Why Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils

I know. It’s the wrong season for thinking about politics. Nonetheless, I’m thinking about it, and sometimes you have to serve up your ideas while they’re still warm.

A perennial (or perhaps biennial or quadrennial) question in the American political experience is “Should people of conscience vote for the lesser of two evils?” The question is of interest to all who care about right and wrong but carries special interest for Christians since their aim is to do all things in obedience to Christ.

My thesis is simple. In a vote between two evils, Christians ought to back the lesser of the two.

For the purposes of this essay, I’m assuming readers already believe Christians ought to vote. My aim is to present three arguments for voting for the candidate who is least evil, whether the office is President of the United States, U.S. Senator or Village Clerk.

1. Such a vote is the lesser of two evils.

The first argument for voting for the lesser of evils is in the proposition itself: less evil. Who can be against that? Here’s the argument one statement at a time:

  • It’s good to do what results in less evil.
  • Voting for less-evil candidates results in less evil.
  • Therefore, it’s a good thing to vote for less-evil candidates.

Let’s evaluate the argument one premise at a time.

The first premise should be an easy sell. All good people want to see less evil in themselves and in the world around them. Some may object that there really are no good people—and they’ve got a point. No one is “good” in the sense of Mark 10:18 (ESV: “No one is good except God”) or Romans 3:12 (“no one does good”). But many are good in the sense of Romans 15:14 (“you yourselves are full of goodness”), and even more are good in the sense of Proverbs 13:22 (“a good man leaves an inheritance”) and 14:14 (“a good man will be filled …”). All decent people are in favor of doing what results in less evil.

The second premise is the controversial one. What sort of voting behavior really results in less evil, especially in the long term? Three attitudes toward that question predominate. Some voters maintain that, over time, more good (less evil) comes from supporting only those candidates who are a near-perfect match to the ideal. In this view, though voting exclusively for superb candidates may have worse results in the short run, we would eventually see excellent results if everyone voted this way.

Another attitude is that there is no voting behavior that results in less evil. The world is doomed to ever increasing wickedness and there is nothing any of us can do about it. Evil will increasingly dominate until Christ establishes His geopolitical kingdom on earth by force.

Parts of that attitude resonate with me. In the end, evil will come to dominate the globe as never before, and that situation will be reversed only when Christ conquers. However, the Scriptures that reveal this end game have been in the Bible for more than two thousand years (much longer, if you include Daniel!). During that interval, human history has witnessed many periods of increased justice (and diminished evil) in various regions—sometimes for centuries.

Christians understand that human nature will remain sinful regardless, and that the redemption of the planet comes only through the reign of Jesus Christ. But it doesn’t follow that we are unable to reduce the evil in the world in one place or another for a few decades or longer.

So what kind of voting results in less evil in our land? The third attitude toward that question is that a voting strategy that results in less evil in the short run often results in less in the long run as well. Good ideas are amenable to more good ideas, and even a leader with few good principles is more open to improvement than a leader with zero good principles.

An objection is that the leader with only a few good principles must have a whole bunch of bad ones. And just as good ideas tend to lead to more good ideas, bad ideas tend to lead to more bad ideas. But this argument actually supports the third attitude: if both good and bad thinking tend to lead to more of the same, the leader who starts out with fewer erroneous beliefs is the best choice.

If less evil is better than more, and voting for the lesser of evils results in less evil, it follows that this is a wise way to vote.

2. The alternatives are imaginary.

At this point, we need to clarify what we mean by “evil” when we say “lesser of two evils.” In my experience, debaters on this point tend to equivocate, defining “evil candidate” sometimes as “garden variety sinner” and other times as “people like Stalin.” The “never vote for a lesser of evils” crowd uses a Stalinesque idea of “evil candidate” to argue against voting for a garden variety sinner they don’t like. The equivocation comes when they turn around and defend voting for the candidate they do like (also a garden variety sinner) because he is no Stalin.

Not exactly a strong argument.

So what do we mean by “evil” when we say “lesser of two evils”? As long as we’re internally consistent (that is, if we don’t equivocate), it doesn’t really matter. If we say an “evil candidate” is any candidate who is not Jesus Christ, then we really have no choice but to vote for “the lesser of evils.” On the other hand, if we say that an “evil candidate” is one who belongs in a whole different class from your average sinner—the class that includes Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein—it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll ever be choosing between two candidates who are in that class.

Either way, we’re stuck with voting for someone who is less imperfect than someone else.

“But there’s another category!” some insist. Any Christian is not an evil candidate. The thinking here is that if there are two top candidates who are unbelievers and one unelectable, obscure candidate who is a true disciple of Jesus Christ, we can vote for the third and avoid promoting the lesser of evils.

What this counterargument has going for it is that there is indeed a fundamental difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate. You’ll get no denial of that from me. It would also be hard to overstate the potential of that fundamental difference to change how a person weighs his options and governs.

However, the difference in how the believing leader weighs his choices and governs is a potential difference, not necessarily an actual one. Though the believer is fundamentally devoted to Christ, he or she does not necessarily respond to every choice with a conscious and passionate desire to know what would please our Lord. We should make every choice that way, but we all know we don’t. So what’s the real governing difference between an unbelieving candidate and a believing one? Because of the blessing of common grace—often in the form of Christian principles that influence even the thinking of some atheists—a Christian who is immature or poorly informed may govern less Christianly than an unbeliever who has been instilled with deeply Christian habits of thought and true breadth of knowledge.

Of course, having “deeply Christian habits of thought” will not save the non-Christian. Only faith in Christ, and the resulting imputed righteousness, can do that. But these habits will make him a wiser ruler than anyone who lacks them.

If you get out much, you’ll meet non-Christians who, despite their unregenerate condition, think and act much like Christians should. I don’t get out much, and even I’ve met a few. What I’ve encountered more often are professing Christians who do not evidence particularly Christian ways of evaluating the kinds of the moral and ethical questions statesmen face.

To summarize, then, while all believers are “righteous” in a sense that all unbelievers are not, this spiritual and positional difference does not necessarily correlate with governing in a truly Christian way. So when it comes to voting, we can’t class all non-believers as “evil” and all believers as “good” in any sense that relates meaningfully to ability to govern wisely and justly. The real choice we face is one of choosing among candidates who are evil in varying degrees and in different ways.

3. You can still vote your conscience.

I often see this issue framed as though there are two, and only two, choices: voting for a candidate who can win or voting your conscience. It’s an interesting disjunction. Let’s scrutinize it a bit. This argument basically says that you can either vote for a candidate who is nearly perfect or, if you vote for another guy, you are voting for all the things he lacks—you are falling to pragmatism. So a citizen (especially a Christian one) can either vote his conscience or he can vote according to practical considerations.

There’s an unstated premise in this argument: practical matters have nothing to do with conscience.

But how well does that hold up? Suppose I’m fleeing from a burning hotel and discover a damsel in distress on the way out. She’s helpless, pinned down by a heavy beam. For some reason, my many hours of typing haven’t resulted in enough muscle to free her. So what’s the right thing to do? If I stay with her, we both die. If I leave her there and run for help, someone might be able to get her out. The idealist reasons that practical results are irrelevant and conscience requires that a man of principle must not abandon a damsel in distress. But most people abandon idealism in these situations. They understand that conscience sometimes dictates that we do what is practical.

Proponents of “voting your conscience” often make the mistake of assuming that if practical considerations can ever define the conscionable choice, they must always define the conscionable choice. Worse, they often assume that if practical considerations have any role in making ethical choices, they must have the dominant or exclusive role.

But the truth is that there are at least three approaches to the relationship between conscience (principle) and practical results:

  1. Pragmatism: practical results are always decisive and are all that matter.
  2. Idealism: practical results are completely irrelevant; only principle matters.
  3. Principled realism: practical results are part of the principle that matters.

Two of these approaches are ways of “voting your conscience.”

If I believe that voting for candidate C (who is a close match to my principles) will result in the election of candidate A (who believes in very little that I know to be wise and good), and I vote for candidate B (who is better than A) for that reason, I am voting my conscience. I just don’t happen to be an idealist.

Whatever the ticket ends up looking like in 2012, Christians ought to vote with the goal of putting power in the hands of the lesser of evils.

Aaron Blumer Bio

Aaron Blumer, SharperIron’s second publisher, is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in a small town in western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored Grace Baptist Church for thirteen years. He is employed in customer service for UnitedHealth Group and teaches high school rhetoric (and sometimes logic and government) at Baldwin Christian School.

Discussion

Great article, Mr. Blumer.

Regarding options 2 and 3, I propose that item 3 might be called wise idealism and item 3 naïve idealism. If my conscience tells me it is unwise to vote in such a way as to be supporting the “most evil” candidate, then it is “ideal” for me to vote for the “lesser of two evil” electable candidates. Stated differently, if there is no question that a vote for an unelectable candidate will result in a win for the “most evil” candidate, then the voter’s conscience is best served by voting for the lesser of two “evil” potential winners.

Someday, the USA may have a true 3 way race where it is difficult to determine who are the likely winners (I’m really not looking forward to that day…see what happened in RI), but we have never seen a race like that in our lifetimes.

Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)

Aaron,

Thanks for helping us think through a challenging issue. I think you are correct.

Cordially,

Greg Barkman

G. N. Barkman

I don’t think all the alternatives are imaginary. Take a presidential race in which both major party candidates are repugnant to you beyond what your conscience allows you to endorse. And they wouldn’t have to be a Stalin before that were the case for at least some voters.

Voting for a third (or fourth or fifth) party candidate who is below the MRT (Minimum Repugnancy Threshold), even if you know s/he can’t win, is not throwing your vote away because “affecting the outcome” is not the only consideration.

Thank You Aaron! You summarize my thoughts much better than I could. If I had to vote for the one I agree with most, I would have to do write-in for myself every time. However, we must try to spread as much righteousness and wisdom as is practically possible. Voting for pastor and voting for president are not in the same realms. Two totally different approaches must be made. You made it quite clear.

John Uit de Flesch

Aaron,

I appreciate what you are saying. However, it presupposes that a person is elected according to the vote. I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been wrestling with this in my mind so these thoughts are a bit raw (but that’s what a blog is for anyway). If God sets up leaders and controls them as the Scripture indicates, then my vote is less about my choosing who wins the election and more about my doing what a responsible, Christian citizen does during an election. If I vote for an “evil,” then what does that say about me?

Think of it this way. If the “man of sin” is revealed at the mid-point of the tribulation, his chief political accomplishment being peace in the Middle East three and a half years behind him, and if democracy continues to spread throughout that region of the world, then at some point it’s possible that people, maybe even Christians, will have voted for him as the “lesser of two evils.”

Matt

Sorry - I meant to say >> I propose that item 3 might be called wise idealism and item 2 naïve idealism. But everyone probably figured that out already. ;)

Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)

DavidO, thanks for the Minimum Repugnancy Threshold concept. Handy.

I also agree that “affecting the outcome” is not the only consideration. Some reading I was doing a few months ago brought the subject of utilitarian ethics to mind again. It was fiction—which can be a great place to explore ethical systems. Anyway, the writer took the view that “greatest good for the greatest number” was always the operative prinicple—or at least his strongest characters seemed to think that way.

But I think the truth is more complex. I would say it this way: other things being equal, the greatest good for the greatest number defines the right choice. But “OTBE” covers quite a bit in this case.

Saw this little bit on a public TV lecture where a guy was talking about what he called “the trolly paradox.” You have a trolly out of control going down this track. It comes to a fork. Then a series of questions has to do with helpless people on one fork or the other and what choices you would make if you can’t save them both. He sets you up by asking, if there are two people lying helpless on track A and one lying helpless on track B, would you throw the switch to track B? Most would say yes because you can’t stop the trolly and that’s the greatest good for the greatest number.

Then he throws you a curve and says “What if there’s a bridge over the track and the guy who was helpless on track B is now standing on the bridge… and if you push him off, he’ll stop the trolly and save the other two?”

At the end, the greatest-good-for-greatest-number “score” is the same, but the meaning of the act is quite different.

Some things are just wrong, no matter what the practical outcome is.

I don’t believe that voting for a bad dude for office is one of those things if it prevents a worse dude from getting the power of the oval office.

A big part of what it comes down to is a point I barely touched on in the essay: is voting for any man an endorsement of his flaws or an endorsement of his virtues? If he is a 98% good match w/our own convictions, and 2% bad match, we tend to think our vote is a vote for his virtues. But what if he’s 98% messed up and 2% good? Why does our vote now mean we are endorsing his flaws?

Doesn’t make sense to me.

Either a vote is a vote for his virtues regardless of the mix or the vote is a vote for his flaws, regardless of the mix. If the latter is the case, we should never vote for anyone!

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

[Matt Walker] I appreciate what you are saying. However, it presupposes that a person is elected according to the vote. I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been wrestling with this in my mind so these thoughts are a bit raw (but that’s what a blog is for anyway). If God sets up leaders and controls them as the Scripture indicates, then my vote is less about my choosing who wins the election and more about my doing what a responsible, Christian citizen does during an election. If I vote for an “evil,” then what does that say about me?

Think of it this way. If the “man of sin” is revealed at the mid-point of the tribulation, his chief political accomplishment being peace in the Middle East three and a half years behind him, and if democracy continues to spread throughout that region of the world, then at some point it’s possible that people, maybe even Christians, will have voted for him as the “lesser of two evils.”
First, I think we have to work through what it means that God sets up and removes rulers. Does it mean that ordinary cause & effect lead to ruler A but He intervenes and raises up ruler B? Or is it that He uses means in carrying out His purposes? I think the biblical evidence favors the latter view as what usually happens.

The alternative tends toward fatalism… I could brush my teeth every day but God is in control of tooth decay, so why bother? I don’t mean to mock; I’m just using an extreme example to explain my point. God is in control of tooth decay. Yet I am responsible to be a good steward of my health.

So I think the fact that God is in control of who becomes President has important implications but it doesn’t mean that I have no role or responsibility in the chain of cause and effect.

As for the “man of sin” scenario. Very interesting. I think I’m inclined to say that, assuming we don’t know that’s who he is, our responsibility would be to vote for good policy and good character as far as we can discern it. Since the MoS is a master deceiver, it would be his responsibility to bear if he has gained power by false pretenses (Tangent: aren’t all pretenses false? but that’s how we say it). In other words, I don’t think it’s my fault if I vote for a guy who—after due diligence on my part—seems to be the best electable candidate and he later turns out to have been lying to all of us. That will be his burden at the judgment.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Aaron,

This is a very good essay. I live in DC, it would be nice if all y’all outside the beltway would assist in kicking the bums out this election. I’m undecided myself. I don’t like Romney or really Gingrich, but either would be a great alternative to the Obama White House. One interesting point to bring up is that when you vote for a man for President, you’re voting not just for a man, but an entire governing apparatus. There are something like 7,000 Presidential appointments throughout the government. There is generally an appointee in every single office across every department. So part of the lesser of two evils idea (at least for President) is that there is a lesser of two evils not just on an individual level, but on the macro appointment level. When you vote for a president, you’re often also voting for the Director of the Civil Rights Office at the Justice Department.

Regarding #2, it’s interesting that in polling, if you hold up a named candidate (say Barack Obama) and “the other guy” (the GOP nominee), the generic option gets a lot better results than any named candidate. This is because we fill in our ideal candidate when not talking about actual people. We are all naturally idealistic.

Shayne

Aaron,

I do agree with you that we probably should work through God’s influence in democratically held elections. My guess here is that God raises up rulers. Certainly that’s the implication from Daniel, is the clear point of Paul’s in Romans in reference to Pharaoh, and the “fullness of time” from Galatians seems to indicate some connection with the Roman Empire and Caesar. I don’t think, however, that God’s raising up leaders and my assurance of that (so much so that I end up voting for someone I don’t believe will necessarily win) tends towards fatalism. There is a strong connection between my soteriology and my political point here. I vote for whom I believe should be our president. God actually chooses the man (or woman).

Again, these are pretty raw thoughts here. :)

Matt

The question, Matt is how raises up rulers. I’m pretty sure we’re all agreed that He does.

What if we try to put the question in the form of a principle:

Does God’s sovereign control of something ever mean that our choices have no cause-effect relationship to it?

To say it another way, should we think that because God is in control, our actions have no causative result? And if they have a causative result, can we say that result has no ethical relevance?

As a general rule, I think we’re on thin ice to reason that “Since God is in control of the outcome, the rightness of my action depends on what I mean by it and not by what it actually produces.” (In this case, ‘what I mean by it’ is “I mean to support the man who is really top notch,” even though he has no chance of winning.)

But I’d be interested in arguments to the contrary. I’m sure there are some.

At Christmas we often say it’s the thought that counts. If I give a can of salted nuts to a colleague and he turns out to have an allergy and the nuts make him sick, I can justly console myself that I meant no harm. But if someone tells me in advance that the nuts will make my friend sick, can I reason “God is in control of who gets sick, and I mean to bless this person, so I’ll give the gift and leave the results to God”?

(Let’s ignore for the sake of argument that my friend ought to have the sense to avoid what will make him sick!)

My point is that it is not easy to use a sovereignty of God argument to honor intentions and dismiss real results.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Matt, to add to my agreement with Aaron’s answer to you: in our political context, try to view the electorate as part of how God raises up rulers. In the same way God might raise up Nebuchadnezzar, he also raises up a majority of voters in each state to form electoral votes, who elect the President. God still holds Nebuchadnezzar to account for his moral and governmental choices, even though God raised him to power. So too, I think he holds us to account for choosing our leaders (or not).

Great article, Aaron. As a resident of Iowa, obviously I have an important role to play in the presidential election as I vote in the upcoming caucus (aren’t we special?). I intend to caucus for my “ideal” (well, almost ideal) candidate on Jan. 3, but come the general election I will vote for the candidate that is the better of the two (or possibly three?) choices, even if he/she is not my “ideal” candidate.

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Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)

Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA

Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University