When voting makes things worse

My American contacts on social media divide into roughly two groups during this presidential election cycle. The two appear not to communicate directly with each other or to engage each other in conversation. Each posts its own memes, extolling its favoured candidate and pointing to the flaws in his or her opponent through some clever turn of phrase expected to persuade the sceptical but more likely to inflame outrage due to its obvious one sidedness. In our present age of social media, there have been such elections before, but the current cycle sees two extremely flawed candidates whom right-thinking people have reason to dread contesting for the highest office in the land. Voting for one against the other will presumably solve the country's problems and get it back on track. Or at least that appears to be the assumption of the meme-sters.

But what if this is a vain hope? What if my vote really does make matters worse? In a single-member-plurality electoral system, dubbed "first-past-the-post" by the media, two parties--and only two parties--have a monopoly over the public square, with voters forced to choose between candidates for whom they may lack enthusiasm, or even confidence. After the internal party reforms of half a century ago, voters can by no means be confident that the parties have thoroughly vetted their candidates for basic integrity and competence. Would-be officeholders make it to the top through a glorified popularity contest that bypasses the old smoke-filled rooms in which local and state officials once considered carefully who was and was not qualified to place before the public. Misguided efforts to democratize more thoroughly the candidate selection process have thrown the constitution off balance and produced something akin to napoleonic politics, in which a favoured leader claims a popular mandate for all sorts of questionable policies, often over the objections of other officials who should be reining in his or her pretensions.

The result this year is an arena in which the candidates of two increasingly dysfunctional parties vie for the loyalty of Americans who have good reason to dislike both.

The Republican Party, a once diverse coalition of midwestern rural and small communities and northeastern brahmins, has turned into a cult of personality centred in the Donald Trump phenomenon. Nearly 170 years after the party's establishment as an anti-slavery party, would-be Republican candidates for office are judged by their loyalty to a single man whose dedication to advancing his personal brand outweighs his allegiance to the rule of law and to the Constitution. This would be an alarming development in any political party, but it is all the more dangerous because the electoral system artificially entrenches the two parties in their respective dominant positions, with other parties effectively lacking even a remote possibility of displacing them. Cults of personality are not compatible with constitutional government for the obvious reason that the aspirations of one person are held to take priority over the ordinary processes whereby policy is made within a larger normative legal framework.

The Democratic Party once commanded the loyalties of a large swath of the American population, giving it an effective governing majority for the two decades between 1933 and 1953. Throughout the mid 20th century, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition of urban workers, labour unions, displaced farmers, and ethnic minorities shaped the character of the Party, which represented the interests of those most affected by the Great Depression and its aftermath. This coalition began to break up in the late 1940s when the Party moved to embrace civil rights for Americans of African descent. Although the Party began changing further in the late 1960s, it moved, especially after the turn of the millennium, to adopt the agenda of expressive individualism, or what I have labelled the choice-enhancement state, based on the conviction that the capacity to choose is the defining characteristic of the human being. Choice has now become a good in itself irrespective of the contents of the choices and their effects on others. We are now assumed to have the capacity to forge our own identities, especially with respect to gender and sexuality, with everyone now compelled not just to tolerate us but to affirm us in our choices.

Last month, the election campaign was shaken up by two events: Joe Biden's dismal performance in his debate with Trump and the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. As a result of the former, Biden was forced to bow out of the race and yield his place to his vice president, Kamala Harris. Like her long-ago predecessor Hubert H. Humphrey, Harris looks set to become the Democratic nominee for president despite not having entered or won a single primary election. This in itself does not unduly trouble me, but Harris brings with her a worrying record on matters related to life and religious liberty, as indicated in this article: Kamala's abortion extremism. For her, the abortion licence is not a mere side show; it is close to the top of her agenda, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's Dobbs v Jackson ruling two years ago. Harris appears especially to single out Roman Catholics who believe and follow the ethical teachings of their church, questioning their fitness for public office, despite the Constitution's clear provision that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" (Article VI).

Voters thus have the unenviable choice between credible threats to constitutional government and religious liberty. A vote to "save democracy" is to opt for endangering freedom of religion. To vote for religious freedom is to imperil democracy. So what do we do? 

One possibility open to Americans, but not necessarily to citizens of other western democracies, is "ticket splitting," that is, voting for candidates representing different parties. Traditionally, if you wanted a particular person to serve as president but were unsure of or outright opposed some of his policies, you could still vote for him but then cast your ballot for members of the other party for seats in Congress. In this way you would vote for a divided government in which each party would check the other and keep it from getting its own way all the time. This would serve to bolster the checks and balances built into the Constitution, even if it slowed down the policy process.

In my forthcoming Citizenship Without Illusions, I suggest that voting is not the most important way to exercise one's citizenship. This is not to diminish the importance of voting, but it is to give people hope when they are confronted with a choice between unpalatable options.

Yet I do devote a chapter to "How to Vote" in an attempt to offer some guidance for responsibly exercising this minimal right of participation in the political process. In the absence of an electoral system that might offer more than two choices, we are practically limited to choosing between two flawed parties and their candidates. Here I suggest that we go ahead and cast our vote for a particular party but refrain from buying wholly into that party's narrative and agenda. Maintain a certain emotional and spiritual distance from that party even as you decide to support it or even work within it.

The voting Christian might reason along these lines: I will vote for the liberal party, because I agree with their concern to protect the rights of the individual. Nevertheless, I admit that their support for individual freedom often goes too far, with the ever-present danger of suppressing legitimate communal standards and the institutions that we are obligated to honor and defend. I pray to God that he will see fit to mitigate this negative feature of the liberal agenda and bring its positive features to the fore. To contribute to this, I will work alongside my fellow believers who have voted for another party, assuming they will take a similar critical approach to their parties’ agendas (85).

There is, of course, no guarantee that such an approach will change the parties themselves, and our vote could still contribute to making things worse in one way or another. But it might help to enhance the public witness of the Christian community, preventing us from offering a scattered voice in the public square while hoping and working for better choices in the future.