Though I’ve spent the election year articulating why Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both unacceptable choices to be president, at various times I’ve been attacked for secretly supporting both of them.
When I’ve criticized Trump, his active supporters have accused me of being in cahoots with the Clinton campaign. When I’ve made the case against Clinton, some liberals have argued that I’m trying to make a false equivalence, muddying the waters and thus tacitly boosting Trump.
At the same time, I’ve been told by Trump supporters that a decision not to vote (or to vote for anybody other than Trump) is a vote for Clinton. And I’ve also been told by Clinton supporters that not voting (or voting for somebody else) is a vote for Trump. So confusing!
To start, this doesn’t make any mathematical sense. To demonstrate: Let’s say 101 people are voting in an election and 50 vote for Candidate A while 50 vote for Candidate B. If the remaining voter chooses Candidate A or B, that candidate wins. But if the remaining voter chooses Candidate C, or doesn’t show up to vote at all, the two main candidates remain deadlocked with 50 votes. So, there is a clear distinction.
But the implications of this argument are much more sinister, because it turns the democratic process on its head. Instead of starting from the position that a candidate’s job is to make his or her case to voters and earn their votes, it starts from the presumption that one political candidate should naturally be entitled to certain votes by default. In this mode of thinking, it becomes the duty of the voter to show up to support that pre-ordained candidate. Rather than treating elected officials as public servants, such an analysis treats the public as servants of ambitious politicians.
In this calculus, I suppose, because I’m ideologically conservative, some set of people think that the Republican candidate is automatically entitled to my vote — or else I’m not really conservative. To another set of people, because I recognize that a Trump presidency would present a significant threat to the republic, I somehow just must vote for Clinton — or else all of my warnings about Trump and Trumpism are mere empty words.
To borrow a term popular on today’s college campuses, people who are excited about voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton need to check their privilege. They should consider themselves lucky that they get to vote for a candidate who they like. But they should also show some compassion for those of us who have suffered through this election, spending months agonizing about the prospect that one of these two lamentable figures is going to be entrusted with the most powerful job in the world. Don’t lecture us about it being our civic duty to countenance one of them.
People shouldn’t feel pressured into voting for somebody who they actively despise, and those who cannot stomach the thought of voting for one of the two major party candidates have to make a decision that they can live with.
After lots of deliberations, here’s where I ended up. Back in February, I outlined why I could never vote for Donald Trump, and everything that has happened since then has only reinforced my position. I’ve also elaborated on why I believe Hillary Clinton is unfit to serve as president. I don’t need to perform a calculus as to who is more unacceptable, because neither of them will earn my vote.
Though I was open to Libertarian Gary Johnson, his lack of seriousness, anti-libertarian position on religious liberty and choice of Bill Weld as his runningmate (who has all but endorsed Clinton) has made that impossible.
I’m left with the question of how best to register my discontent with all of the options. I’ve strongly considered not voting, but doing so deprives me of a means to have my objections officially recorded. In Washington, D.C., where I vote, individual write-in votes are not counted. So, unlike my colleague Tim Carney who has the option of writing in Evan McMullin in Maryland, in D.C., a vote for McMullin — just as a vote for Charles Dickens or Mickey Mouse – is recorded in a generic “write-in” category. After spending the past few weeks thinking about creative people to write-in, I decided to enter a write-in vote that captures my sentiment in this election: “None of the Above.”
The electoral college outcome of D.C. is not in doubt. But when the votes are tallied in D.C. and added to the national popular vote total, my vote will be recorded, and it will reduce the percentage of the popular vote total claimed by the victor, ever so marginally reducing the mandate that the winner can claim. This is the best I can do to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless vote.
The act of voting isn’t about choosing the lesser of two evils, but it involves an affirmation — the voter is registering a stamp of approval of a candidate as an acceptable person to hold the office. Candidates have hundreds of millions of dollars, thousands of staffers and surrogates, and many other means at their disposal to make their case to the American people. If they fail to make the sale, they can only blame themselves.
