I have been trying to think of something useful that might come out of the impending election debacle, and realized that it can be a useful self-education experience. So I thought I would share.
The superficial question is, of courser, who should I vote for in the presidential race? There are five actions that aren’t utterly beneath consideration: Trump, Biden, Jorgensen, not voting, and write-in (Leonard Peikoff). My specific answer is less interesting, what is more important is how I arrive at the answer. An important contextual fact is that Washington is a deep blue state and there is no question that all of the electoral votes will go to Biden (barring Democratic craziness where the Democratic electors ends up voting for Faith Spotted Eagle).
The primary choice is between voting and not voting, so I a principle that favors voting, or favors non-voting. Barring the realization of a more important principle, non-voting would win since it is a self-sacrificial act (waste of time and effort for no value: re-read the first clause of this sentence). If the only issue on the ballot were selection of a president, and if the choices are all only a hair-width separate from voting for death, then there really is no point in voting. However, voting is an all-or-nothing proposition, and it is highly unlikely that all choices on the ballot are “death A vs. death B” (there are plenty of other compelling reasons to vote for or against candidates and propositions here). The degree of self-sacrifice involved in voting for a president is thus microscopic. I need not explain the stupidity of the argument from duty to this audience. The best argument for non-voting is the “I can’t give my sanction to any of these candidates”, and this is a case where “best” doesn’t mean “good”. This is the primary competitor against the “Trump as vote against Biden” comclusion that I reach at the bottom.
In the Washington (and some other states), your vote has symbolic value, but not effective value. I know very well that if all of the voters thought that, then nobody would vote etc. even in Washington so my vote would count a lot, but I’m not talking about all or most of the voters. The vast majority of voters do not think, they emote. What then is the symbolic value of the five choices? On the one hand, a huge number of write-in votes for Peikoff could be symbolically useful under a “send a message” theory. In a very few states, such a write-in vote may be counted: in Washington, since Peikoff is not a paid, declared candidate, write-in votes for him are not tallied (this is the norm in the US). Scratch one option. Not voting for president is also not “counted”: there is no count of how many people voted but specifically did not vote for a presidential candidate. Scratch that option.
Now we have to make a choice between Biden, Trump and Jorgensen. Again, since a Washington vote is symbolic, what symbolic consequence follows from voting for one of these three candidates? I was inclined to vote for Jorgensen, since she has a philosophy and while I disagree with some of it, I agree with far more of it than I do with that of Biden or Trump. Jorgensen is the only candidate that I can say anything good about, the others fall into the “at least Y is not X” category). I’m aware that there are declarations that libertarians are the scum of the Earth and that no true Objectivist can vote for one: that’s true of Trump and Biden as well, so the scum-of-the-earth principle would favor not voting at all.
Trump is a random loose cannon who has minimal grasp of the concept rule of law, and who is quite an uncivilized barbarian. The greatest danger that Trump poses is First Amendment-related. However, he has installed three more-reasonable SCOTUS justices and has dialed back some of the regulatory over-reach that Congress has allowed previous presidents to impose on especially on business. At first glance, Biden looks a bit more reasonable as a predictable tax-and-spend Democrat. At second and third glance, though, you must factor in the realities of Biden’s “base”. I believe that he will substantially cave in to the radical “progressive” wing of the Democratic party – as proven by his choice of running mate. Which brings us to the spectre of Biden’s future – will he survive one or two terms in office? Will he leave office in the middle of a term and leave us with a radical leftist incumbent president? In other words, Biden goes to the bottom of the list, now it’s a race between Jorgensen vs. Trump.
Remember that in Washington, the electoral votes go to Biden, so the question is, which symbolic act is of greatest value. I would be really happy if public discussions included statements like Jorgensen’s, that the government should never determine what a private business should pay employees; government should not be classifying nor prohibiting any form of currency; affirmative action programs are wrong, the government should allow workers to opt out of Social Security; the government should not regulate social media sites to prevent fake news; producers should not be required to label genetically engineered foods – these are Jorgensen positions which are not part of the Trump platform. The problem is, the Secretary of State does count and will eventually report the total number of Jorgensen votes, and that’s as far as it will go. What matters for public discussions is what the media is willing to talk about. The media simply will not talk about irrelevant third-party positions. Some months later, Wikipedia will probably report the vote totals.
What is at stake, from the PR perspective, is a simple question: what will the media say about the elections? If (as I conclude is most likely) Biden wins, is there symbolic value to adding a popular vote to Trump’s tally? Would that symbolic value have any practical value, for example if the popular vote were close like it was in the case of Nixon-Kennedy, Trump-Clinton or Bush-Gore; or if there is a landslide like Reagan-Mondale? It is most likely that the media will declare a “mandate” for Biden’s and Harris’ agenda. The practical value of a symbolic vote for Trump is that it makes such a declaration a tiny bit less credible.
