridlock for nearly a decade. Denial of any victory on the other side at all costs has now become a political norm. The base of each party perceives themselves as ignored and mistreated by their party elites. Yet, despite all this, the activists’ appeals largely fall on deaf ears. If they do get friends, family, or strangers to respond at all, they are told that they are pursuing a hopeless fantasy, and that their actions will only help to elect the least desirable candidate for office…and I, with genuine sympathy for their cause, admiration for their efforts, and great frustration with our broken political system, say to them this: Listen to your friends and family. Do not vote for third party candidates.

I want to demonstrate to third party supporters why their efforts are futile, but in a hope to redirect their efforts to causes that have a greater chance of fixing the system they are legitimately upset with. I am not writing from the perspective of someone who thinks the system as currently constructed is working well enough, or that a choice between Clinton and Trump was adequate. I even began pursuing a PhD in Political Science primarily out of my interest in third party politics and alternative systems of governance. Unfortunately, in my decade of study, I have only become convinced of what my colleagues already were, and what anyone honestly studying the science of human behavior and political gamesmanship would be forced to conclude: the barriers to a viable third party in America are not just high, but insurmountable.

My Argument

First, caveats. This essay is directed more towards those who defected away from Clinton to a third party candidate, and as such, I will be referring to Clinton more than I will Trump. Nevertheless, all that I argue here applies generally to the other side as well — those who genuinely thought a Trump presidency would produce better outcomes than a Clinton presidency should have voted for Trump, not Johnson or anyone else. Similarly, it’s important to understand that my argument does not apply simply to this election year. I won’t be making any arguments based on the 2016 candidates themselves, nor am I interested in attacking or defending them. I am not interested in making you feel more warmly about “establishment” candidates, nor convincing you that third party candidates are substantively right or wrong. In fact, my argument only requires you to think that one major party candidate was at least slightly, infinitesimally preferable to the other.

I want to address a number of potential reasons why someone might want to vote for a third party candidate:

1) A belief that, in a given election, one of the third party candidates can win.

2) A hope that, by making a good showing this year, a third party could potentially win in the following election, or soon thereafter.

3) An attempt to scare a major party into doing what they want by threatening to withhold support for them if they don’t.

4) A moral sense that they simply cannot bring themselves to support a candidate who does not meet a minimum ethical or inspirational standard.

In the first three cases, I will demonstrate the actual impossibility of such scenarios occurring. In the latter case, I will argue that such idealism is actually even more morally compromised than the alternative of holding one’s nose.

Finally, I want to do more than just pour cold water on those who hope for (and deserve) a better political system than the one with which we are presently stuck. This article will conclude with an examination of what exactly would (and, almost more importantly, would not) be accomplished by creating a viable multiparty system in America, and some ideas as to how we actually could go about doing just that. As vigorously as I will be arguing against third parties under the current system, please keep in mind that I support them, in theory, with equal vigor.

Duverger’s Law

I said before that third party success in America is not just unlikely, but impossible. I do not make that assertion lightly. Duverger’s Law, one of the most stable findings in political science, explains that the difficulty third parties have taking hold in the USA is, above all else, due to its voting systems.

Duverger’s Law states that there is a simple relationship between the type of electoral system maintained by a country, and the number of major political parties that can be supported under that regime. Simply put, countries that hold plurality-rule elections will have a two-party system, and countries that use proportional representation (PR) will have a multi-party system.

So what the hell does that mean?

A plurality system is what we have in the United States — the victor of any given election is simply the individual who receives the most votes. Under proportional representation systems (found in Spain or Israel, for instance), citizens vote for parties, and party representation is awarded in proportion to the percentage of vote received, so a party winning 50% of the vote gets 50% of the seats, while a party winning 10% still gets 10% of the seats, and so on. In a PR system, the Prime Minister is not directly elected, but is the head of the party that either controls a majority of the seats in government, or has cobbled together a coalition government with enough other parties to add up to a majority.

The very simple logic underlying Duverger’s Law is the same logic that underlies most of economics and political science — people will engage in behavior when they benefit from it, and change their behavior when they do not. In a PR system, when people vote for minor parties, they receive clear benefits for doing so, and so these parties are able to survive over time. In a plurality system (what we have in the US), votes for minor parties never translate into electoral or even policy victories, and so third party voters never are rewarded for their efforts except perhaps in the personal satisfaction that they have voted their conscience — enough for some voters, but not enough for many others.

What gives this law its power, what makes this law a law, is that it has never been violated: no country with a plurality voting system has three or more dominant parties.

Statements such as these are often not convincing, though, and so I prefer to teach by extended example. What follows is a stylized hypothetical involving what happens in two fictional political cultures over the course of three elections. The purpose of this story is to show how the above logic works in actual practice. It also will demonstrate that having a functioning multiparty system has nothing to do with the characteristics of the people or politicians who live in a given place — it’s all about the voting system! While I will be making up the number of parties, their relative popularities, and the issues that arise, the logic of how voters respond to these assumptions is drawn entirely from real life. If we were to rerun the following scenario a thousand times, we would end up with the same result.

A Tale of Two Cities

Suppose, in the distant future, we establish civilization on Mars. A million citizens are shipped to the planet for colonization, and are randomly selected to populate one of two cities on the surface, Pluralia and Proportionalia. These cities are identical in every single way — demographics, geography, climate, citizen preferences, etc. — save for one: Pluralia will hold its elections by plurality rule (remember, our current system), while Proportionalia will hold elections using proportional representation (again, like much of Europe). Because both cities are otherwise identical, and citizens have not yet had an opportunity to test, shape or understand the political systems to which they belong, the first election in each city produces identical results. Five political parties run, named simply for the sake of ease, with their real life counterparts in parentheses: Center-Left (Democrats), Center-Right (Republicans), Far-Left (Greens), Far-Right (Constitution Party or ‘Alt-Right’), and Mixed (Libertarians).

The first election is held, and the results are identical in both cities. We’re now going to follow how these two systems deviate from one another over a very short period of time. The chart below shows how each party does in each of three elections, for each city separately. The numbers are blue when the party improves over the last election, and red if it’s showing is worse. The Winner column shows which party or coalition of parties wins each election. Don’t look at the chart right now — read along, and refer back to the chart as needed.

Proportionalia

Election 1: Because it uses a PR system, all five parties receive representation within the Proportionalia government. Far Left and Far Right do the worst, but they are still rewarded with a combined one fifth of the seats in government. Center-Left is the largest party, but in order to form a stable ruling coalition, it must be certain that it controls over 50% of the vote. Therefore, Center-Left and Far-Left enter into a coalition that controls 55% of the vote. Far-Left pledges to support Center-Left on a number of issues, with the expectation that Center-Left will in turn ensure that a couple of Far-Left’s most important issues are addressed adequately. However, politics being what it is, this is not what happens. Instead, Center-Left repeatedly pushes Far-Left’s concerns aside, and by time the next election season begins, Far-Left has received nothing for its end of the bargain, which they have upheld. What’s worse, several major political figures in Center-Left have been caught embezzling public money! Voters, understandably, are upset.

Election 2: Voters abandon Center-Left, some for Far-Left, and some for Center-Right, which has run on a popular anti-corruption platform, and which has also attracted some voters away from Far-Right. Because of their considerable ideological overlap, Center-Left and Far-Left are more than willing to form a coalition again, but their combined power only totals 49%. Center-Right and Far-Right do the same, but face the same problem, controlling only 41% of the vote. Mixed, despite doing worse than almost any other party, now has an enormous amount of power — it gets to decide who to form a coalition with, thereby controlling whether the right or left takes power. After some debate, Mixed joins with Center-Left and Far-Left, and their coalition controls 59% of the vote. This time, things go differently. Far-Left, now slightly more powerful than Center-Left, is the dominant party, and is able to enact much of its desired legislation. Center-Left has learned its lesson, and now vigorously patrols itself to root out corruption before it can take hold. Mixed is able to get some of what it wants too, as Far-Left knows they must be placated to remain within the coalition.

Election 3: Center-Left does better this time, owing to its commitment to better ethics. Far-Left does slightly worse, as many Center-Left voters return to the fold. The formation of a coalition government still depends on the choice of Mixed, who having extracted what they wanted from the left, now decide to form with Center-Right and Far-Right, to get what it wants from the right. A coalition between Center-Right, Far-Right, and Mixed takes power, and Proportionalia is now starting to look like a city with a young but relatively stable five party system.

Pluralia

Election 1: As Center-Left received the highest vote total, its preferred candidate becomes President of Pluralia, while the remaining parties get nothing. Members of Center-Right and Far-Left both are unhappy with the results, but largely feel they are capable of winning in future elections. Meanwhile, given how poorly Far-Right and Mixed performed, their supporters already have strong doubts about their future viabilities. Many members of Far-Right now realize that if enough of them had voted for Center-Right, and perhaps convinced some members of Mixed to do so as well, they would have at least ended up with a party that agrees with them on at least some matters. These voters plan to vote for Center-Right in the future. There are some members of Far-Right, of course, who find this pill too bitter to swallow. Their ethics too sacrosanct to violate, they continue to support Far-Right. During its first administration, Center-Left ignores the wishes of the members of Far-Left, as they do not belong to a shared coalition, and feel no need to placate them. As in Proportionalia, several members of Center-Left are also implicated in a corruption scandal. While many supporters of Center-Left wish to punish their party leaders for this malfeasance, they do not believe Far-Left is capable of winning, and so continue to vote for Center-Left, as it is at least preferable to Center-Right or, god forbid, Far-Right.

Election 2: Center-Right now takes full power, and the other parties get nothing. For the second time in a row, Far-Left does reasonably well, but is not even close to being able to win an election. Many Far-Left members realize they will have to throw their support behind Center-Left to avoid living under conservative regimes in the future. The many members of Far-Right who switched over to Center-Right are rewarded for their choice by avoiding life under another administration by Center-Left. The remaining members of Mixed are equally unhappy under Center-Left or Center-Right, but for different reasons, and many of them realize that by voting for Center-Left or Center-Right next time, they can at least control which undesirable world they will live in.

Election 3: Almost entirely due to the mass exodus from Far-Left, Center-Left is able to reclaim governmental power. It did not, however, make any efforts to reform itself after the corruption scandal, knowing that it would be able to win the next election simply by counting on members of Far-Left to vote for them — after all, what other choice did they have? Meanwhile, the Far-Left, Far-Right, and Mixed parties are more or less decimated. These parties will continue to exist over the next decades, but only because they are maintained by a small percentage of voters who cannot stomach the pragmatism necessary to vote for one of the two major parties. Each election, these voters will try to appeal to members of Center-Left and Center-Right to switch to their party, but owing to the fact that most voters do not share their more radical and/or nuanced values, and to the fact that most voters don’t pay much attention to Martian politics, defections are very rare and very temporary. Pluralia has quickly and clearly become a stable two-party system.

Proportionalia and Pluralia, though originally identical, now have very different political realities after just a few elections. In Proportionalia, a multiparty system thrives. Members of most parties can legitimately claim that they have seen at least some of their preferred policies enacted into law. A corrupt party, Center-Left, quickly reformed itself out of the great fear that voters would flock into the capable hands of other, similar parties. Mixed, the least popular party, has actually had a fair degree of control over the power dynamics of Proportionalia. On the other hand, in Pluralia, only two parties remain in any meaningful sense. Only members of Center-Left and Center-Right can claim to have had any policies enacted on their behalf, and even many of these policies are watered down versions of what they would really prefer. Center-Left has been restored to power despite a total lack of commitment to ethical reform. The “third” parties only continue to exist in any form due to the pride and commitment to idealism of its members, but cannot realistically hope to gain power, even under dire circumstances. All of this has occurred because of one simple fact of human nature — behaviors that are rewarded are generally continued; behaviors that are not are generally abandoned. The multiparty system has been preserved in Proportionalia, not because its people are smarter, more diverse, more daring, more sophisticated, or more attentive, but simply because it employs a system that rewards its citizens for voting for minor parties.

Further Barriers to Success

Many committed 3rd party supporters, having read this far, might point out that Duverger’s Law is partially dependent on what appears to be circular reasoning. Third parties have no chance of winning because people refuse to vote for them, and people refuse to vote for them because they have no chance of winning. It would therefore be tempting to think that just because no plurality-rule system has transitioned from a two-party system to a multiparty system does not mean that, with sufficient effort, it can’t happen now. We just need to get the word out! We just need people to wake up! We all just need to band together!

Unfortunately, there are a number of additional reasons why that kind of optimism is unwarranted, and that starting up a viable third party at this point in our history, with our current voting system, is just too difficult:

1) Inattentiveness: Most people do not pay much attention to politics. Less than a third of the public even watches cable news; voters do barely better than chance at knowing where the parties stand on even basic and well-known issues like abortion; less than 45% of citizens even vote in elections that don’t feature a presidential race; less than half can name the party that currently controls each branch of Congress. To expect to get the public invested in third party voting, which they scarcely understand, barely consider interesting, and generally think of as a hopeless cause and/or a waste of their vote is to expect too much.

2) Stubbornness: Worse, political scientists find that when people do tend to pay attention to politics, they don’t tend to be very receptive to persuasive messaging. Most people don’t just like one party or the other — they identify with that party, or at the very least identify against the other party. While a plurality (37%) of people identify as independent, most of these people will consistently choose one party over the other over time and across the issues. Only about 10% of the public is truly independent in the sense that they have no partisan preferences…and unfortunately, this group largely consists of the people who don’t pay attention to politics, as discussed above. This leaves an extremely small number of people who both pay enough attention to politics to hear the call to action by third parties, but are disconnected enough to not immediately reject the message as inconsistent with their own preexisting beliefs and allegiances.

3) Ideological Variety: This would not be enough of a basis for a third party revolution as it is, but even this example assumes that third party voters would all be coalescing around a single third party candidate. Instead, we know that the third party vote would be split, as in Pluralia and Proportionalia, between the far left, the far right, libertarians, and perhaps many other designations. If the combined vote of all sympathetic independents isn’t enough, it won’t be enough when it is further split across three or four alternative parties.

4) The Novelty Wears Off: Then, even if someone were somehow able to get the third party message out, and a single third party candidate rapidly began ascending in popularity, there’s no reason to think they’d be able to stay in that position long enough for it to translate into actual votes. Political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck have identified what they call the “Discovery-Scrutiny-Decline Cycle”, which describes how and why most long-shot candidates who capture the public’s attention do so only briefly. Take Herman Cain in 2012, for example. In a race where many Republican voters seemingly wanted to find a worthy challenger to Mitt Romney, he briefly enjoyed a huge burst of public support. The reasons for this were similar to the reasons Trump has done well. He was seen as a political outsider with a great resume of business experience and a willingness to speak in plain terms. The media loves a dark horse story, and was only too happy to cover his strengths as he rose, briefly, to first place in the primary. The only narrative the media loves more, however, is the ‘fall from grace’, and when he plateaued, he received intense scrutiny of both his personal life (multiple allegations of sexual harassment) and his weak command of foreign policy. Within weeks of gaining his frontrunner status, he was forced to drop out the race entirely.

There is every reason to believe this pattern would repeat itself with third party candidates (especially if you believe the mainstream media is complicit in upholding the two-party system). In fact, it did, to a certain extent — when Stein received even modest media attention, it tended to focus on her lack of experience, and her more unpopular political attitudes, such as her concerns about the safety of vaccines and wi-fi technology. Her running mate almost immediately met opposition due to his (relatively minor) associations with 9/11 Truthers and Holocaust deniers. Johnson, on the other hand, was a stronger candidate, but most of the coverage of him focused on his Aleppo and Tubman gaffes. Even substantively, while coverage of him focused on the positions that many average Americans are arguably warm towards (opposition to the carceral state, foreign wars, and corruption), if he had risen higher in popularity, how long would it have taken before the focus had been placed on his less popular stances (open immigration, dismantling of the regulatory state, and decriminalization of drugs)? Not long, and if you don’t believe me, ask Ross Perot.

5) Ground Game: Finally, there’s simple logistics and financing. Politics is so much more than the opinions of the public. Those who are organized, attentive, wealthy, and connected can get what they want, and those who are not, cannot. To the extent that this is true for interest group competitions over policy, it is even more true for political parties themselves. For a third party to be successful, it has to be more than just a figurehead presiding over a skeleton. It must have tremendous resources in the form of volunteers, full-time staff, media presence, social influence, and, of course, lots and lots of money. No third party comes close to fulfilling these basic requirements, and is unlikely to do so without, perhaps, decades of careful planning. For the two major parties, their institutional structures are already in place, and have been so for at least a half century. That’s a hell of a head start.

To properly understand the magnitude of this problem, we must look at the current state of the third parties. I will even give them an advantage by considering all third parties as one uniform force, even though we know how fractured the many third parties are. As it currently stands, there are two independent U.S. Senators, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, neither of whom are actual members of an existing third party, and both of whom are fully committed members of the Democratic voting bloc. They owe their success to their very state-specific popularity in Vermont and Maine. None of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are members of a third party. Of the fifty governors, one is independent, Governor Walker of Alaska, but his success is due to his close ties to the Democratic party. Maybe all this hides greater success at the local level? Not so — there are 7,382 state legislators in this country, and only 25 of them are something other than Democrat or Republican, less than a third of a percent of the total. Finally, focusing on money, both the Libertarian and Green parties had less than a million dollars cash in hand two months before the election for use in the presidential race, compared to $40–60 million for the major parties, each. To have less than a million dollars to spend would be a death knell for Democrats or Republicans, and it is so much worse for the third parties, who badly need this money to even get the word out that they exist. Remember, only 30% of voters knew who Stein or Johnson are. How bad is this likely to be at the state or local level?

To summarize, voters don’t pay attention, and won’t hear third party appeals. When they do, most won’t change their mind. Those few who do will still split their vote across many parties, all of whom are severely underfunded. If you want a way out of this problem, it will require you changing the system. The citizens of Proportionalia, with a robust multiparty system, aren’t smarter, or more open-minded, or fairer than those of Pluralia, they just vote third party because they can see an immediate, tangible benefit of doing so.

Thus far, I have argued why third parties cannot win now, and under our current system, cannot win ever. There are, however, other reasons why people may choose to vote third party without holding any belief that a third party candidate can win the office. A less common motivation may be to incentivize one of the two major parties to better represent one’s views by using third parties as a protest signal. A much more common reason may be that people simply want to vote for the candidate that best represents their beliefs and values, regardless of whether this could ever cause actual political change. While both of these motivations at least do not rest upon the false assumption of the possibility of victory, they are still both deeply flawed.

Playing Chicken with Democracy

Some people want to use a third party vote as a means to force at least one of the two major parties to shift its policies in their direction. Their logic, using an individual on the left as an example, goes something like this:

“Right now, the Democrats aren’t as far enough to the left as I’d like. I, and others like me, will vote for Jill Stein. If Hillary loses, or comes close to losing, the Democrats will see that they could have won with the support of third party voters, and will be so eager to make sure that they don’t lose in a similar fashion next time that they’ll change their policies to win me over. Four years of Trump, however bad that might be, will be worth a permanent and meaningful shift in the priorities of the Democrats.”

This is an admirable strategy, drawing on the basic principles of free market competition…but it just doesn’t seem to work.

It is perhaps best to start by examining any evidence that might tell us whether or not this strategy would work. If it does, then when third party candidates arguably cause a major party candidate to lose vote share (or to lose the election altogether), we should observe that the party in question adopts some of the third party platform to become more competitive in the next election. Luckily, we have several examples of this happening in recent history — Thurmond in 1948, Wallace in 1968, Perot in 1992, and Nader in 2000. So what happened after these elections? Thurmond ran against Truman in 1948 to provide a true Dixiecrat (racist) alternative to the incumbent Democrat, and Truman nearly lost the election, but Thurmond’s move was essentially the death rattle of the Dixiecrats. They continued to incrementally lose power within the Democratic Party until the mid-1960s, when they effectively joined the Republicans. In 1968, George Wallace also ran as a pro-segregation alternative, and did well enough to nearly cost Nixon the election, but the Republican platform gave very little explicit lip service to segregationist policies in the following decade. In 1992, Perot likely did cost Bush reelection, but there is simply no evidence that the Republicans adopted any of the unique elements of his policy agenda.

Finally, Nader (arguably) cost Gore the 2000 election, while running as a more liberal alternative to the Democrats. We’ll spend a bit more time on this one, because it most closely mirrors our current situation — a loss for the Democrats caused in part by defection from its ideologically extreme wing. Following Gore’s loss, the reaction of the mainstream left was to recoil in horror from Nader, not to embrace his principles. Nader quickly became a hated figure within the Democratic Party, and among even its casual members in the public. The Democrats of the 2000s, to be sure, did not respond to this historic loss by bringing some of Nader’s ideas into their fold. Instead, they maintained the neoliberal Washington Consensus that he so vigorously opposed, and almost unanimously voted along with the Republicans to enter a major foreign war just two years later. Rather than attempting to work within the structure of the Democratic Party to set the agenda further to the left, he made himself a pariah, and arguably made his personal politics less viable within the party.

Given that strategic withholding of votes seems to be a decent strategy in theory, why does it never seem to actually work? There’s a few possible answers:

1. For most people, politics is more social than it is ideological. Strategic withholding does not factor in the potential reputational downside that spoiling an election carries in real life. Now that Hillary lost, has the Democratic Party really begun soul searching? Or have establishment supporters simply vilified Stein and her supporters in the same way they did to Nader after 2000?
2. The protest signal being sent to the party is relatively weak. All that a third party vote tells the party is that you preferred someone else, but there are so many reasons why those preferences might exist. Hillary lost, sure, but is the party likely to interpret this as dislike for its policies or dislike for Hillary? After all, given her high unfavorables, how difficult would it be for the DNC to convince themselves that they can win in 2020 by simply nominating a more likeable candidate, while changing fundamentally nothing about their policies? Given how few voters are reliably ideological, it is in fact probably true that they could.
3. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Democrats might know they are losing some voters on the far left by not moving further in their direction, but also know that they could lose even more moderate voters by moving away from them. If they gain back the 1.5% of Stein voters in 2020 by pursuing single-payer health care or carbon taxes or social justice, they might lose more than 1.5% of voters who don’t care much at all about these issues, but don’t want new taxes, or a disruption to their health coverage, or involvement in a “PC culture”.

While it’s nice to think that one can force the parties out to the extremes by withholding one’s vote, there’s really very little empirical or theoretical evidence to think that it would be successful. Instead, one purchases a relatively tiny chance to get more of what they want in the future by certainly getting a lot less of what they want now in the present.

Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

Source: Pinterest, insane people

Everything we have discussed so far has been about political outcomes. In all of the scenarios I have presented, the hypothetical third party voter is trying to realize meaningful change, in the form of third party victory, or at least policy concessions. I suspect, however, that for many third party voters, their choice will have much less to do with outcomes than with a commitment to moral purity.

Our decision over who to vote for should above all else be a matter of ethics, but which ethics? Broadly speaking, ethical arguments can be categorized as either deontological or utilitarian. In the case of the former, we judge the goodness of an action by the nature of the action itself, and for the latter, we judge it by its consequences. On one hand, we can judge the ethics of our vote choice by the goodness of the choice itself. On the other hand, it’s all about whether the world becomes a better or worse place as a result of our choice. Under certain electoral systems, there may not be much of a disconnect between these two ways of thinking, as a dilemma arises only if voters have a compelling reason to vote for someone other than their most preferred candidate. In a PR system, as we have seen, most voters aren’t penalized for voting for whichever party they believe in the most, as there is a very good chance that a small party can benefit from their vote, and a very small chance that it will benefit a hated candidate. In our system, unfortunately, there is a disconnect. If one votes for the lesser of two evils, one casts their vote for a disliked candidate to prevent an even worse one from taking power, and must live with the consequences of stamping their approval onto the disapproved. If one votes their conscience, they keep their hands clean, but increase the likelihood that they get the worst of all outcomes.

It will come as no surprise to those reading this far that I take the utilitarian side of this dilemma. Politics is, at its most basic, a battle over who gets what, when, and how. When we consider our political ethics, therefore, our primary consideration should be for how our actions affect society at large. When we vote, we contribute (however infinitesimally) to an increased likelihood of one candidate winning the race, and a decreased likelihood for all others. By time we face the general election ballot, we have no control over the choices before us, just which of them we end up with. We make society better, therefore, not necessarily by choosing a candidate that will improve the status quo (maybe none of them will!), but often by choosing bad over worse. It’s often difficult for us to think of morality in these relative terms, but it is the cornerstone of many of our best systems of thought. In economics, the best course of action is whatever offers the most benefits compared to the nearest realistic alternative. In experimental science, the effect of an action is what occurs in the world relative to what would have occurred if a different action were taken.

Whatever horrors or disappointments one might imagine Hillary Clinton bringing upon the world, only one other person, Donald Trump, could have been chosen in her place. Johnson and Stein, as we now see, did not even come remotely close to being competitive. If we believe that a world with President Clinton is better, even slightly, than a world with President Trump, it is our moral duty to do what we can to ensure that we get President Clinton…even if we are ultimately unhappy with whatever may come. Voting for Clinton does not put any of her blood on your hands; what you would be responsible for is a slight increase in the quality of the world compared to the alternative, if you do in fact believe she is even marginally preferable.

There is often an air of moral superiority among those who refuse to hold their nose and compromise by voting for the lesser of two evils. I submit, however, that those who do are the ones who should be found morally wanting. If you say to yourself that you cannot bring yourself to vote for someone who does not inspire you, or even disgusts you, I argue that you, too, are thinking in terms of utility — the difference is that the only utility you are considering is your own. We don’t like to feel like we have shook hands with the devil, but only we have to live with that psychic pain, which is both minor and fleeting. It is the whole rest of the world that has to live with the outcomes of what all of our decisions have resulted in, and those outcomes won’t be psychological. They will be material, long-lasting, and severe. Because Trump won, already in two weeks, the government hiring freeze and immigration bans have disrupted the lives of thousands of people, and many millions may lose their health insurance depending on how Obamacare is handled, leading to thousands of preventable deaths a year. Hundreds of millions would be affected by a downturn in the economy caused by mismanagement of foreign relations, such as the creation of an unnecessary trade war through tariffs, or a worsened national bond rating due to decreased faith in America abroad. Tens of millions of the most vulnerable among us would be severely affected by a decrease in funding for governmental services. Many programs in the arts and humanities already risk losing federal funding. Multiple future generations will be affected by a few potential Supreme Court picks. The list is long and varied. If the only thing we can find on the other side of the ledger is a moment of frustration, a day or two of depression and disappointment from voting for the lesser of two evils, then a choice to not do so is astonishingly selfish.

What Now, Then?

In conclusion, a vote for a third party candidate serves no justifiable purpose. Due to the logic of Duverger’s Law, these candidates cannot win, now or ever. Attempts to agitate for them will fall upon a sea of deaf ears, and most of whom receive the message will promptly reject it. To make any minor party strong enough to compete with the major parties will require more money and active participation than we can expect. Withholding our votes from the major parties to force them into paying us lip service in the future just does not appear to work. Voting only for those who meet our full moral approval constitutes an act entirely of self-consideration, and a flippant dismissal of the well-being of our fellow citizens, who will bear the consequences of our actions. Knowing all this, we have no real choice but to vote for the lesser of two evils. The picture I have painted is bleak, to be sure. While fully admitting that our two-party system is terribly broken, I have nonetheless argued that it cannot be fixed under our current election laws. To end things on a weakly positive note, I will suggest a better way forward than voting for third party candidates as an exercise in futility.

Before I do, though, I want to start by pointing out that even if you got a robust multiparty system, you may be sorely disappointed. Many people convince themselves that opening US politics to new parties is a panacea for all our problems, but it is not, as many troubled countries with several strong parties can surely attest. For one, just because another party is able to gain enough power to be relevant does not mean they will be able to actually make major changes. Even if Jill Stein became president tomorrow, she would find very quickly how little she’d be able to do. Ultimately, those of us who support radical political change are mostly undone by a simple fact — not enough other people want what we want. A robust green party does not necessarily make single-payer healthcare more likely, it just gives those who vigorously support it a partisan identity and a home for their interests. If you are disappointed with the policies of our government now, you would still in all likelihood be disappointed with its policies under a multiparty system.

That said, I do think there are many advantages of having more than two parties. First, political identity is meaningful, and it is no small contribution to a well-functioning democratic system than to allow people who feel cast aside by the two major parties now to feel truly represented by someone. Second, citizens deserve enough parties to accommodate for a number of different types of policy packages. There is no reason, for instance, to think that a pro-choice position must be married to a progressive tax system, or environmental protection. Having only two parties restricts the number of bundles available to the public to two. Third, something like free market “competition” between parties would actually be possible. Minority voters often complain that they don’t like the Democrats, but know that the alternative would only ever be worse. In turn, the Democrats know they don’t have to do anything for people of color in order to win their vote indefinitely, so they feel no pressure to do so. In a multiparty system, these voters could simply exit. Finally, if it can be helped, we should never have to make a choice between the candidate we like best and the candidate that can win. We don’t have that luxury under this system, but we could under another.

So how might we actually achieve the goal of creating a multiparty democracy in the United States? Admittedly, no matter what route we consider, the chances of successfully doing so are extremely slim, but some routes are slightly less slim than others. As explained earlier, to get a multiparty system, we have to replace our plurality voting system with something else. But what? It could be a PR system, which might be attractive for several reasons, but it doesn’t have to be. It would also be particularly difficult to achieve, as getting it would require heavily modifying our constitution. It may even face some amount of cultural backlash, as average Americans might regard the replacement of the system they’ve been familiar with all their lives for something practiced more commonly in Europe as being unpatriotic.

Another alternative would be to advocate for a change only to the voting rules themselves. Remember that the aspect of PR systems that makes minor parties viable is that people don’t have anything to lose by voting for them. Voting in the PR system automatically accomplishes this, but so would replacing our plurality-wins voting system with something else. One such replacement rule would be Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). Under IRV, citizens do not vote for a single candidate; instead, they rank all the candidates in order of preference. A Stein voter, for instance, could rank her first, Hillary second, Johnson third, and Trump fourth. Then, when the votes are tabulated, just like our system, any candidate who has a majority of 1st place choices win. If no one does, then the candidate with the least amount of support is eliminated. For all those who ranked her first, their second choice becomes their new first choice, and the process starts over, repeating until one candidate is a clear majority winner. Under this system, Stein voters get to vote their conscience without increasing the likelihood that Trump wins. You can have your cake and it eat, too.

There are other voting systems that have this useful property as well. Approval Voting allows voters to put down either a 0 or 1, indicating approval or disapproval, for every candidate, and the candidate receiving the highest amount of approval wins. This would allow voters to “vote” for multiple candidates at once. Another system, Range Voting, will be familiar to anyone who has ever used Netflix. Instead of voting for a candidate, you simply rate them on a scale of 1–10, indicating how much you like them. The candidate with the highest approval rating wins office.

What is nice about changing the system in this manner, rather than pursuing a PR system, is it would be easier to actually accomplish. Replacing the plurality-wins rule would only require changing the method by which the states choose their electors in the electoral college. This, happily, would not even require changing the US constitution, but only the rules at the state level. A number of states have already begun a similar process to eliminate the electoral college altogether by agreeing to select all their electors via the winner of the US popular vote once a critical mass of states choose to do the same. Something similar could be accomplished for any of the above voting arrangements.

Another attractive feature of these systems is that there’s no reason to assume the change would be automatically opposed by the Democrats or Republicans, who of course would be key in shaping public opinion on the decision. In the long run, surely, this would disadvantage the parties, as it would allow smaller parties to grow and challenge them. This, however, would probably take awhile to occur. In the short run, though, this system could potentially benefit them by preventing vote spoiling from happening. The major parties should welcome never again having to worry about losing support from those inclined towards third parties, and could even therefore champion this voting reform.

The battle will be uphill for any such reform, and it will be difficult to build the movement and increase voter awareness of these issues, but by doing so, your chance of improving the system rises some amount, however small, above zero. That is hope, however faint. That is progress, however slim. The alternative likelihood, forever, is zero percent. Join me in abandoning the false hope of the modern third party candidate.