Should One Go Vote in Elections?

With God's help

Nekuda – 5769

How shall we fulfill our civic duty?

At this time everyone is once again agonizing over which of the occupants in this game of musical chairs should receive our vote. The prime minister of ten years ago, who is today’s opposition leader and tomorrow’s foreign minister/finance minister? Or perhaps today’s foreign minister, who will be tomorrow’s opposition leader and the day after tomorrow’s prime minister? In this game, one rises and another falls, while the earth stands forever (for now, miraculously).

I, humble as I am, as someone who did not vote in several of the previous election campaigns, am already accustomed to receiving rebukes along the lines of: "At least vote for the lesser evil." "Why this squeamishness?" they ask me. And above all: what about "fulfilling your civic duty"?

The average voter (is there such a thing?) nowadays makes an effort to determine who is the lesser evil. Whom does he hate/despise the least? And when you ask him: why vote at all for someone you do not believe in? he answers with great seriousness and a sense of responsibility: because we must not be squeamish children who expect a perfect party. The perfect is the enemy of the very good. The mature voter understands that he must find the lesser evil and vote for it. That way, at least, one can save what can be saved. In other words: I vote for A because B is worse than A. A is the lesser evil.

And so Reuven votes for Bibi because he does not want Olmert. And Shimon votes for Barak because he does not want Bibi. Levi votes for Sharon because he does not want Shulamit Aloni. Issachar votes for Hadash because he does not want Balad (though really, why not Ra'am-Ta'al?). And little Benjamin, the youngest of the sons, votes for the Pensioners, simply because he does not want all the others (and besides, he always liked Gideon Reicher on Tziporei Laila Chatting with Themselves).

What all of them have in common is that they vote for the lesser evil. Ostensibly very rational, enlightened, and not childish. But what I, humble as I am (=the reasonable non-voter), would like to suggest to the intelligent reader is this: be a little childish. Look for someone you can vote for, not someone you vote for merely against his rival. And until then? If there is no such person, then you should abstain. Fulfill your civic duty, and do not go vote.

The penny dropped for me about four years ago, in the midst of an exhausting municipal struggle that we conducted in a small town somewhere in the wild south, at the end of the world, off to the left. The struggle was waged against B., a corrupt and violent council head who abused the town and its residents from the moment he was elected (and who was eventually removed by the Interior Minister because of his deeds). B. had been elected to that office in place of M., a calmer and more upright council head, but I greatly disliked his policies and the failures that characterized them as well. In the election in which the two of them ran against one another, as was my custom, I did not go to the polls ("and that is exactly how, because of you, B. was elected," everyone told me). I refused to vote for the lesser evil, and I even tried to persuade others not to do so. About a year later, in the course of that exhausting, frustrating, and despairing struggle (which killed off all the political aspirations I never had), I was asked what would happen if they now decided to hold elections. I said that if these were the two candidates, I again would not go vote. And what if B. were elected again? Then we would fight him once more, I replied.

What I learned in that struggle is that voting for the lesser evil paralyzes the institutions of government. When there are two perennial candidates, like B. and M. in that town in the south, who have been running against one another for nearly a generation, this is a reliable recipe for paralysis. Neither of them is truly successful, and one of them is outright corrupt and violent, as noted. What are we to do in such a situation? Vote for the unsuccessful one who is not corrupt, as my friends said? In my view, one should abstain. Consistent voting for the lesser evil gives each of them a guarantee that his supporters (=the people who hate his rival) will stay with him through fire and water, regardless of what he does, whether he succeeds or not. After all, if we do not vote for M., B. will come, and vice versa.

A good friend of mine, an energetic left-wing activist, said to me after the Second Lebanon War: under no circumstances will we work to bring Olmert down, because then Bibi will rise. That same friend himself told me in the merry days of Arik Sharon (around the time of the First Lebanon War), when he was still headed in the "right" direction, that the man was corrupt, violent, and dangerous to democracy. In the end it will hurt you too (=the Right), he told me. The Right, of course, refused to listen, for otherwise Rabin/Peres/Ahmad Tibi and the like would come. Arik is at least corrupt and trampling in the right direction. Once again, the policy of the lesser evil in the short term prevailed over long-term considerations. Today (after Lebanon War n+1) it seems that the time has finally come to repent and sober up from this mistaken approach.

The policy of the lesser evil paralyzes the political system in several respects: 1. It does not allow additional candidates to enter the field. 2. It neutralizes the public’s influence over its elected representatives. 3. And from these two it follows that it prevents any possible improvement in the functioning of government.

1. A new candidate cannot enter a system in which all the voters are captive. No one will vote for him, lest this weaken my candidate (=the lesser evil) and bring to power the rival candidate (=the worse evil). I will not vote for some newcomer, because then Bibi will not defeat Barak, or vice versa. Therefore I will vote for Bibi/Barak, because after all he is the lesser evil. And thus we perpetuate the political game of musical chairs and paralyze the entire political system with our own hands. This leads to a situation in which the people at the head of the system are incompetent, unintelligent, and corrupt. Above all, they are people over whose mode of action we have no influence whatsoever. None.

If so, because of the policy of the lesser evil and "fulfilling our civic duty," today’s prime minister is tomorrow’s foreign minister and the day-after-tomorrow’s opposition leader. Everyone fails and survives, and the game of musical chairs continues. The laws of evolution are shattered before our astonished eyes: the unfit survives, because the fit cannot enter the game.

1. The policy of the lesser evil also makes its mark on our vigor, involvement, and concern as citizens. Blunders on the scale we have experienced in recent years should have brought millions into the streets, to the point of violent revolt against the various governments. That did not happen. Not even after the Second Lebanon War, with all the trauma, and despite the full public consensus regarding the government’s performance and responsibility. Here we are today, two and a half years after the war, and the candidates are the same candidates (except for those who happened to be weeded out because of corruption), and the sea is the same sea. Nothing changes. What is the reason for this? Because we have lost our influence over the candidates. We are captive in their hands. After all, I will not stop voting Likud, because otherwise the Alignment will come, and vice versa. So why should Likud/the Alignment change? See how the protests after the Second Lebanon War affected Olmert. He simply laughed at all of us. A wall-to-wall national consensus did not manage to move him even a millimeter from his chair. Today the voter has no influence whatsoever over his elected representatives, and therefore they have no reason not to renege on the promises made before the elections, since even in the next elections they will not be held accountable for it. There is no reason to do anything in response to public opinion, since it will have no consequences in the next elections.

2. How does one break this vicious circle? How does one bring new, more capable and more successful forces into the system? The core of the democratic process is political evolution. An evolutionary process requires the creation of mutations, successful and less successful (for the process is random). The survival of the successful ones, together with the weeding out of the failures, is what leads to improvement. Whoever does not allow mutations to arise, out of fear of the damage they may cause in the short term, thereby prevents the possibility of improving the system in the long term. Failures are the necessary price of improvement. Ironically, the fear of failures is itself what brings them about.

If so, these two consequences of the policy of the lesser evil, that is, of fulfilling our civic duty, prevent any possible improvement of the system.

If we are not prepared to vote for an unknown candidate, or to abstain if there is no one who seems worthy to us, and to pay the price of unworthy mutations, that is, failures, in the short term, we will never bring about improvement in the long term. Without allowing mutations that die out, there can never be evolutionary change.

And what if the new candidate who presents himself, and for whom we vote, fails? What if it turns out that he is inexperienced and unsuccessful? Or perhaps even more corrupt than the current ones (is there such a thing?)? Then we will replace him as well. And what if his replacement is also like that? Then we will replace him too. Will we survive until then? In the meantime, they will surely have already wiped us out, the questioner asks. After all, we do not have that privilege, he will say, because our situation is acute. Perhaps next time we can do it, in the next elections, but not now.

The problem is that because of these arguments, in every election cycle we "fulfill our civic duty," and perpetuate the problem instead of allowing it to be solved. The reason we got into the present situation is the feeling (an unjustified one, constantly pumped into us by interested parties and self-seekers) that the current situation is acute. The security and social threats do not dissipate (which shows that our choices did not really help, and were not important even in the short term). If we heed these falsehoods, and continue to "fulfill our civic duty" and vote for the lesser evil, we will never be able truly to begin improving the system.

The conclusion is that this very desire—to save what can be saved in the short term—is what causes the long-term problems. The great absurdity of lesser-evil considerations, beyond their long-term cost, is that almost always they are disproved even in the short term. Candidate So-and-so, for whom we voted so that Mr. Anonymous would not come and make agreements/start wars and the like, does exactly what Mr. Anonymous would have done ("Things seen from here are not seen from there," as we have already said?). There is no difference between them. So even the short-term risk involved in voting for a different candidate is not all that great. At most, Bibi/Barak will be elected instead of Barak/Bibi. What difference is there between them at all?

My words do not mean that it is necessarily preferable to refrain from participating in elections. I mean only to say that one should not adopt the policy of the lesser evil. Anyone who does not sufficiently identify with any of the existing forces should abstain from voting, and not vote for the lesser evil. He should fulfill his civic duty and not go vote. In that way he will express his revulsion toward all the candidates together, and thus voter turnout will fall to 10%. That will have far more effect than a lesser-evil vote, which has no effect at all. This is abstention born of civic concern and a willingness to pay the price, not abstention born of indifference, as interested parties always portray it.

When 90% of the votes are up for grabs, that calls many new forces to compete for them and offer their wares in the evolutionary marketplace. One should not shy away from voting for a new force, one that is not among the existing forces, if it seems worthy to us. A policy of voting for the optimal choice (and not for the least bad), together with abstaining when necessary, will create a space into which additional forces can enter and present themselves for election. Perhaps they too, or some of them, will fail. Then others will come in their place. If a prime minister has failed, he should be replaced, even if the other candidate seems to us even more threatening and problematic. Usually it is still worthwhile to pay the price for the sake of the long term.

It should be added, for the avoidance of doubt, that we are not dealing here with utopia, but at most with progress toward it. One should not expect perfect candidates, and I do not mean by my words to rule out every compromise whatsoever. That really is childish. I mean to say that each person should vote for a worthy candidate, not necessarily only for a perfect candidate who fits my agenda exactly.

Here the question arises of the dividing line between the lesser evil in this sense and the lesser evil in the sense I have described thus far. If compromise is permitted and even necessary, does that not mean that one should vote for the lesser evil? This is of course something very difficult to define, and each person must draw the line as he sees fit. It seems to me that one possible criterion for distinguishing between the situations is that if someone has failed or is corrupt, he should be replaced without regard to the question of who will replace him (for all I care, Ahmad Tibi can take the place of Olmert and Barak). In addition—and perhaps this is a more general criterion—we should ask whether there is any chance that the candidate for whom we vote will advance something positive. That is, am I voting for him, or is my vote for him only so that his rival will not come? In the second case, it seems to me preferable not to vote at all.

Actually, is that not the lesser evil after all?…