From: jeff@frodo.b30.ingr.com (Jeffrey Adam Johnson)
Subject: Re: "Voting For the < 2 Evils"
Keywords:  vote
Organization: Intergraph Corporation, Huntsville, AL.
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 23:46:20 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.171558.12130@infonode.ingr.com>,
dianne@dianne.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Dianne Ferrans ) writes:
 
> Clinton/Gore in '92!
> 
> (Sorry, Leah, I'd consider libertarian, but I don't want to risk Bush winning
> by giving Clinton that one less vote!)

    Here's something I got in my e-mail box recently:

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    Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 21:42:08 -0700
    From: Bob Bickford <rab@well.sf.ca.us>
    Subject: Electoral votes, etc.


    This from a discussion on the WELL:

     Last Friday the Wall Street Journal presented a baseline analysis of
     November's likely Electoral College (EC) results.  It reflects the
     calculations of both campaigns, independent analyst Charles Cook, and
     the Journal's own reporting.

     Bush will get 208:  Texas, 32; Florida, 25; NJ, 15; NCar, 14; Ga, 13;
       Va, 13, Ind., 12; Ala, 9; Okla, 8; SCar, 8; Ariz, 8; Miss, 7; Kan, 6;
       Utah, 5; Neb, 5; Maine, 4; NH, 4, Ida, 4; Nev, 4; Alaska, 3; Wyo, 3;
       Del, 3; NDak, 3.

     Clinton will get 211:  Cal, 54; NY, 33; Penn, 23; Mass, 12; Wash, 11;
       Wisc, 11; Tenn, 11; Md, 10; Minn, 10; Iowa, 7; Ore, 7; Ark, 6; WVa, 5;
       Hawaii, 4; RI, 4; DC, 3.

     The "toss-up states" are:

       Ill 22, Ohio 21, Mich 18, Missouri 11, Louisiana 9, Conn 8, KY 8,
       Colo 8, NMex 5, Mont 3, SDak 3, Vermont 3

     270 votes are needed.

    ---------

     It appears that the election will be decided in Illinois, Ohio
    and Michigan.

     ... [ some other commentary deleted ]

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    The way the electoral college "game" works is "winner-take-all" for
most states, including Alabama.  That is, whichever candidate gets one
more vote than the other candidates throughout the entire state gets
all 9 of his political party's presidential electors a vote in the
electoral college; after the popular election, all the states' electors
gather and cast their votes for the president.  Usually, they vote for
the candidate whom their party nominated [ however, in the 1972 election,
one of the Democratic Party electors switched his vote and voted for
Toni Nathan, the 1972 Libertarian Party vice-presidential candidate,
making her the first woman in American history to receive an electoral
college vote.  Geraldine Ferraro was the second female to receive an
electoral college vote.  But I digress... ]

    So, unless YOUR ONE VOTE is the deciding vote in the entire state
of Alabama ( which is highly unlikely ), then you might want to reconsider
your voting strategy of voting for "the lesser of two evils".  I'll
mention the slogan "The Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil" before moving
on.

    Elections and the political process in America may also be looked
upon as a perverted sort of "Prisoners' Dilemma", the classic logic game.
However, instead of figuring out whether or not to confess and "rat" on
the other guy, the voter must figure out how to optimally cast his vote
during the election.  Unfortunately, many people's voting strategy is
centered around the short term, and they don't consider how their vote
in this election ( even for a losing candidate ) determines what choices
they have to vote for down the road, and also the conduct of the winner
of the election, whomever that might be.

	Here's some text from a campaign speech I made in the fall of
1990 during my write-in campaign for the U.S. House of Rep. for Alabama's
5th District:

       Next, I want the voters of Alabama to realize that if they vote
    for a Libertarian candidate, they are not wasting their vote.  A vote
    for either a Democrat or Republican essentially means "YES, I like
    what you're doing, and I want you to do more of it."  Other people say
    that they vote for a Democrat or Republican as "the lesser of two
    evils" -- but the lesser of two evils is still evil ! A vote for a
    Libertarian is a vote for a definite change in government, while a
    vote for the Democrats or Republicans is basically only cosmetic.

       I'll admit, it may be a while before a Libertarian is elected
    President, but voting for a Libertarian candidate sends a message to
    the other parties, and oftentimes influences their position on the
    issues.

       For example, the Socialist Party platform of 1928 contained planks
    for nationalization of railroads, electric companies, dams ( including
    our own 5th district's Muscle Shoals dam); social security; and a
    progessive income tax.  While no Socialist candidate has ever been
    elected, their party platforms were taken up and enacted by both the
    Democrat and Republican parties.
	...
       With my candidacy, I also want to make the people of Alabama aware
    of how difficult it is for a third party to even get on the ballot.
    Presently, unless a party receives 20 % of the vote in a statewide
    race, that party must collect the signatures of  1 % of the people who
    voted in the last election.  That works out to collecting over
    13,000 signatures, just to get our party of the ballot.  If such
    ballot restrictions had been in force 40 years ago, the Republicans
    would have had to petition for signatures.  It's sad to say that
    it's easier to get on the ballot in Poland or East Germany than it
    is here in Alabama.

       This year [1990], we failed to come up with the required number of
    signatures, so we will not be on the ballot this Novemeber. However,
    the Libertarian Party is now spending over $10,000 in Alabama
    alone, to pay professional signature gathers to get us on the ballot
    for 1992.  Note that none of this money was taken from tax payer
    dollars, which is a source of hundreds of millions of dollars of
    funds for the Democrats and Republicans funds.

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    So other reasons for voting for third-party candidates:

    1.  It helps them get on the ballot next time.

    2.  It "sends a message" to the other parties.

    3.  It lessens the credibility ( if any ) of the winning candidate to
        claim that his positions are "a mandate from the people."

    4.  The election isn't a horse race.  People should vote for
	who they think is the best candidate, and not for who they
	think is going to win.

ps.  Libertarian candidates *WILL* be on the November ballots in 
     Alabama, thanks to about $13,000 worth of petition gathering.

======================================================================
Jeffrey Adam Johnson              Internet:  jeff@frodo.b30.ingr.com
("I speak only for myself.")          UUCP:  uunet!ingr!b30!frodo!jeff
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  "WARNING, WARNING, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON !" -- The "Lost in Space Robot"

  [ There are long .signature quotes ahead !  Hit "n" now, or I can't be
  held responsible ... ]

"Let every man make known what kind of government would command
his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it."
 - Henry David Thoreau, "Essay on Civil Disobedience"

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed;
if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly;
you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds
against you and only a precarious chance of survival.  There may be even
a worse case.  You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory,
because it is better to perish than live as slaves."
 - Winston Churchill

"This may illustrate a dangerously typical situation in complex society:
it is psychologically easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an
intermediate link in a chain of evil action but is far from the final
consequences of the action.  Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured
the concentration camps, but to participate in mass murder he had only
to sit at a desk and shuffle papers.  At the same time the man in the
camp who actually dropped Cyclon-B into the gas chambers was able to
justify _his_ behavior on the grounds that he was only following orders
from above.  Thus there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no
one man decides to carry out the evil act and is confronted with its
consequences.  The person who assumes full responsibility for the act
has evaporated.  Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of
socially organized evil in modern society."
 - Dr. Stanley Milgram, "Obedience to Authority", 1974  ( excerpts from
   his psychological experiments where human subjects apply lethal electrical
   shocks to other humans, because "they're only following orders." )

"What no one seemed to notice, ... was the ever widening gap ...
between the government and the people. ... And it became always
wider. ... the whole process of its coming into being, was above all
*diverting*, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did
not want to think anyway. ... Nazism gave us some dreadful,
fundamental things to think about ... and kept us so busy with
continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated ... by the
machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we
had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing,
little by little, all around us. ... Each step was so small, so
inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that
 ... unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle,
what all these 'little measures' ... must some day lead to, one no
more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field
sees the corn growing. ... Each act ... is worse than the last, but
only a little worse.  You wait for the next and the next.  You wait
for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a
shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.  You don't want to
act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to
make trouble.' ... And it is not just fear ... that restrains you; it
is also genuine uncertainty. ... And you *are* an alarmist.  You are
saying that *this* must lead to *this*, and you can't prove it. ...
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or
thousands will join with you, never comes.  *That's* the difficulty.
... The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the
houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts,
the cinema, the holidays.  But the spirit, which you never noticed
because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the
forms, is changed.  Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the
people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when
everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. ... You have
accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year
ago, things your father ... could never have imagined."
 - Milton Mayer, "They Thought They Were Free; the Germans, 1938-45"
   ( 1955, University of Chicago Press ).
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