presidential election Archives

September 19, 2022December 14, 2022

Sex Differences or Sexism? On the Long Wait for a Female President

In her recent New York Times piece, “Britain 3, America 0,” Gail Collins laments the failure of the United States to elect a female president. Meanwhile, traditional old Britain has recently acquired its third (Conservative) female prime minister, Liz Truss.

Collins’ frustration will strike many readers as obviously correct, perhaps even boringly correct. If, counterfactually, we lived in a society without sexism, then surely we would have had at least one female president by now. If that’s right, then sexist stereotyping plays some role in explaining the fact that we haven’t. But are there other explanations than sexism?

According to the Center for American Women in Politics’ Debbie Walsh, the problem is “that women are seen as good at getting along with other people, but not necessarily at running things.” In other words, inaccurate sexist stereotypes explain the nation’s failure to elect a female president.

The trouble with this explanation is that psychological research partly confirms certain clichés about men and women.

While both sexes have near-identical average scores for some traits, e.g., openness/intellect (the ability and interest in attending to and processing complex stimuli), studies repeatedly find significant differences between the sexes for other traits. For instance, on average, women are more “agreeable” than men, meaning they have a higher tendency toward “cooperation, maintenance of social harmony, and consideration of the concerns of others.” But men are, on average, more assertive, which many – rightly or wrongly – consider a key leadership trait.

There are competing explanations for these sex differences. Some think they are explained by human biology. Others contend that they are cultural artifacts, ways of being that men and women learn from society as they grow up. But most psychologists now think that a complex mix of nature and nurture explains these average differences between men and women. But whatever the cause(s), there is little dispute that these measurable differences exist. On this basis, some have concluded that our society is not sexist because “Women really are different from men!” And they think that this fact – and not sexism – explains things like why we’ve not had a female president.

But this conclusion would be premature. There’s still plenty of opportunity for sexism to be doing some explanatory work.

First, it might be that our assumptions about what makes a good leader are sexist. We might tend to overvalue the “masculine” traits and undervalue “feminine” traits. Perhaps women’s greater tendency to agreeableness (“cooperation, maintenance of social harmony, and consideration of others”) is precisely what we need in a leader in these divisive times, but we keep electing less suitable but more assertive “strong men.” If we systematically overvalue the traits more common in men and undervalue those more common in women, we would be putting the pool of female candidates at an unfair disadvantage. This is one way in which sexism can operate even if there are sex differences.

Second, and I think far more significantly, individual men and women are not the averages of their sex. An average is just an average, and nothing more. Within any group as large as half the population, there is obviously a huge amount of individual variation. There are many highly agreeable and unassertive men and many highly assertive and disagreeable women. Think about it — you probably know people who fall at all different points on this scale.

Even if, hypothetically, traits more common in men did make them more suitable for the role of president, then, given great individual variation, we should still expect some presidents to have been women, even if not half.

This brings me to another way that sexism can operate on top of sex differences. Imagine a voter who sincerely thinks that assertiveness is a key trait for a president. After all, a president must make difficult and important decisions each day, often under terrible pressure. Imagine this person could never vote for someone who they didn’t think was highly assertive. That seems like a reasonable view.

But sexism could still be at play. If the average woman is less assertive than the average man, then we might tend to overlook the leadership potential of highly assertive women because we assume, given their sex, that they are less assertive than they actually are.

Given that female politicians have, presumably, had to overcome certain challenges their male counterparts have not, you might even expect female politicians to be particularly assertive, perhaps even more than their male counterparts. Britain’s controversial first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, certainly lends some credence to that possibility.

To explain why we’ve not had a female president, then, we can’t simply appeal to either sexism or sex differences. The relationship between sexism, sex differences, and political outcomes is more nuanced. We don’t need to dispute the psychological evidence of sex differences in order to maintain that sexism is a real problem with damaging political consequences. It might be that our assumptions about the traits needed for leadership are sexist and biased. Or it might be that our awareness of group averages blinds us to individual differences, preventing us from fairly judging the merit of individual female political candidates. Yes, there is significant psychological evidence for sex differences in traits that are commonly regarded as important for leadership. But sexism could still be unjustly distorting political outcomes. As is so often the case, the partial explanations of political events and outcomes that we are so often provided are excellent at getting us riled up and reinforcing our loyalty to our political tribe, but they’re much worse at helping us to understand the society of which we are a part.

June 6, 2022December 14, 2022

Are Politicians Obligated to Debate?

In the leadup to the provincial election in Ontario, many members of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party have been avoiding the debates taking place in their respective ridings. In fact, 22 out of 34 Conservatives have recently failed to show up to debates in which members of their rival parties were participating, a number that greatly exceeds the absences from all other parties combined. When asked to comment on the situation, a campaign official speaking on behalf of the Conservatives stated that the party’s mandate was to have each candidate “carefully assess the value” of participating in a debate in order to “limit the risk” of doing so. He also stated that debates are of “low value” and a candidate’s time can be better used in other ways.

Debates ahead of elections are common in democracies around the world. So, too, are instances of politicians avoiding them. For example, in the run-up to the recent presidential election in the Philippines, candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. participated in only one out of four scheduled debates; when asked to explain his absence, he cited the desire to keep his campaign “positive” (although many of his critics speculated that his failure to attend the debates was motivated by a desire to avoid discussing his family’s history). The strategy seems to have paid off, as he is presumed to have won the election.

Some who disapprove of Conservative Party candidates skipping debates in Canada have called the move “anti-democratic”; in the Philippines, Marcos’ opponent Leni Robredo said that participating in debates is something that candidates “owe…to the people and to our country.”

Is this right? Do politicians have any specific obligation to participate in debates? And if so, what kind of obligation?

There is one sense in which political candidates like those mentioned above are not obligated to participate in debates, given that not participating does not preclude one from running. We might think that there is a different kind of obligation involved, though, one associated with “playing fair” or maybe “being a good sport”; such norms, however, have rarely held much water in the world of politics. Of course, one risks losing face in front of one’s constituents by failing to appear for debates, but if a politician can make up that loss in other campaign activities, or if one’s target constituency doesn’t really care about the outcomes of political debates anyway, then it might be more prudent to skip debates altogether, especially given the risk of hurting one’s campaign by getting caught off-guard by a question or saying something dumb.

So we might think that politicians who refuse to attend debates are not violating any explicit electoral processes, or being imprudent, but are instead lazy, or cowards (or both). But this is perhaps a far cry from the accusations above of being “anti-democratic.”

Indeed, there does seem to be something more egregious about avoiding political debates, namely that doing so undercuts informed citizenship, something that is a necessary condition for a well-functioning democracy.

To defend this kind of argument we need to consider what we mean by “informed” and “well-functioning.” But in general, the claim is this: if those in positions of political power are meant to be reflective of, and act in service to, the will of the people, broadly construed, then those people need to be informed about what candidates’ positions are on important issues.

That’s glossing over a lot of nuances, of course. And it’s not as if every voter needs to be extremely knowledgeable about all the details of every candidate’s respective platform, or stance on every policy issue, in order to be well-informed. Regardless, the loose argument is that better-informed voters will tend to make better voting choices, and the responsibility to inform citizens lies not just with said citizens, but with the politicians, as well. Political debates are, arguably, a significant source of information about candidates. Failing to participate in such debates thus prevents voters from getting important information they need to be well-informed. We can then see why one might think that avoiding political debates is anti-democratic, as doing so is antithetical to the democratic process one is participating in.

One might think, though, that there are surely other ways in which one can become well-informed about the candidates in an election – one could, say, look up relevant information online.

Doesn’t such readily available information make political debates more or less obsolete, at least in terms of their ability to inform the public?

No, for a few reasons. First, reading statements online does not give one the same kind of information that might come up at a debate, as there are no opportunities for rebuttals or follow-up questions. Second, one does not get to compare candidates in the same way when simply reading information online. Finally, people are not great at actively seeking out information about candidates who are members of parties one does not already endorse. It seems less likely that one would change one’s mind when doing self-directed research, in comparison to a debate.

Here is the kind of being-well-informed that seems especially crucial for a well-functioning democracy: not just knowledge about what one’s favorite candidate is all about, filtered through one’s preferred news outlet or website, but information about how different candidates compare, as well as information about other choices one may not have considered. More than just custom or nuisance, debates serve an important function of helping to inform the voting public, and failing to engage in them violates obligations central to democracy.

January 21, 2021December 14, 2022

The Ethics of Presidential Polling

Pretend you are driving your car on an interstate highway. Now envision yourself getting the car up to a speed of 85mph, then closing your eyes (actually close your eyes now) and keep them closed for a whole minute. You will want to open your eyes after a few seconds because of the fear of not knowing what lies ahead. Is there a curve? A semi-trailer in front of you? Or, is the lane ahead blocked for construction? This thought experiment illustrates in part that a major ingredient of fear is uncertainty.

Humans want to know the future, even if that future will happen within the next few minutes.

Evolution has provided us with the need to predict so that we have a better chance of survival. The more we know, the better chance we have to anticipate, and thus, to survive. It’s also true when we want to know who is ahead in political polls prior to an election. Fears about the economy, possible international conflict, a raise in taxes, and the assurance of the continuation of Social Security and health care all play a role in deciding whom we will support on election day. There may be a fear that your values and the party that best represents them will not be elected to lead the nation, and this serves as a motivation to vote your ticket.

The 2020 presidential election is over, but the dust has only just settled. State and national political polling for the presidential election began in earnest as soon as the Democratic nominee was apparent, and continued right up to the night before election day. At the same time many voters were asking the question, “Can we trust the polls this time?” Undoubtedly many were recalling the debacle of the 2016 election polling that predicted a relatively easy win for Hillary Clinton, but when they awoke the next morning, Donald Trump had been elected president. The Pew Research Center suggested that the question should rather be, “Which poll should we trust?” However, I suggest that another question should be considered as well: “Is it ethical to have public presidential election polling at all?”

Many ethical questions arise when we consider this type of public polling: (1) Does the polling sample reflect an accurate picture of the electorate? If it does, the veracity, or truthfulness, of the results can be more trustworthy. If it doesn’t, then the polling is skewed and results unreliable. (2) If the polling is skewed, how will voter behavior be affected? Could citizens be casting their votes based on false information? Research tells us that if a voter thinks their candidate will win, the less likely that person will vote. How does this affect one’s autonomous choices? (3) If the polling predictions are not accurate, what are the psychological effects on the electorate and candidates that may lead to negative outcomes when the election is over? The benefits and costs of having polling information available to the electorate must be considered in such high-stakes activities like voting for the president of the United States. It’s imperative that any published polling be scientifically based.

The gold standard of scientific research sampling has long been established as random sampling where everyone has an equal chance of being chosen to participate. When all have an equal probability of being chosen, the sample will generally reflect the population from which it was drawn. The problem then becomes one of reaching more people, so as to even the odds that the sample is representative of the population. Technological advances have allowed us to do this, but in so doing have changed the face of public polling in ways that may compromise its outcomes.

Today, the internet serves as the tool of choice for pollsters. However, not everyone has internet access and therefore some selection bias in the sample will exist when this type of polling is used. Furthermore, the average American has 1.75 email accounts which only increases the possibility that the same person may receive more than one request for information, thereby decreasing the chance for a larger sample, so the chance for mismeasurement increases. It is understood that there is always sampling bias, and pollsters do attempt to make it as small as possible, keeping it at a manageable 2.5-3.5%. This bias is called margin of error (MOE). For example, if a poll has an MOE of 3%, and candidate A is at 48% in the poll while candidate B sits at 46%, candidate A does not have a two- point lead as some media personnel report; it’s a dead heat statistically. But, if the MOE is not pointed out at the time of reporting, the electorate receives false information. It’s even more important to look at this effect in swing states than in the national picture due to the fact that the Electoral College, not the popular vote, actually determines who the next president will be.

To alleviate the selection bias problem nationally and in swing states, many polling companies are using opt-in, or non-probability panels from which to collect data. This method uses ads to attract persons to participate in the polling. Since these ads may only appeal to, or even be seen by, certain demographics, the probability of establishing a representative sample diminishes. Some panels formed by answering these ads are there solely because of a modest monetary award for participation. One way that pollsters try to solve these potential drawbacks is to establish panels of up to 4,000 persons who have been chosen based on stratification criteria, so that the sample looks as much like the population as possible given the restraints mentioned here. For example, if the population is 76% Caucasian and 14% African-American, approximately 76% of the non-probability panel would be Caucasian and approximately 14 % would be African-American.

Similar stratification methods would also be used for other demographics; however, how many demographics are accounted for when these decisions are made? The Gallup and New York Times/Siena College polls account for 8 and 10 demographics (weights) respectively, while the Pew Research Center accounts for 12 such demographics. Statistically, the more weights that are applied, the more the sample accurately represents the population from which it was drawn. The panels formed in this way stand for a certain amount of time, and are repeatedly polled during the political campaign.

Apart from these worries, there are other potential obstacles to consider. Take positive herding, for example — a term used by social psychologists to explain the phenomenon that positive ratings of an idea or person, generate more positive ratings. So, if candidate A continues to amass perceived higher polling numbers, the chance that those being polled later will align themselves with candidate A increases. Voters are even more likely to exhibit this behavior if we have not made a prior commitment to any response. So this affects the independent voter more than other voters, but that is the voter both parties must typically have in order to win an election. And this is compounded by the fact that the repeated public polling during a presidential campaign may increase this social phenomenon, and skew the polling results that could lead to unwary independent voters deciding for whom to vote.

Are the respondents on these panels answering the same questions as respondents on other panels? Questions posed to participants from different researchers are not standardized; that is, not every participant in every poll is answering the same questions. When the data are presented publicly, and polling data are compared, we may be comparing apples with oranges. If candidate A polls at 48% in poll A, and 43% in Poll B, we must consider on what issue candidate A is being polled? If candidate A is being polled on likeability in both polls, it must be asked: likeability based on what, candidate A’s stand on the economy or on immigration, or …? The information becomes amorphous.

How can the potential voter know what the data are measuring without understanding the make-up of the sample, the questions asked, and which method of polling was used to obtain that data? To get the complete picture is an ominous task even for a statistician, and certainly cannot be expected of most of the population to discover on their own. We rely on the media, and on the polling companies themselves to provide that information. While polling companies do publish this information on their websites, most voters do not have the time (or the inclination) to peruse the data, even when they know that such websites exist. Even if they make that effort, would most be able to understand the information shared?

The 2020 election has given us a real look at some psychological effects of polling on the American population. Former Vice-President Biden was reportedly set for an 8-point margin of victory (nationally) according to the New York Times/Sienna College final poll the night before the election. As late as 2 a.m. on November 4th, Biden held a slight lead nationally, but it was a dead heat in the swing states, and those states were leaning toward Trump at the time. In the final analysis Biden won those states after the mail-in ballots were counted. National polling did not publish survey results of mail-in voters vs election-day voters, yet the different modes of voting predicted the outcome. Psychologically, Trump supporters were primed to believe that ballots were “found and dumped” the day following the election.

It took 11 days for the results to be “finalized,” while the nation was in turmoil. Trump’s campaign used this time to start questioning the results; his supporters believed that the election had been stolen; after all, Biden won by only 3.4 points nationally after mail-in votes were tallied further adding fuel to the fire for Trump supporters. Recounts in swing states and counties were called for in the swing states based on this information, since the margin of victory ranged from less than one percentage point to just over one percentage point, but remained constant after the count was completed.

So what does all this say about the ethics of public polling? As can be seen, the numbers that get reported are based on a number of assumptions, and any model is only as good as the assumptions on which it is based. Are the policies of the candidate (the economy, immigration, etc.) measured the same in each poll? Was the positive herding phenomenon a factor in responses? Were media personnel diligent in pointing out MOEs as they reported polling results? In all these cases, one’s voting autonomy can be affected because the data’s veracity is in question.

But the problem isn’t necessarily with our ability to read the data as much as with our choice to circulate that polling data in the first place. Uncertainty produces fear in humans; we often alleviate this fear through prediction, and polls provide that predictive factor. That information, however, provides only a perception of the reality.

November 3, 2020December 14, 2022

The Day after Election: A Return to Normal?

black-and-white photograph of the Capitol building at night

Much attention and energy is focused on the outcome of the election, but regardless who wins there is a great deal of work to be done — simply declaring one side the victor won’t solve our problems. So what’s the next question we should be asking after “Who won?”

Regardless of who wins the Presidential election, it is clear now that Americans are anxious about the election and the future of their democracy. A recent poll found that 9/10 believe that America is not “normal” right now. Between COVID-19, racial tensions, public unrest, and the election, many Americans yearn for a so-called return to “normalcy.” Public health experts often speak of what it will take to return to normal from a health perspective. The Biden campaign has heavily focused on returning to normalcy. As described by Glenn Reynolds in USA Today, it is a pitch that “all the Trump craziness will expire, and things will be safe, sane and familiar.” The Republican campaign has also been pitching the concept of returning to normal. But the most important morally salient question to be asked is what does “normal” even mean and why do people want to return to it?

Normal can imply two important meanings. Normal can signify actions that are consistent with norms like rules, principles, standards. If one does not act in a way governed by certain norms, then it is not normal. Normal can also signify what is usual, typical, or to be expected. For example, the Brookings Institution suggests several ideas about what returning to normal might mean after a Trump presidency: a normal president will release their tax returns, a normal president won’t associate with dictators, a normal president won’t attack democratic norms by refusing to accept the results, a normal president would be more empathetic, etc. In some cases, these may indicate norms that we think a president should follow such as respecting election results. In other cases, these are simply expectations based on past experiences. It may not be normal for a president to spend so much time on Twitter. However, it becomes problematic when we start to confuse the two, because “normal” in the second sense may mean different things to different people.

Normalcy, in the second sense I have described, is inherently conservative and backward-looking. It is a form of nostalgia, and a tendency to see through rose-colored glasses; an attempt to harken back to the good old days. For example, Ezra Klein of Vox suggests that the Biden campaign “is offering a politics of nostalgia. He is painting a sepia-toned portrait of the Obama era, and reminding voters that he was in that portrait, standing right behind a president they liked and miss.” But if this is the case, then what is “Make America Great Again” if not an appeal to a return to some perceived normalcy? Of a return to the good old days? But psychological studies of fading affect bias remind us that the good old days are not always as good as we remember. After all, President Trump isn’t the first to cozy up to dictators.

Why is a return to some previously “normal” point in time even desirable? Normal is what led to where we are. The victory of Trump in 2016 and everything that has happened since was only made possible by trends and habits that existed before the election. Polarization and fierce partisanship were on the rise well before 2016. The disproportionate shooting of Black people by the police was still present long before 2016, as was systematic racism. Normal before the pandemic left most nations unprepared and scrambling to secure the necessary equipment and resources needed to address the crisis.

Conservative media has stressed that much of what the Biden campaign and broad left are proposing is not normal. The proposals to tackle climate change, public health, and racial justice are new, not normal. In some cases, such as responding to climate change, insisting on normalcy would be bizarre. For many on the left eager for change, it is the break from the norm that is desired. For the right, Trump has already ended normalcy by significantly changing the balance on the Supreme Court. It is foolish to insist on norms that developed in the past that are not responsive to the problems of the future.

Yet, as each side seeks reform in the name of restoring normalcy, it is clear that what is “normal” is not a consensus. The rhetoric of insisting on returning to a “normalcy” that half of the country doesn’t recognize is inherently exclusionary. To be outside of what is called normal is alienating; this is true regardless of political ideology. The larger problem is whose “normalcy” will prevail? And what are the risks of excluding the other side of the normalcy they seek?

It may not even be possible to return to “normal.” Even if Trump loses the election, even if he loses badly, his success in politics has demonstrated that so many assumptions about our democracy were incorrect. That Trump and the Republicans have been able to attack the media, criticize members of the armed forces, spread misinformation, spread coronavirus, run without a new platform, completely backtrack on their own stated principles regarding court appointments, and still get over 40% support in most opinion polls reveals something more concerning. In 2004 an accusation of flip-flopping could be devastating to a candidate, but now consistency over policy barely matters compared to political affiliation. How can democracy function when almost half of the electorate is willing to overlook facts, principles, and social cohesion? Even if Trump loses, the basic strategy will live on. Voter suppression tactics will only become more subtle. Political conspiracies will continue to spread. Many on the left now embrace the advertising tactics of the Lincoln Project, who are able to run the sort of negative and manipulative messaging that used to be so devastating against Democrats. The distrust and animosity that have swelled over the past decade of American politics and the habits that have followed from this will not disappear after election day.

November 2, 2020December 14, 2022

Third-Party Voting in 2020

photograph of citizens filling out voting ballots with "Vote" sticker on booth

In the weeks leading up to the election, many high-profile celebrities have made last minute political endorsements and pleas for individuals to vote. On October 25, Jennifer Aniston shared an Instagram photo of herself dropping her ballot in the mail. In this post, she shared she had voted for Joe Biden, and in a short PS added “It’s not funny to vote for Kanye. I don’t know how else to say it. Please be responsible.” Kanye West officially announced his presidential bid on Twitter back in July. While he is only on the ballot in 12 states, he has spent over $5 million on his campaign and traveled around the US to give campaign speeches. Perhaps this is part of the reason he did not take lightly to Aniston’s comments, facetiously quipping “Friends wasn’t funny either” in a now deleted tweet. While many might not consider West a serious candidate, he has spoken at length about his stances on political issues from abortion to police reform.

While it may not have been her intention, Aniston’s post points to a larger moral issue not only about the issues at stake in this election, but about voting in general.

Is it wrong to vote for a candidate you know has no chance of winning? Is it okay to vote third party or to cast a protest vote?

From Ralph Nader to Jill Stein, third-party candidates are treated with extreme hostility by Democrats, especially when elections are a toss-up. It seems that every year, a substantial number of voters on the right or left cast votes for candidates that they know have no chance of winning. For some, these votes are out of ‘protest’ against the two-party system which does not represent their interests. To others, it is a joke, or perhaps a statement of their apathy toward or lack of faith in our political system as a whole. Five million votes were cast for third-party candidates in the 2016 election. It is fair to say these candidates were not serious, as they were not even given a space on the debate stage. While this might not seem like a lot compared to the overall sum of 138 million votes, some argue that votes for third-party candidates cost Hillary Clinton the election, as the number of votes for Jill Stein were far larger than the margin that Clinton lost by in swing states such as Michigan and Florida. Some have pointed out the flaw in such criticisms, because they assume that third-party voters would have voted for Clinton as their second choice.

However, the 2020 election is also very different from the 2016 election. In 2016, barely any major polls predicted Donald Trump’s victory. Those casting third-party votes may have underestimated the consequential power of their actions. Donald Trump was also a wild card back in 2016, because though he made plenty of campaign promises, he had no political record to attest to his potential behavior in the White House. In 2020, both Trump and Biden are established politicians with a record. Though it’s been four years, the lingering effect of the largely unforeseen election upset has left virtually no national poll in a position to underestimate Donald Trump. Those choosing to vote outside of the established norm are well aware of the potential consequences of failing to register a preference for one of the two likely candidates.

While it’s clear that voting for a hopeless candidate in this election will generate a predictable outcome, is it possible that our vote can be morally assessed by more than the consequences we believe it will produce? Principled voting, often as a form of protest, has been labeled negatively as immoral, selfish, and wasteful. Voting as a statement is certainly not widely accepted in American culture, but that does not mean it has no moral basis. Under the “expressive theory” of voting, rather than seeking consequentialist ends, individuals vote in order to express their loyalty to a political party or an ideology. Voting might also be a way to keep in line with our principles and avoid hypocrisy. To go even further, could voting, or refusing to, be a way to keep our hands clean of any ills done by political leaders who will undoubtedly go on to make moral mistakes during their four years?

On the other hand, maybe our decision to cast a protest or principled vote is a reflection of one’s total alienation from the parties in power. Studies have shown that most of us naturally turn to consequentialist moral decision making when under pressure. Principled stands, such as voting based on value rather than strategy, are often chosen when we perceive there is little at stake.

The perception that little is at stake in a presidential election has been labeled by many as one of inherent privilege, as there is often much more at stake for historically marginalized groups when it comes to which party holds the key to the presidency. Voting is still bafflingly inaccessible to many Americans based on inequities attributable to race, socioeconomic status, and criminal history. In order to combat this lack of access to civic influence, many on the left have appealed to altruistic intuitions. Altruistic voting is the concept that we should vote not for our own selfish interests, but for the welfare of others. Those who advocate for altruistic voting see politics as a method to enhance the collective good. In her aforementioned Instagram post, Jennifer Aniston appealed to altruism by urging her followers to “really consider who is going to be most affected by this election if we stay on the track we’re on right now… your daughters, the LGBTQ+ community, our Black brothers and sisters, the elderly with health conditions.” It is fair to say that for many, this election has come to represent much more than merely who will sit in the Oval Office for four years.

Many critics of altruistic voting point out the fact that its consequential justifications are not consistent with its low probability of consequential change. Regardless of practicality, is a good moral basis for voting? One could see the nobility in choosing to put one’s selfish concerns aside for the betterment of society. However, there is often no clear moral choice when it comes to voting, as perfect candidates rarely exist. While you may seek to vote for the candidate who will protect a woman’s right to choose, they might also have a questionable record in terms of criminal justice reform. Even if one plans to take an altruistic approach, there is no guarantee, in a system which consistently demands choosing the “lesser of two evils,” that one will truly discern who to vote for.

How we moralize voting is hinged on what we really believe a vote means. Does it mean we wholeheartedly believe in the candidate on the ballot? Does it mean we think they are the most rational choice? Or is it simply another way to express who we are and what we believe in? How we answer these questions will reveal whether or not we believe voting Kanye 2020 is unethical.

October 23, 2020December 14, 2022

Is Microtargeting Good for Democracy?

photograph of "protecting america's seniors" sign next to podium with presidential seal

“Suburban women, would you please like me? Please. Please.” This was Donald Trump’s messaging at a campaign event this month. While there are many striking things about a statement like this, what particularly struck me is how transparent Trump is about trying to appeal to specific voting demographics rather than to women, voters, or Americans at large. This is not new of course, political campaigns have spent decades trying to find the specific target voters they need to win, but what was once the terminology of campaign logistics and pundits has become public campaign rhetoric. A campaign is able to identify and target voters through a process called microtargeting. But what is it and does it make democratic politics better or worse?

Let’s say that you enjoy a certain television program. What you may not realize is that there may be a significant correlation between your viewing habits relative to others and how you may vote. As a result, when that program goes to commercial, you may be bombarded with political advertising for a certain candidate. This actually happened in 2016. The Trump campaign determined that people who watched The Walking Dead were more likely to have specific views on immigration and as a result, Trump advertising on immigration was aired during the program. This is microtargeting, and through careful statistical analyses of large amounts of data, political campaigns can find and try to reach specific voters in order to improve their chances of winning.

Microtargeting involves the use of a large pool of data that tracks potentially thousands of variables about a person in order to determine the political messaging that you will best respond to. How this data is collected is a matter of controversy. Some of this data can be limited in scope to matters like what precinct you live in, whether you voted in previous elections, etc. Other times, the data can be much more specific including viewing habits, social media habits, personal details, and more. By using various algorithms in data analysis, a company or campaign can target you with online and television advertising, door-knocking, and even mailed literature. You may get different advertisements for a candidate than your neighbor gets for the same candidate because of this.

The issue carries a whole host of ethical problems and concerns. For example, the Facebook-Analytica scandal involved the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica providing such services using data collected from Facebook without permission from users. How this data is collected and who can access it are major concerns for those who worry about privacy. However, for my purposes I will focus on the ethical concerns that microtargeting raises as it pertains to democracy and the democratic process.

Proponents of microtargeting argue that this is just a more effective means for a campaign to reach out to potential voters. The Obama campaign made great use of microtargeting techniques in order to mobilize young people, Latinos, and single women in key swing states. Traditional forms of advertising can leave certain voters out if advertising is based only on factors like geography or party registration. This also means that advertising can be more efficient as there is no longer a heavy reliance on wide-run television advertising.

Being able to recognize people who may support a candidate and then figuring out what exactly will motivate them to vote isn’t a bad thing. Nor is it necessarily a bad thing that political parties learn more about who their voters are and what kinds of things they care about. This may reveal more about what voters care about than what is typically captured by opinion polling, media coverage, and focus groups. Such tools could be effective at identifying and perhaps re-engaging those who have dropped out or are otherwise ignored in the larger democratic conversations that take place during an election year. Likewise, it is not necessarily a bad thing for a voter to get the kind of advertising that they may wish to see.

On the other hand, microtargeting can be harmful to democracy in several ways. Microtargeting seeks to identify issues important to you and to feed you advertising that will motivate you to vote. However, democracy should not just be a matter of appealing to the often subjective and idiosyncratic views you already have. Election campaigns are not a mere matter of logistics, they are a national conversation. Microtargeting enables and encourages narcissistic voters.

Voters should be aware of the larger democratic conversation taking place at an election time and they may not understand these issues if they are only receiving targeted advertising that only focuses on narrow issues in a narrow way. If gun rights or the environment are the most important issue to you in an election, that’s great; but you should be aware of how those issues affect others and what other issues may require the attention of the public.

Another significant problem lies in the irony of microtargeting; it narrows the focus to the individual while simultaneously lumping that individual into specific segmented target groups based on correlations of certain variables in other groups. Each target group has its own interests, motivations, and desires (and fears), and campaigns are then free to exploit these as they see fit. This makes it easier to create conflict between these groups, as there is evidence that microtargeting can contribute to polarization. It means that politicians focus more on voting blocks and less on the public at large, hence why even presidential candidates now speak directly to voting blocks. It also means that a campaign doesn’t have to focus as much on a single consistent message, making it easier to tell different things to different target groups. Political parties choose their voters rather than the reverse. And it isn’t only politicians. The media coverage of the election spends an unhealthy time obsessed with which target group will support who, or how demographics in certain districts have changed over time. The election becomes about the process of the electioneering rather than about policy, character, or other issues of public importance.

Even more disturbing is that these correlations between variables may signify nothing rather than being a predictor of political preference. Models may build incorrect profiles of the groups they are targeting. Indeed, some have posited that this is little more than snake oil posing as science. The advertisements are also less accountable. These are targeted ads rather than ones that will be seen by the public at large. They are often shared on Facebook and social media and can often contain misinformation. All of this can serve to undermine political trust and transparency.

There are great benefits that microtargeting can have for democracy. It could be used as part of a massive campaign to encourage voter registration and voting. Experts will often suggest that it is neither good nor bad, but it is only how it is used that is ethically relevant. However, the larger concern is that we do not understand the effects of the use of the technology yet to know in what ways that it can be used for good or bad. Thus, while banning its use may not be wise, limiting its use in politics seems wise, at least until we learn whether it can function as a tool for the improvement of democracy.

October 19, 2020April 28, 2023

Under Discussion: Democracy Demands More than Your Vote

photograph of protesters occupying Brookyln Bridge

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: Democracy’s Demands.

It took roughly thirty minutes for people to start arguing about what to do once reports of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death became public on the evening of September 18th. With fewer than two months left before Election Day, it was not immediately clear that Ginsburg’s replacement could — or should — be rushed through the confirmation process before November 3rd. And many were quick to say, in no uncertain terms, that they thought it inappropriate for the president to nominate another justice, given the political circumstances. Consider this tweet from author and producer Reza Aslan:

If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire fucking thing down.

— Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan) September 19, 2020

Nevertheless, it quickly became clear that partisan interests would indeed take center stage in the final weeks of the election cycle with (eventual nominee) Amy Coney Barrett’s name circulating as a likely contender for the seat even before Ginsburg’s body had been laid to rest. Despite public opinion polls indicating that a consistent majority of voters want the winner of the 2020 presidential election to nominate RBG’s replacement, President Trump and Senate Republicans have worked hard to pack up the Supreme Court before November, nonetheless.

And, despite Mr. Aslan’s September suggestion, nothing has been burned down.

While some protests, both in Washington and at the homes of several Senate leaders, have materialized, the dominant prescription to voice public opinion on the matter has pointed towards one place: the ballot box. In a manner reminiscent of former President Obama’s famous “Don’t boo; vote” call, politicians, pundits, and other media personalities have, with increasing fervor, exhorted the American people to get to the polls. And though it is hard to measure the impact of a “Souls to the Polls” event or a special reunion of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, early calculations suggest that Americans are indeed voting in record-shattering numbers, with voter turnout in 2020 already matching 12% of total voter turnout in 2016.

Of course, for someone specifically interested in voicing their displeasure at the partisan abuse of the currently-vacant SCOTUS seat, pleas to vote in an election that won’t be decided (and whose winners won’t be installed) until well after Judge Barrett becomes Justice Barrett might seem beside the point. Furthermore, even if the timeline were different, the SCOTUS-motivated voter would be casting her ballot in support of a candidate who would also receive support from thousands of other voters and it’s far from clear that the entire group would be voting for exactly the same reasons. Politicians frequently aim to build coalitions of differently-motivated voters for precisely this reason: opinions vary, not only about answers to political questions, but about which questions are most important to ask in the first place. For all its virtues, the “one vote, one voice” mantra fails to account for the unavoidable homogenization of voter’s voices in support for a single candidate.

This is roughly why the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called voting a “trap for fools” that prevents people from exercising their true power as citizens. Championing instead the formation of interest groups that can wield political power about the specific values around which they unify, Sartre saw voting as an institutional mechanism for “serializing” the citizenry into complacent powerlessness. According to Sartre:

“When I vote, I abdicate my power — that is, the possibility everyone has of joining others to form a sovereign group, which would have no need of representatives. By voting I confirm the fact that we, the voters, are always other than ourselves and that none of us can ever desert the seriality in favor of the group, except through intermediaries. For the serialized citizen, to vote is undoubtedly to give his support to a party. But it is even more to vote for voting…that is, to vote for the political institution that keeps us in a state of powerless serialization.”

By assimilating variable support for a panoply of initiatives and desires into the discrete affirmation of only a handful of individual politicians, Sartre saw representative-based voting as a flattening of a person’s public agency.

And, indeed, the drafters of the U.S. Constitution would seem to agree. Writing in the Federalist Papers, James Madison warned about the dangers of public sentiment forming “factions” that could ultimately overthrow the system he and his friends were constructing. To Madison, this was a problem for two reasons: firstly, populist forces could easily be swayed by the manipulative power of demagogues (a point Alexander Hamilton discusses at length in Federalist No. 68), and, secondly, voters could form factions — what Sartre would call “groups” — that would threaten the “various and unequal distribution of property” within the United States. In Federalist No. 10, Madison outlines a defense of what would become the Electoral College as a cooling mechanism that could prevent popular ideas from being quickly turned into federal policy, saying “A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it.” Indeed, Madison’s “republican remedy” looks strangely similar to Sartre’s “powerless serialization,” but whereas the former views it as a solution to a problem, Sartre sees it as a problem of its own.

But, for all their disagreements, I think that Madison and Sartre would nevertheless agree on at least one thing: the practice of voting is not the chief duty of a democratic citizen. When not plagued by manipulative efforts to suppress voter turnout, the standard electoral process is a relatively easy responsibility that takes — again, in ideal circumstances — only a short amount of time every few years. But Sartre ridiculed those who “have been persuaded that the only political act in my life consists of depositing my ballot in the box once every four years,” arguing instead that the life of the political agent is suffused with a constant responsibility to attend to, speak up about, and organize both supports and protests in service of public issues.

In a similar way, later in his life, Madison defended not only public education, but specifically for “the poorer classes to have the aid of the richer by a general tax on property” so that, among other things, the electorate would be both more informed and more equipped to engage in political life; indeed, to Madison, the operation of such “learned institutions” to enlighten the public is “the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.” So, for both Madison and Sartre, politics was not simply a matter of semi-annually marking a ballot, but required diligent, regular attention to important matters of public concern, educating oneself and others so as to bring about the overall best state of affairs.

To be clear: my point is not to cast doubt on the value of suffrage, but to recognize that whatever virtues (pragmatic or otherwise) it may hold, the general election does not exhaust the duties of a responsible citizen in a modern democracy. Protestors, educators, and other servants of civic welfare who care for justice to be understood and upheld are just as crucial for the vibrant operation of our republic as are poll workers and voters.

As Hamilton himself wrote in The Farmer Refuted, “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature.” Democratic citizens who take that identity seriously should exercise these human rights and responsibilities in ways that far exceed the always-soon-to-be-musty ballot box.

October 8, 2020December 14, 2022

Considered Position: Flawed Democracy – Voter Participation

photograph of "Vote" written on chalkboard with drawing of American flag

This piece concludes this Considered Position series on the United States’ claim to being a “flawed democracy.” To see the earlier segments, start here (part 2, part 3).

Most people need to vote if we want most people’s interests represented. Unfortunately, a great number of people don’t vote. Either because they are prevented from doing so or because they just don’t care, many people who can legally vote don’t. In this section we will explore the idea of the “rational nonvoter.” To do so, we will consider debates around mail-in voting. Afterward, we’ll examine what may be the greatest roadblock in having a functioning, representative democracy: voter apathy.

Mail-In Voting

In recent days, mail-in or absentee voting has gotten a lot of press. COVID-19 poses a significant threat to the upcoming election. Either people go to the polls, and the virus spreads and kills, or people don’t go to the polls and the low voter turnout diminishes the legitimacy and representativeness of the results.

One prominently suggested solution to this dilemma is to have people just vote from home via mail-in ballots. Absentee ballots are already used by military personnel while serving abroad. But they are also used domestically. All states allow at least some citizens to vote absentee and more than two-thirds allow all citizens to vote this way. Those states without “no-excuse” mail-in voting require some sort of reason that explains people’s inability to physically come to the polls. Lastly, some states conduct elections entirely by mail and automatically send ballots to all registered voters.

A number of Republican politicians, including Trump, have opposed this solution, typically spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation to justify their position, but most people, including many Republicans, support some sort of solution like this. Besides the patently false idea that mail-in voting increases voter fraud in any significant way, there is one common bad reason for opposing mail-in voting. As Trump himself put the common Republican worry, “if you’d ever agreed to [universal mail-in voting], you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Fortunately, this too is false. While increasing access to mail-in voting might increase turn-out and increasing turn-out sometimes modestly aids Democrats in elections, it really matters more who turns-out, and the evidence suggests that “universal vote-by-mail has no impact on partisan turnout or vote share.” In other words, if it changes anything, universal vote-by-mail increases the number of votes, but doesn’t do much of anything to affect who those votes are for.

Nonetheless, as we’ve discussed before, you can be right about something even if you don’t have good reasons. That’s the difference between true belief and knowledge. And in fact, there are some very good reasons to be wary of universal mail-in voting. It may be more of a necessary evil than a universal boon.

Probably the single greatest problem with mail-in voting is the loss of the secret ballot. “The secret ballot” refers to how, when you go to the polls to vote, you can vote whichever way you want without anyone knowing. This is fundamental to democracy. If people are paid or coerced to vote one way or another, the democratic process is delegitimized. With a secret ballot, it is still possible to pay or threaten someone to vote a certain way, but there is no way to confirm if your bribe or threat worked since no one but except maybe a few election officials will ever see your vote. So it isn’t much done. However, with mail-in voting this all changes. Someone’s abuser can stand over them, force them to vote one way, and seal and send the envelope themselves. A corrupt caretaker can do the same to an elderly person. And so could a parent coerce a child. Even without the threat of force, more subtle forms of coercion, including moral judgment and social pressure, can be much more powerful when the coercer can confirm whether or not you listened to them.

In addition, none of these examples even touch on the possibility of buying people’s votes. There are two main ways ballots are checked to make sure they are legitimate. First, there is the ballot itself. It is printed on very special paper with a special code, unique to each registered voter. This way, it’s almost impossible for people to make counterfeit ballots. Second, many states use signature verification to assure a particular voter was really the one filling out their ballot, and the United States Postal Service (USPS) has procedures for tracking mailed ballots and flagging potential fraud.

However, all this only stops people from wholly counterfeiting votes. It is perfectly possible for a real person to receive their ballot, sign it, and sell it to someone else. Even if the ballot is not mailed from the voter’s house, this will not result in it being flagged as potentially fraudulent by the USPS. This is because of the legality of ballot collection in some states. Ballot collection is the process of people other than the voters themselves collecting and submitting voters’ ballots. In some places, this is limited to family members or caretakers. In other places, people working for political campaigns can do it too. The potential for fraud is there and it would likely be difficult to identify and prevent. However, it cannot be reiterated enough that this does not happen sufficiently frequently to have been responsible for any election to have gone one way or another.

In any case, coercion of this sort would seem to be small-scale and disorganized. An abuser’s coercion of someone’s vote in one direction will be countered by another abuser’s coercion of someone’s vote in the other direction. The fact that ballot collection isn’t legal in most places, and that where it is legal there are usually limits, means buying votes in the way I described on a large-scale would be difficult. It would be tough to do systematically and given that the margins on elections are usually on the order of magnitude of at least thousands of votes, it would take a lot of work to change an election. Plus, the aforementioned USPS flagging would require any would-be election buyers to deposit those thousands or tens of thousands of ballots in a wide enough area to not arouse suspicion. And, finally, keeping any such operation secret would require each of those thousands of bought-off voters to keep quiet. The odds of this happening on such a large-scale are on par with the odds of other large-scale operations like the moon landing being faked.

On the other hand, there are some seriously good reasons to support universal mail-in voting. The biggest reason here has to do with those rational nonvoters I mentioned at the start. A rational nonvoter is someone who doesn’t vote who is rational in the economic sense. What this means is that for these people, the cost of voting to them surpasses the cost of not voting. A great deal of people, as we will discuss in more detail later, do not think their votes matter, mostly because of the influence of corporate interests like the ones we discussed when we talked about Citizens United. And if your vote doesn’t matter, why waste your time and gas money driving over to the polling station? More importantly, why take off time from work? Economic circumstance discourages many people from voting. Fourteen percent of registered voters who didn’t end up voting blame a conflicting schedule or being too busy. Filling out an absentee ballot, in contrast, is easy. They send it to you and you don’t even need to buy a stamp. By decreasing the cost of money and time in voting, you make it easier for voters to rationalize voting. And as we said at the start, the more voters, the more accurately an election represents citizens’ interests.

Universal mail-in voting would be a big change to our electoral system. Whether that change would be for the better or for the worse depends a lot on what precautions we take. Mail-in voting has real potential for fraud, even if it hasn’t commonly happened in the recent past. At the immense scale required to have universal mail-in voting for America’s hundreds of millions of registered voters, it’s certain any cracks in the system will be tested. As with any issue, we are forced to weigh the benefits and costs but we won’t really know whether we made the right choice until after the election is done.

Voter Apathy

If COVID-19 keeps a great number of people from turning out in the 2020 election, questions will be raised about the election’s legitimacy. If only a fraction of the population votes, and only a plurality of those votes are for the winning candidate, it will be difficult for the winner to claim a mandate from the people. At the same time, it would be hard for things to get much worse than they already are, turnout-wise.

In the 2016 election, 55.67 percent of the voting-age citizen population voted. That’s way lower than most other democratic nations. Let’s take things further. Donald Trump won the 2016 election according to the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, garnering only 46.09 percent of the votes cast. Doing some math here, we can see only 46.09 * 55.67 = 25.66 percent of the population cast a vote for the current President.

It is difficult to compare the election of our president to the elections of Prime Ministers in parliamentary states but doing so may give us a rough idea of how poor our president’s mandate is (importantly I don’t just mean Trump here: US turnout hasn’t changed much in the last several decades). Belgium had the highest turn out of any nation in 2014 at 87.21 percent. And, the governing coalition held 83 of 150 seats in their Parliament. With the same calculation, we can say roughly 48.25 percent voted for the ruling government. This is clearly a much stronger mandate.

Low voter participation raises fundamental questions about our democracy. A basic view of representative democracy (the sort we have) is that a representative only deserves power if they have popular support. The laws, too, are only legitimate if they are enacted by a government which has popular support. Ultimately, society and government are social constructions; they are part of the social imaginary. They don’t exist in the world like rocks or trees. So the power and effectiveness of government, much like the power of Santa Claus on small children, depends on how much people believe in it.

And people don’t believe in it very much. Around 30 percent of registered voters who did not vote in 2016 did not vote either because they “did not like the candidates or campaign issues” or because they were “not interested” or “felt [their] vote would not make a difference.” The former reason was more common than the latter but 2016 wasn’t terribly representative of people’s general reasons for not voting. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were both disliked more than any candidates in recent memory. But more familiar is the sentiment people have that their vote “would not make a difference.”

There are a number of reasons for this sentiment. Foremost among these is a concern with money’s influence on elections. About 57 percent of people agreed in a poll with the statement “politics and elections are controlled by people with money and by big corporations.” This is an issue we have covered at length already. In short, there is little regulation on campaign donations and what regulation there is isn’t enforced very well.

Another major reason for people’s apathy toward voting is that they don’t think their votes matter in a numerical sense. In a nation of over 300 million people, the role each individual vote has in determining a presidential winner or loser has little relevance. This argument stems from a bit of a logical fallacy though. Consider a jar with red and blue sand. When mixed, it appears purple. And every grain of sand is very small. You can pluck out any grain of sand, red or blue, and say “this grain of sand is so small, it has no contribution to the color of this jar.” And when you remove it, you don’t change the color of the jar. Does this prove your point? Of course not. By the same logic, you could claim to be able to remove all the sand, grain by grain, and that the jar would remain purple instead of clear. You could claim the same about removing all the blue sand or red sand.

When one person or one grain of sand is missing from the ballot box or jar, the color of the results doesn’t change. But if many people do not vote, the outcome can change. The only case where it wouldn’t would be if those who didn’t vote were represented perfectly by those who did. If you’re the only one not voting in your whole state, yeah, your vote or lack thereof probably doesn’t matter. But when upwards of 20 percent of the population thinks that way and elections are decided by single digit margins, it is irrational for all those people to think their votes don’t matter. It’s the same logic that advocates apathy in the face of climate change and we all know how helpful such apathy has been so far.

One legitimate grievance voluntary nonvoters have (for many people are prevented from voting by reasons outside of their control) is that candidates don’t represent them. The fault for this at least in part lies with the primary system. Political primaries are the intra-party elections held to determine which candidates will represent the parties on general election ballots. These only started happening in the 1900s and had little real influence in the determination of candidates until the 1970s. Before this, party conventions decided who would be on the ballot. Typically, the candidates were chosen by conventions based on electability. Party values were secondary to victory. Nowadays, however, primaries dominate. However, it’s not immediately clear why this objectively more democratic system should lead to problems with how well candidates represent voters.

The best way to think about it involves first remembering how little people participate in elections in the first place. If you think turnout in general elections are bad, you will struggle to believe how bad turnout is for primaries. Only 28.5 percent of eligible voters voted in both parties’ primaries combined in 2016. Only those who care most about politics are going to turn out for these, and it’s easy to see that people with more extreme beliefs are thus going to turn out than people with moderate beliefs. People aren’t passionate about moderation and compromise. This leads to more extreme candidates being elected by primaries. Those who end up thinking about voting in the general elections will be far less extreme and will thus feel unrepresented leading them to refrain from voting.

Political primaries would be a great thing if everyone voted in them: they are certainly more democratic than the older convention-based system of candidate selection. The people who rallied for them to become the standard for candidate selection were not malicious or stupid. Just as we have seen with a variety of political problems, the cause can often come from rational and benevolent individual decisions. The same goes for corporate campaign donations. While the surface-level behavior of corporate donors seems greedy and self-serving, the roots can be good.

If we are a democracy, we need to encourage changes to our electoral system that will maximize the amount of democratic participation. Those reforms could take any number of shapes but they must be made for change in any other domain to occur. Without democratic legitimacy, any leader, whatever they do, is ineffectual, since their actions are not representative of the will of the people.

Conclusion

This series concludes with a discussion of voter apathy because it is a problem that must be resolved before change can be made for the better in any of the domains we have discussed. People have to care. They have to learn and think. And we have to take care as a community to watch over one another to assure none of us contributes to something terrible out of an innocent or even benevolent motive. Even after reading all of this, having seen all these arguments and motives laid out, it is unlikely that you will change your behavior anymore than I have for learning all this. As Portia said in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice:

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”

Nonetheless, life is a series of moments. And if in some of these we remember what we have learned, we might make the right decisions. To be apathetic is to submit to the unconscious, amoral, tide of the structures of our societies that already have great control over the paths we take. And so long as we push, just ever so slightly, perpendicularly to that tide, exerting some small amount of free, conscious will, in just a very few moments, from time to time, things can change and for the better. To refrain from even this is a choice that cannot be blamed on the system, even for all of its ills.

The mission of the Prindle Institute for Ethics is to foster the skills of moral reasoning that give us the real freedom to choose in those few, decisive moments. Without these skills, the possibility for even small change in those moments is lost. Without them, the unconscious tide is all there is. As we have discussed throughout this series, plenty of extraordinarily harmful actions can be superficially justified and rationally so. And the systems under which we live, this tide, strongly incentivize us to adopt some of these while ignoring broader reaching, more complex moral concerns.

Whoever you are, whatever issues you care about, if you live in a democracy, elections and election reform are critical. Those minutes spent voting are some of the few moments where we have the chance to participate in decisive action. This series has been a depressing one, pointing out flaw after flaw in the electoral system. But we can’t just give up and focus on how depressing it is. We must think critically, examine our values, and place our focus instead on what the world can be. As the Lorax famously said in Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax:

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

October 7, 2020December 14, 2022

Considered Position: Flawed Democracy – Money in Politics

cartoon image of man speaking into megaphone made of money

This piece is part of a Considered Position series that reflects on the United States’ claim to being a “flawed democracy.” To see the earlier segments, start here.

We’ve spent a great deal of time here and here, discussing ways that the current US electoral system leads to the abuse of minority rights. However, certain minorities hold an enormous and disproportionate influence on politics. In previous sections, we’ve tended to use “minority” to mean a group that has a minority of the political power, regardless of its share of the population. In this next section we will be considering a different kind of minority, one that comprises only a tiny fraction of the population but which holds a significant amount of the political power. I am speaking, of course, of the rich and of corporations and the influence of their money in politics. We will consider in turn how money is used to influence politics, the fairly recent Citizens United decision that greatly increased this influence, and some potential solutions that minimize the difference in political power between the rich and the poor.

Lobbying

Once, the US federal government was a lot more corrupt than it is now. People complain nowadays about lobbying but lobbyists only offer, or threaten to take away, campaign donations. And while sometimes politicians use their campaign money on personal expenses, this is not terribly common. Back in the late 1800s, in the so-called “Gilded Age,” politicians were wildly corrupt. In 1886, the President Rutherford B. Hayes wrote in his diary, referencing Lincoln, “This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer. It is a government by the corporations, of the corporations and for the corporations.” This was the most explicit form of corruption, quid pro quo, literally “this for that.” Corporations consciously bribed politicians who gladly took the bribes. Nowadays, thankfully, quid pro quo corruption has been greatly reigned in. However, a systemic and more subtle sort of corruption remains.

Citizen Lobbying

This is the institution of corporate lobbying. Lobbying isn’t a bad thing. Anyone can lobby. “Lobbying” just means taking action to persuade an elected official to vote one way or another on a certain piece of legislation. And it is central to American democracy. The practice is protected by the First Amendment (not Article the First) where it is written that “Congress shall make no law. . . abridging . . . the right of the people. . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Anyone can do it, either by calling or writing individually to your congressperson or as part of a group, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That organization successfully lobbied the federal government to raise the drinking age to 21. This was a good example of lobbying gone well. Increasing the drinking age was widely popular and remains so today.

Now all sorts of lobbying does have certain broad problems too. In general, lobbying results in politicians acting not according to the will of all of their constituents, or even the majority. Rather, politicians will tend to act in accordance with whichever citizen lobbying groups are most vocal. See, polls are expensive and sometimes inaccurate. But some people will voluntarily call their congressperson, or write to them, and make their opinions known. This may also be inaccurate but at least it’s cheap. Suppose that only 20 percent of a district’s constituents really support defunding Planned Parenthood. But if those 20 percent all call and write to you while, of the other 80 percent, only 10 percent contact you, it will seem like more than two-thirds of your constituents want Planned Parenthood defunded and so maybe you the congressperson will vote in support of some legislation doing just that. This is undemocratic. The minority is having their interests put ahead of the majority. But, on the other hand, it’s not the fault of the citizen lobbyists. Other, less-vocal citizens are free to speak up. They just don’t. And if a congressperson votes in accordance with those who speak up, she might be justified: those who call or write may care more and maybe those who care more should have their interests represented more commonly than those who don’t care enough to reach out.

However, economic circumstance, rather than just care, can affect who lobbies too. Consider this: everyone has the time to call or write their congressperson every once in a while. But who has the time to lobby for hours a day? The only ones who can do this are the ones who don’t have to work a normal job. And these will be the wealthy, non-working spouses, and those who are retired. These groups will have their interests overrepresented. Even if you care, if you have to work many hours a day, you’re not going to be able to make your interests known as effectively as these groups can. This seems to be unjustly undemocratic. Conventionally, we don’t think you deserve more political power just because you have more money.

Small Business Lobbying

The bigger problem, then, comes with groups that tend to have lots of money. I mean of course corporations. In 2018, $3.4 billion dollars, an unimaginable sum, was spent on lobbying at the federal, state, and local level. In its most basic form, corporate lobbying can be as innocuous as citizen lobbying. A small business, with only a handful of employees donating a few thousand dollars to a candidate who supports small businesses doesn’t seem to be doing much wrong. Now that’s still more money than most people will contribute to political campaigns. In fact, the vast majority of people don’t donate any money to political campaigns.

And, while there seems to be little problem with small businesses spending small amounts of money on local elections, when those small businesses ally with other businesses, large and small, and pool their money through large lobbying organizations, they can have enormous undue influence. The largest lobbying group is the deceptively named “US Chamber of Commerce,” which is an association of 3 million businesses of varying sizes. This group spent nearly $100 million on federal lobbying in 2018. They consistently support Republicans, having spent 93 percent of their lobbying money supporting them in the 2010 elections. And, 94 percent of those they support deny climate change.

Given that climate change is a problem that hurts all of us, including business owners, we are also forced to wonder, in whose interest are these corporations, or associations of corporations, acting? If not in the interest of their owners, then in the interest of whom? And, notice: in the previous sentences, it seems natural to attribute a responsible action with intent and all to a corporation or group of them. We treat corporations like people in the way we speak and in fact legally they have a certain kind of personhood. So maybe, given that people can act in their own interests, the corporation is acting in its self-interest. But that’s not quite right, right?

Ultimately, corporations aren’t really people. They are associations of real people. So it must be that the corporation is acting in the interests of those who compose it. But most people who are part of a corporation day-to-day are the people who work for it. But they rarely have real power over the decisions the corporation makes. Rather, that power belongs to the owners. In a small corporation, that’s usually just a person and the few employees might have a personal connection to him or her and can exert influence that way. But in larger corporations, ones that are publicly owned, responsibility is diffuse.

Public Corporation Lobbying

A CEO has token power over the company, but he doesn’t own it. He can be replaced. Ownership, and the responsibility it entails, is diffuse throughout all the stockholders. Many of these stockholders are people with retirement accounts who don’t have a great deal of their assets tied up in a single company, so they don’t care all that much about individual corporations’ actions. They just want the value of their retirement accounts to increase. So, then, these publicly-owned corporations tend toward acting, in a sense, in their own self-interest, toward increasing their own value and profits without much regard to anything else. Furthermore, these corporations tend to prize short-term profits over increasing value in the long-term. This can be most readily by the difficulty humans in general have with delaying gratification.

As a result corporations tend to always place profits over any set of values, even if following those values would benefit the corporation in the long run. While the economic costs of climate change are believed to be enormous, companies like Exxon have been happy to lobby against taking action to stop it, even while they have known since the 1980s that it was a problem. Like climate change itself, this is a problem of collective action with individuals carrying little blame and having minor incentives to act against the group interest. And so, like climate change, it is a difficult problem to solve. It is difficult to expect the millions of Americans who invest in the stock market through retirement accounts to have intimate familiarity with the ethics of every company their account has investments in.

So it seems the really bad sort of lobbying is when large, public corporations lobby the government so as to maximize their short-term profits without regard for any set of values or the general interest. But, this is also exactly the sort of lobbying that we cannot blame on any one individual. It is a systemic issue. Removing individual CEOs who advocate lobbying will do us no good. Like the ancient hydra, cutting off the company’s head will cause more to grow in its place. If that’s true, we need a systemic solution; we need the government to pass laws to limit this sort of corporate behavior. However, this solution too is difficult to accomplish. Elected representatives have strong incentives to tolerate corporate lobbying. And, unlike amoral public corporations, these congresspeople can have good reasons for their actions.

Imagine being a congressperson. You just won your first election and already people are talking to you about your next election. You promised a lot of groups a lot of things to get the money to finance your campaign. You’ve got big ideas for serious changes you think you can make for the better in this country. You want to make people’s lives better! And if you lose your election, well, who knows if those changes will ever get done? Plus, you’ve not worked a non-political job in quite a while. And being a congressperson pays very well, especially if you stick around long enough and become popular enough to become a party leader. Of course, you’d rather be totally independent of those nasty “special interests” but it’s a lot harder to build your political war chest from small-dollar donations. You want to be certain of your reelection so you can get your goals accomplished, all of them in service of your constituents. So when that lobbyist from Exxon calls you up and offers a huge campaign donation in exchange for a promise that you vote down that upcoming bill. It’s something about opening up some remote part of Alaska for oil drilling. And you’re just a Senator from Iowa. Your constituents don’t care. You’re dedicated to serving them! So you promise Exxon whatever they want. You’re not a bad guy, just someone trying to change the world for the better.

In this admittedly charitable view of the relationship between politicians and lobbying, the congressperson is not deliberately doing wrong out of his own self-interest. Self-interest plays a role, and it will always play a role in politics so long as being a congressperson is a paid job (which it is for good reason) and so long as there are personal benefits to having power. People can desire to remain in office purely out of self-interest even without any more explicit bribes going on. However, it’s not hard to believe most politicians accept lobbyists’ money for good reasons as I’ve described above, at least some of the time.

Politicians do frequently care about their constituents. And so the desire to do good in one domain (whatever a politician’s personal policy goals are) can inhibit their ability to make decisions in the sort of unbiased, unmotivated way we expect good leaders to follow. Parochialism is an important factor in these decisions too. We ask congresspeople to make decisions whose consequences may not fall on them or their constituents. As with the Exxon example, it’s all gain, no pain, so-to-speak. And yet our process of having local elections incentivizes congresspeople to act only in that local interest, not in the general interest. Importantly, then, the fault isn’t so much on the congresspeople for individual acts of deferring to the will of lobbyists. Rather, the fault lies on those who created and who perpetuate the institutions which provide the incentives for these acts.

The question of blame often poisons discussions about lobbying. Some place blame on corporations for lobbying, but the businesses leaders who make decisions are beholden to their shareholders. Others blame the congresspeople and think of them as greedy and self-serving when they listen to lobbyists. But as we’ve discussed, this need not be true either. The blame is very diffuse. It’s the fault of disinterested 401k holders. It’s the fault of parochial constituents who will vote out a congressperson who puts the national interest ahead of the local one. Some blame lies on congresspeople and business leaders, but their decisions are a reflection of competing obligations. A corporate executive may recognize the harm of lobbying, but still want to provide for his family and lobbying is a fantastically effective way to help the business which pays his salary. A congressperson, too, would be naive to think lobbying did not corrupt his decision-making, but he wants to provide for his constituents and without corporate money it’s very difficult to win elections. I want to be clear: some corporate employees and some congresspeople are corrupt. They act to benefit one another, not the citizenry. However, even if every executive and every congressperson acted in good faith, lobbying would still exert a corrupting influence. Such is the nature of a corrupt system. As the saying goes, don’t hate the players, hate the game.

Citizens United

So, like we’ve concluded in many other pieces, the system itself is to blame. How did it get this way? I mentioned before how the Gilded Age was the high point for corruption in politics. And one would hope that every new day would be a lower and lower point as we continually reform the system for the better. But of course, the news isn’t that cheerful. The amount spent on Congressional elections increased by 600 percent from 1980 to 2012 while the amount spent on presidential elections has increased by over 1,200 percent in the same period, adjusted for inflation. Now those of you who would blame this increase on just ordinary population growth, consider this: the population has only grown 25 percent from about 247 million in 1980 to about 308 million in 2010, when the most recent census was conducted.

There is an enormous, complex history to the state of campaign finance and lobbying regulation. The battle between regulators and those who would seek to influence elections with money have raged since near the beginning. However, in this section we are going to focus only on a single piece of this history. It’s a Supreme Court decision that you have probably heard of. It was controversial from the very beginning when the court voted 5-4, sharply along ideological lines, to remove all limits on independent expenditures by corporations toward political campaigns. This was, of course, the Citizens United vs. FEC decision, Citizens United for short.

Wow, that sounds boring. It’s hard to imagine something as boring-sounding as “independent expenditures by corporations toward political campaigns” was a “controversial” decision. I suppose we should begin then by considering what these expenditures are. After that, we can consider why there were limits on them and how the removal of those limits has affected our elections. In doing so, we will predominantly focus on the arguments made by Justices on the Supreme Court since both sides made arguments for their side not based just on the law, but on the morals and values they believed to underpin the laws. In other words, this was a decision based on conflicting interpretations not on the letter but on the spirit of the law.

Also important to remember is that this was an example of judicial activism by the conservative bloc of the court. Long-standing precedent was overturned. Chief Justice Roberts compared the decision to the overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, saying that, “stare decisis,” that is, the idea that precedent should be left alone, is not an “inexorable command,” and that “If it were, segregation would be legal.” He also lists a few other instances of precedent being overturned. However, Brown v. Board was a unanimous decision, another he mentions was decided 7-1 and only one was contentiously decided 5-4 along ideological lines like Citizens United. Thus, there is some reason to be suspicious of the esteemed Chief Justice Roberts’ claim. That being said, we will be charitable to the majority’s arguments and will get to them in due time. But first, let’s begin with trying to understand what Citizens United actually did before we consider whether what it did was justified.

Suppose you are a wealthy individual. It’s 2007 and it’s time to elect the president. You’re not a big fan of that Senator from Illinois but you like that maverick from Arizona. He really seems to get you. So, you want to help him get elected. This is prior to the Citizens United decision in 2010, so your options are somewhat limited. You can donate to what is called a PAC (Political Action Committee), 527 group (its name coming from the section of the tax code under which it is regulated), and directly to a campaign.

There are benefits and drawbacks to each of these. You can only donate $2,300 directly per candidate (feel free to donate to as many candidates for Congress as you want), but the campaign can then use that money to “expressly advocate” for your preferred candidate. Express advocacy includes statements like “Vote Sheev for Supreme Chancellor” or “Defeat Macbeth at the ballot box or you’ll be next!” This is in contrast to “issue” advocacy which can only provide information about a candidate. It cannot direct those who are exposed to it to act in one way or another. PACs are also allowed to coordinate with candidate’s campaigns to maximize the effectiveness of their advocacy.

If you’ve still got some money left, you might try donating to a 527 organization. Technically, PACs are 527s too, but the term is usually used to refer to organizations that do not engage in express advocacy. 527s’ issue advocacy simply provides “information,” either about a general issue (“abortion is murder and here’s why…”) that might be a point of contention during the election, or about a candidate. For example, you might run an ad that says “Abortion is murder and Democratic candidate Soranus is a big fan! But Republican candidate Severus wants to make it strictly illegal!” They have to stop short of actually saying “Vote Severus!” This can still be very effective, and prior to the advent of Super PACs, it was the most popular way to make a big difference in elections. 527s are also not allowed to coordinate with candidates.

You can make some other donations, mainly to party committees on the local, state, and national level, and the limits on these are much higher. But that’s not going to be as effective at getting that lovable Vietnam veteran into the Oval Office. If you happen to run a business, your corporation will unfortunately not be able to contribute to any campaign or 527 group (you can actually thank McCain for that), but some of your employees can contribute to PACs associated with your corporation which can contribute to campaigns. However, there is a fairly strict limit on the total contributions these PACs can make. Whether your business has one PAC or ten, the limit is the same.

It didn’t work out. Maybe if you had just been able to donate more and McCain could have won. Fortunately, it’s 2012 and you have another chance with the charming bloke from Maine. And now, thanks to the Citizens United decision, you can do a lot more. First of all, PACs have been superseded by super PACs. These PACs can engage in express advocacy and can accept unlimited donations from both individuals and corporations. You read that right: that’s not from employees contributing to a corporation-associated PAC. Corporations can contribute straight from their treasuries. The last remaining limit is that super PACs cannot coordinate directly with candidates’ campaigns. But, as would be confirmed in 2016, the FEC doesn’t much care to stop this communication and any attempt to stop it would have to go up against the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

Plus, if some of your more liberal friends were offended by your large campaign contributions toward McCain last time, just find or start a non-profit corporation, give your donations to it (your business can do this too!) and have that non-profit donate to a super PAC supporting Romney. Normally, any individual contributions over $200 and all contributions from organizations (corporations, super PACs, etc.) have to be publicly disclosed. However, non-profits aren’t legally obligated to reveal their donors to the public so no one but the government will know you or your company contributed. (Post-2018, these non-profits aren’t required to tell even the government). So, the super PAC will have to reveal that that non-profit made a donation but it’s completely untraceable to you! You can just tell your friends you’re not that interested in politics anymore. Coincidentally this also allows foreign nationals to bypass laws that ban them from contributing to US political campaigns.

That last sort of contribution is what is frequently referred to as “dark money” since it’s ultimately untraceable and oftentimes, non-profit corporations, “ghost companies,” are formed for the express purpose of hiding contributions. And these non-profits spend a lot of anonymous donations: about $1 billion since 2010. That’s part of a total of $3 billion spent by super PACs in general since 2010. This is the result of that boring little decision to remove limits on independent expenditures by corporations toward political campaigns.

So why did five Supreme Court Justices vote to allow all this to happen? Well, there are basically two arguments they made, one legal, one moral. We’ll cover these in turn. The legal argument is simple: as Justice Antonin Scalia writes about the 1st Amendment, “The Amendment is written in terms of ‘speech,’ not speakers.” In particular, the Freedom of the Press clause, they argued, protected the free speech of associations of speakers.

“Now wait,” you might be thinking, “this is about money, not speech.” However, it has been long recognized by the Court that a right to spend money is intimately connected with the right to speech and communication more broadly. If you want to have any sort of communication except literal spoken speech, you require a medium and that medium usually costs money. If you want to write a letter, that takes pen and paper. Speaking on the radio requires a radio station. Running a TV ad requires recording equipment. Money is speech. Rather than denying that, the Court has historically judged that certain types of this kind of “speech” are worth limiting. The typical standard has been that the influence of money is worth limiting when it is used for the purpose of corrupting candidates and elected officials or when its influence leads to the appearance by the public of corruption. It is in the interest of the government that the populace not believe their votes are worthless and that money rules when it comes to elections.

So Scalia is undoubtedly right about the First Amendment. And, strictly speaking, he’s right to say it’s difficult to interpret the First Amendment as limiting any sort of speech. But of course, all sorts of speech are restricted. The Court has found grounds to limit speech despite the lack of explicit restrictions in the text of the amendment itself. The more important argument, then, is the moral one.

The moral argument the conservative majority made has two parts: first, that the ability of businesses, especially small businesses, to engage in free political speech is important; and second, that independent expenditures never give rise to the sort of quid pro quo corruption that warrants limiting said political speech. That second piece, by the way, implies that only quid pro quo corruption warrants censorship.

In defense of that first claim, the majority utilized a classically liberal claim: “that there is no such thing as too much speech.” This idea goes all the way back at least to John Stuart Mill in the 1800s. The idea, familiar to us all, is that in the “marketplace of ideas,” the expression and discussion of all ideas is important. According to our power of reason, the true ideas will stick in our minds more readily than the false ones. And each new exposure to false ideas will only strengthen in us the confidence we have of the truth. It’s a noble idea, but one that has failed every test of human psychology in the modern era.

For one, people have a confirmation bias, which leads them not to preference true ideas over false ones, but ideas they have over new ideas and new evidence they don’t agree with. People also accept and hold beliefs based on a heuristics which leads to an availability cascade where claims reiterated frequently enough in the public sphere are more readily accepted, even when demonstrably false. This holds especially true when the claims made fall outside of the listener’s area of expertise. If you don’t have much knowledge one way or the other concerning, say, climate change, and you haven’t done any research on the topic, but you more often hear that it’s fake than that it’s true, you will probably think it is fake. From this comes the famous saying, attributed to Nazi Joseph Goebbels, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” The majority would have it that most political speech by corporations is meant to spread ideas in good faith. The more cynically minded, however, will readily accept that corporations are acting right in line with Goebbels. Indeed, Justice Stevens echoes this sentiment in his dissent:

“If individuals in our society had infinite free time to listen to and contemplate every last bit of speech uttered by anyone, anywhere; and if broadcast advertisements had no special ability to influence elections apart from the merits of their arguments (to the extent they make any); and if legislators always operated with nothing less than perfect virtue; then I suppose the majority’s premise would be sound. In the real world, we have seen, corporate domination of the airwaves prior to an election may decrease the average listener’s exposure to relevant viewpoints, and it may diminish citizens’ willingness and capacity to participate in the democratic process.”

In fact, this same practice has been applied to the validity of the Citizens United decision itself with many politicians who support it denouncing all opposition as being opposed to “free speech.” Senate Majority Leader McConnell commented on the decision saying that it constituted “an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups.” Importantly, he never specified that those groups are corporations. And, of course, being against free speech makes you un-American and renders your arguments invalid.

The second moral argument that the majority relied on is that there is corruption, or the appearance of corruption, damaging to the electoral process when there are or appear to be quid pro quo agreements between donors and candidates. Fortunately, since this is a question of appearances, we can rely on polls of Americans. We can ask Americans if they think the sorts of donations the Citizens United decision would allow would corrupt the electoral process. And in fact, in Justice Stevens’ dissent, he cites such a poll, writing that:

“a large majority of Americans (80%) are of the view that corporations and other organizations that engage in electioneering communications, which benefit specific elected officials, receive special consideration from those officials when matters arise that affect these corporations and organizations.”

And we can confirm this with more recent polling that suggest more than three-quarters of Americans, across both parties, want the Citizens United decision overturned.

Now there remain serious questions: perhaps the standard concerning the “appearance” of corruption should be thrown out. Shouldn’t it matter more whether there is actual corruption? And, as we have discussed in many previous pieces, unfortunate outcomes may be the result of a rational, morally justifiable act. The main role of the Supreme Court, many people agree, is not to exact their or any values on the law. Rather, their role is merely to interpret and apply the law. It may very well be that the conservative majority got this case right, that the Constitution really cannot allow limits on corporate independent expenditures. In obeying their duty, they may have enacted a terrible consequence upon the nation.

And here comes the classic question of civil disobedience: if the laws are unjust, should they be followed? Perhaps the Supreme Court is obligated to do what’s best for the nation, regardless of the Constitution or past laws. It’s a radical view but one that follows fairly naturally from a broad conception of civil disobedience. And according to one poll, most people think that the Supreme Court should at least “interpret the Constitution based upon changes in society, technology, and the U.S. role in the world” instead of allowing “ONLY what’s exactly spelled out in the Constitution.” The originalism of Scalia, it turns out, isn’t so popular.

Citizens United was a very complex case. We have barely scraped the surface of the history behind it and have considered only a few of the ramifications of it that will extend far into the future. Once again, it seems at least possible that a problem with our electoral system (corporate individual expenditures) is not the result of malice or stupidity but rationality and duty. Furthermore, while public opinion is pretty solidly against Citizens United, there are at least some legitimate arguments for it that are based in views of free speech that have shaped our nation’s history and the history of liberal government for centuries. One definite result, however, is this: we should not lose faith in democracy and submit to the idea that corporations run the show. Citizens United, love it or hate it, needs to be discussed despite its complexity. If we are in fact a democracy and not a corporatocracy, the rules around elections ought to be up to us. The Supreme Court certainly holds a great deal of knowledge and wisdom but it does not always accurately reflect the people’s will. If Scalia is even a little bit right about the value of speech, we ought to debate their decision and decide collectively whether to keep it or overturn it and we ought to elect Representatives who believe the same.

Continue to Part IV

September 21, 2020December 14, 2022

Is the U.S. Becoming Less Democratic?

photograph of worn USA flag on pole with clouds behind

What does it mean to be a democracy and is the United States becoming less democratic in nature? With November rapidly approaching, the election has been marred by accusations of voter suppression, worries about Russian interference, claims that the entire election is rigged, and concern that this will be the most litigious election ever. Given this state of affairs, it seems like the democratic process is being undermined. However, the process of voting and democracy are not the same thing; the former is an instrument for enabling the latter. Does the problem go beyond one election?

American philosopher John Dewey understood democracy as a much broader phenomenon. While elections and the machinery of democracy matter, and while the vote of a majority is important, it is more important to consider how the will of a majority is formed or how the public can manifest the desires and preferences that matter to it. As he notes in Democracy and Education, “A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” that when fully realized affects all modes of human association. In The Public and Its Problems, he explains, “From the standpoint of the individual, it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs…From the standpoint of the groups, it demands liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interest and goods which are common.”

Essentially, democracy allows for individuals to provide input for the direction of the group while the group ensures that each individual within the group can realize their potential in keeping with common interests. It is a method for ensuring that conflicts within a society can be resolved in ways that promote growth and development, “it is the idea of community life itself.” Since these kinds of social interactions go beyond the scope of government, it stands to reason that democracy itself has a larger scope than how a government is selected.

For Dewey, in order for a political democracy to function properly it must allow for the interest of the public to be the supreme guide for government activity to enable the public to achieve its goals. To do this, however, a public must be able to identify itself and its aims. But, the public is prevented from doing this for reasons that are as relevant today (probably more so) as they were for Dewey. Rapid technological and social development means that we are simultaneously able to both affect distant locations, yet often lack a clear sense of the distant consequences of our actions. Lack of public awareness of these consequences means that we must rely on expert administrators.

But, during the age of fake news, COVID conspiracies, and the rise of QAnon, there is disagreement over basic facts. How can a democratic public perceive indirect consequences when they can’t agree on what is happening? One might expect the public to perceive a threat like COVID and assert what it wants, but without a common understanding, the government response has been confused, and significant segments of the public have demonstrated through protest and gathering that they simply aren’t concerned about the indirect consequences they may cause.

COVID-19 has been a global threat, it has caused (at least) almost 200,000 deaths, and it has created an economic crisis, yet many are unwilling to tolerate limited sacrifices such as wearing a mask and social distancing. Given that this has been the response to COVID, how will the public respond to the issue of climate change when the effects become more apparent? How will segments of the public respond when asked to make more significant sacrifices for a problem they may not believe is real?

It is also increasingly evident that tribalism is affecting the machinery of democracy. Partisanship has become an end in itself as a significant number of voters seem to believe that a platform does not matter, political norms (such as over Supreme Court nominations) do not matter, and the traditional stances taken by political parties do not really matter. This may lead to a situation where the Supreme Court, whose legitimacy has already been questioned, seems even less legitimate, just before a very litigious election.

Dewey believes that it is important to distinguish the machinery of democracy (elections, Congress, the Supreme Court) from democracy as a way of life. The form this machinery takes should respond to the needs of the public of the day and should be open to experimental revision. One might be tempted to believe that so long as this machinery can be maintained and revised where necessary there is no threat to democracy. However, Dewey suggests that since the machinery of democracy is merely an instrument for achieving what a democratic public wants, short of a unified public, it is futile to consider what machinery is appropriate. In other words, any potential reforms regarding mail-in voting, the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, and so on will not address the underlying issue without first addressing the fractured democratic public. If the public remains unable to find itself, the government will be less and less able to represent it and that makes the nation less democratic in the long run.

July 8, 2020December 14, 2022

Is Biden Trapped by Identity Politics?

photograph of Biden at rally pointing to the crowd

As anticipation continues to build over Joe Biden’s choice of running mate, he’s announced that his preference is for a candidate of a different race and gender than himself and followed this up with a commitment to selecting a candidate of a different gender. This rankles many people, even some with otherwise liberal leanings. The thought, it seems to them, is that candidates for office should be selected entirely on the basis of their qualifications, without consideration of their sex or race. To think otherwise, now, has come to be pejoratively called “identity politics”, and as more Democrats push for Biden to choose a Black woman, right-wing voices delight in the insistence that Biden is being held hostage by identity politics. What’s so bad about that?

Identity politics is often treated as a term of abuse. This is not surprising, as the concept now so often stands for politicians using their racial or gender identity — or proximity to such — as a means to achieve political aims such as winning an election or silencing critics. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, has seemingly attempted to counter the growing number of criticisms from African-American former allies by increasing public appearances with his African-American wife, Chirlane McCray.

Such uses of identity politics appear cynically calculated to influence voters’ decisions not through sound argument or policy, but by appealing to a desire to support one’s group. In the worst-case scenario, identity politics in this sense is meant to deceive voters: it tells them that a candidate is one of them, or on their side, while endorsing policies that harm them. Identity politics can, of course, be abused in this way, in what Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò has called “elite capture”: the process by which a movement is exploited by elites to serve their own purposes rather than those of the people it is supposed to help. But abuse of this kind is not unique to identity politics, and so not a reason to dismiss it as harmful in itself.

It would be objectionable if Biden or those pressuring him were using identity politics in order to manipulate voters into acting in ways that harm them while helping Biden or his party. But for that to be the case, it would have to be true that he is actively pushing for policies that would harm the voters such a stratagem is designed to win over, and it’s unclear that he is — at least compared to his opponent. Moreover, for him to be using identity politics in this way, it would need to be the case that distracting voters from their real interests were his main reason for leaning toward a Black woman as a running mate. But there is no evidence of this, and it seems unlikely considering the chorus of his supporters pushing him to make this choice. It’s true, of course, that Biden is trying to win the election, and any running mate he chooses will be someone calculated to help him do that. But presumably he does a lot of things with that aim, most of them unobjectionable. If his purported reliance on identity politics is a problem, then, there must be a further reason.

One common objection to identity politics holds that voters have “been presented with a narrative and arguments convincing them to rely on identity politics, or in other words, shallow stereotypes,” as Tammy Bruce puts it. On this uncharitable view of identity politics, it functions primarily by reducing people to representatives of particular identities rather than recognizing them as individuals. Perhaps, then, the critics mean that in having to choose a Black woman candidate, Biden is ensuring that whoever he eventually chooses is not chosen for her qualifications, but for her gender and race alone. This is a popular take on identity politics, but it comes with its own set of problems.

First, to think that the pressure on Biden forces him to choose not a person but a stereotype seems to itself reduce Black women to stereotypes, since simply committing to a Black woman candidate does not imply either that anyone who meets that description is equally qualified nor that everyone who meets that description is qualified. The thought, instead, could be that although a number of Black women are perfectly qualified to be vice president, no one from that demographic has ever been chosen for the role due to a social depreciation of their race and sex. Seen in this light, a commitment to choosing a Black woman need not appear as a commitment to choosing a stereotype, but to choosing from a typically overlooked pool of excellent candidates.

Second, there is an underlying assumption that one’s sex or race is irrelevant to one’s qualification for a job. But clearly this is not always the case. It makes good sense, for example, to choose a Black spokesperson for the NAACP or a woman to consult women on reproductive issues. In these cases, a candidate’s race or sex is a qualification for the position, though it is not the only qualification and may not even be a necessary one. If, for example, a reproductive counselor is needed but no women with the requisite training can be found, it would make sense to choose a man. Still, to strongly prefer a woman for that position is not in itself problematic. There is no reason that the same might not be true of a candidate for vice president, especially if we consider that what qualifies one for that role is not some fixed set of laws, but an interplay of the historical and cultural context with the presidential candidate’s and their party’s strategy and priorities.

But there is an even more widespread, and perhaps slightly more highbrow criticism of identity politics, leveled by pundits from the liberal middle to the far right of the spectrum, such as Mark Lilla, Francis Fukuyama, Jonah Goldberg, and the Heritage Foundation. The spirit of this criticism isn’t so much that identity politics encourages us to see each other — and ourselves — as stereotypes. Instead, while such critics sometimes express sympathy for identity politics, they argue that by focusing on group identities it undermines the communal ties that bind us together. On this view, identity politics weakens our shared values by encouraging us to view ourselves primarily as members of sub-national groups and to focus on the interests of our group rather than those of the country. From this perspective, in expressing a preference for a running mate of a particular race and sex, Biden is sending a signal to some social groups that he is on their side but simultaneously telling other groups that he is not on theirs, and that he represents a fundamentally different culture from their own: one that prizes diversity over their interests.

But the view of identity politics as essentially divisive only works if we assume the divisions aren’t there to start with, or that they are minor enough that drawing attention to them causes more harm than good. If the divisions are already there, however, the options are to ignore them or to work to repair them, which cannot be done without recognizing that they exist. Now suppose that an electorate overwhelmingly votes for white men, regardless of the qualifications of others in the running. We might think that such an electorate is flawed. Waiting for the political landscape to improve on its own might work, but it also might not, since the electorate reproduces its biases with every election, choosing the person who “looks right” for the job, and thereby ensuring that that’s the kind of person who looks right for the job. In the meantime, an entire field of highly qualified candidates is left out. Another alternative, then, is to change the landscape by providing extra support for the candidates who don’t fit that type.

Identity politics — or at least the term itself — began life with the statement composed by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The Black lesbian activists who comprised the collective did not take the concept to mean that they should get special treatment simply because they were Black, women, and lesbians. Instead, the thought was that insofar as society is structured in a way that does not treat all equally, they have a better insight into the inequalities that affect them than Black men, or straight women, might have. But the goal is not to splinter into ever-smaller groups, each demanding different treatment. The goal, rather, is for each group to lay out the ways in which it is not treated equally, so that different groups can come together in solidarity to help right each other’s injustices. Identity politics is the means; solidarity is the end. Elizabeth Drew asks, “But why does a woman necessarily merit a head start on the next presidential nomination?” The answer, perhaps, is that it’s time that women — and especially Black women — have the platform from which to present their own solutions to injustice.

March 2, 2020December 20, 2023

Operation Chaos; or, How to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

War is politics by other means, we are told. It seems true also that politics is war by other means. American politics embraces a sort of total war credo, where any method it takes a party to advance its political agenda is on the table. This is manifested by so-called “Operation Chaos,” the military-inspired name for a strategy by Republican activists to influence the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. However it’s not clear that strategy advances the interests of those voters involved in the way they hope it will.

Operation Chaos aims to influence the Democratic primary by getting Republican voters to cast ballots during the elections in open primary states. Open primary states, like South Carolina, are states in which a voter does not have to be a registered member of the political party whose primary the opt to vote in. So ahead of South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday, February 29, 2020 the organizers of Operation Chaos urged Republican voters—or at least those who want to see Trump re-elected in November, 2020—to vote for the Democratic contender who will have the worst head-to-head chance against Trump in the general election. More specifically they argued that helping Bernie Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont, win the nomination would ensure a Trump victory. This idea, referred to as “party raiding,” is not new, having long been one of the possible downsides of open primaries pointed out by critics.

This strategy is dubious on several fronts. The first problem is that there is no evidence that party raiding is either common, extensive, or particularly effective. Second, according to a panoply of polls, Bernie Sanders is projected to beat Trump in a head-to-head, general election contest. However these polls don’t provide any certainty about the outcome of a general election contest, and there is no way to know at this point how a Sanders nomination would affect the American electorate. Two competing arguments paint starkly different pictures. Sanders supporters argue that his nomination would motivate young and progressive voters, who might otherwise stay home in November, to turn out and give Democrats the bump the need in contested states, like Pennsylvania. The contrary argument is that Sanders will turn-off, rather than turn-out, moderate voters and Trump-dissatisfied Republicans who might be enticed to vote Democrat in 2020. In any case, any effort to hand the Democratic nomination to Sanders is not the sure bet for Trump that the organizers of Operation Chaos seem to think.

But there is a deeper problem with the party-raid strategy of Operation Chaos. Their plan, because of the risk of undesired results, fails to maximize the interests the voters who cast these attempted disruption ballots. It may even be too generous to portray the plan as operating under risk, and instead more appropriate to see it as a plan operating under genuine uncertainty. American economist Frank Knight distinguished between risk, where we are aware of the relative odds of success for various course of action, and genuine uncertainty. Under genuine uncertainty we either don’t know all of the possible outcomes (if we know any of them), or we don’t know what the odds of success are (even for a known set of outcomes). In the aftermath of the 2016 American presidential election, and other events that have surprised pundit predictors, we are becoming more aware of how often we mistake genuine uncertainty for mere risk.

Suppose, however, we are charitable to Operation Chaos and concede that the relative probabilities of success for different head-to head, general election contests against Trump are known. Does party raiding now stand vindicated as a good plan? No, it doesn’t. The remaining problem has to do with how the different possible outcomes affect the Operation Chaos voters’ interests. If they are right about Sanders’ chances, and they succeed in handing him the nomination, they get the outcome they most want. However if they are wrong about Sanders’ chances, but still succeed in handing him the nomination, they get what they least want. Voters would maximize their chances of getting something they want if they voted strategically in such a way so that no matter who won, Democrat or Republican, they would get (some of) what they want.

This is similar to the decision strategy promoted by John Rawls in his well-known A Theory of Justice. He constructs a thought experiment in which people devise a social system from an “original position” behind a “veil of ignorance.” The gist of the Rawls’ thought experiment is to demonstrate what a fair and just social system would look like. He reasons that people, because they are rationally self-interested, will work to create a system that maximizes their own self-interest. To make sure that they also create a system that is fair to their fellow citizens, Rawls asserts that people should design this system while ignorant of certain facts about themselves (e.g., their skills, racial/ethnic characteristics, gender, etc.). That is, he creates a a situation involving genuine uncertainty rather than mere risk. When subject to such strictures, Rawls argues that people will distribute social goods across all the possible social positions they themselves might inhabit once the system they have designed gets going. This then produces a fair system for all people.

In the case of Republican voters cast ballots in open Democratic primaries, they would better maximize the extent to which the next President promotes their own self-interest. By voting for a Democratic candidate who, if elected, would act to promote policies that Republican voters prefer, party raiders would ensure that some of their preferred policies are promoted in the case of either a Democratic or Republican victory. That is they create a win-win situation for themselves. However if party raiders hand the nomination to a candidate who, upon winning the general election, would promote policies that are counter to the raiders’ preferences they create a situation a win-lose situation for themselves.

To all appearances, Operation Chaos didn’t work in South Carolina. Former Vice President Joe Biden won the state’s primary by a wide margin over Bernie Sanders. If Operation Chaos continues their efforts in subsequent open primary states, like upcoming “Super Tuesday” states Virginia and Texas, they should vote for the Democratic candidate who would best represent their interests—not the one who they think is most likely to lose against Donald Trump in November.

February 28, 2020December 14, 2022

The Case for Epistocratic Democracy

Winston Churchill famously described democracy as “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” But what if societies tried an epistocracy? An epistocracy is a form of government in which the knowledgeable of society rule. In his book, Against Democracy, Jason Brennan, a Georgetown University political philosopher, argues for this form of government. In an interview, he observed,“[Democracy] incentivizes citizens to be ignorant, irrational, tribalistic, and to not use their votes in very serious ways.”

Even Athens, oft-regarded as the prime example of democracy, was an epistocracy. Brennan argues that Athens was epistocratic “because only a very small number of people were actually voting, and they were the most educated members of society — the people who had the most political knowledge and the time to spend working on politics.”

A government run by knowledgeable political technocrats has some appeal. But critics point out obvious problems. It is susceptible to despotism, robs most individuals of their political agency, and requires the development of an objective standard for evaluating useful knowledge. But the underlying problem an epistocracy seeks to solve–the uninformed voter–still requires a solution.

Those who participate in the political process ought to be informed and knowledgeable for numerous reasons, prime among them is voters’ duty to their fellows to meaningfully contribute to our shared political process.

Ignorance is a constraint; willful ignorance is a moral wrong. If we grant the uncontroversial assumption that free choice and autonomy is morally preferable to constrained choice and subjugation, we must also conclude that willful ignorance ought to be avoided. Information is required to make an autonomous decision. Informed choice is a more free choice.

Think, for example, about a patient who is unaware of the details or consequences about a procedure he or she is about to undergo. The patient cannot possibly give consent as he or she has not reached the threshold of information required to make an informed decision. In a similar way, a consumer who has just purchased a car cannot be said to have freely bought the car if the salesman lied about the price. The consumer is inhibited by the deception of the salesman; it is unclear how his or her choice to buy the car was free or voluntary.

Willful ignorance is a self-inhibitor, a self-deception on one’s ability to choose. In a political context, willful ignorance entails failing to inform yourself with a basic level of political knowledge when you have access to that political knowledge. (An individual who does not have the tools or access required to inform themselves cannot be considered willfully ignorant.)

An understanding of the basic structure of your government (e.g. the separation of power and the roles of the different branches) and an awareness of the policy preferences of candidates is sufficient to be informed. This is hardly a requirement of expertise. Indeed, this seems to be a low threshold, especially in the age of immediate access to information, and it often requires no more than browsing reliable online sources or reading reputable news sources about candidates’ proposals.

Despite this ease of access, uninformed citizens are prevalent. For example, only a quarter of Americans can name the three branches of the U.S. government. Knowledge of the function of each branch is necessary for casting an informed vote. You may be aware of the judges a presidential candidate prefers for the Supreme Court but if you do not know that the President merely nominates a judge to be confirmed by the Senate, how meaningful is the vote for the candidate alone? A voter ought to understand that if he or she desires a particular tilt on the Supreme Court, he or she must also vote for Senate candidates who are likely to support the nomination of that Supreme Court Justice.

Those who are uninformed may have freely selected a candidate, party, or policy option in the sense that no external actor was inhibiting their ability to do so, but they may have done blind to what a candidate advocates for, what the policy entails, or how the mechanisms of government work. As Brennan points out, which party an individual votes for is often determined by their religion or the region where they reside rather than an evaluation of the party’s alignment with the individual’s own interests. This basic level of political knowledge is crucial. Understanding what policy advances your preferences or protects your interest is a requirement for voting for the policy that advances your preferences and protects your interests. Otherwise you are making choices while laboring under a delusion.

Another reason to be informed is the duty that you have to your fellow citizens. Individual citizens are partial, indirect authors of the law by which all citizens abide. The creation of these laws are best when the authors know what the proposed laws are and what is required to pass those laws. As Brennan notes in “The Ethics and Rationality of Voting,” “How voters vote has a significant impact on political outcomes, and can help determine matters of peace and war, life and death, prosperity and poverty.” Even if an individual voters in their own self-interest, their vote impacts others in society. While “the expected harm of an incompetent individual voter” is small, it is not preferable that the votes are cast in ignorance.

Civilians in democratic societies ought to be informed. By not being so, we are inhibiting our own ability to choose freely. We should aspire towards an epistocratic democracy–a democracy in which all voters are informed–because we have a shared duty to do so.

February 25, 2020December 20, 2023

Bloomberg: Biasing Elections With Billions

photograph of Mike Bloomberg speaking at political rally

There are few things as closely connected as money and politics. In the 2016 election alone, $6.5 billion was spent. Of that, $2.4 billion went toward the presidential race and $4.1 billion went toward Congressional races. In the 2010 election, about half of the money spent on Congressional races was from large donations (more than $200) by individuals and about a quarter came from organizations known as PACs. About ten percent came from candidates self-funding. There is a sort of nobility to a candidate funding his own campaign. Most candidates accept money from organizations, companies, and rather well-off individuals and end up feeling an obligation to act in their interests. But those funding their own campaigns, in contrast, are beholden only to the people who they receive votes from.

Nonetheless, few candidates are able to fund their own campaigns. While a reasonably well-off individual might be able to completely self-fund a campaign for Congressional office in a small district, virtually no one can afford to run for President without accepting money from other people and groups. In 2016, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton spent around a billion dollars. Little of that was their own money. This is a little surprising when it comes to Trump, who is himself a billionaire. That even Trump did not finance his own campaign shows the difficulty of doing so. However, in the 2020 election, one candidate is trying to do just that.

Michael Bloomberg has spent $450 million of his own money trying to win the Democratic Primary, so far. That is more than all the other candidates combined. And yet, few have lauded Bloomberg for the nobility of being unbeholden to special interests, financing his own campaign for the Democratic nomination. Bloomberg’s top campaign adviser, Howard Wolfson, has promoted this very idea, saying that Bloomberg “cannot be bought” and that he is “wholly independent of special interests.” Even so, Bloomberg has been criticized for attempting to “buy his way to being president.”

There are a few moral objections that people might raise to the Bloomberg campaign that might outweigh the value of the independence of his self-funding. These can be more clearly explained by consideration of why it might be good for a candidate to fund his own campaign. A candidate who funds his own campaign for noble reasons, who wishes to avoid being bound by special interests, typically accomplishes this feat through great personal sacrifice. Most Americans make much less over the course of many years than the cost of a single election. So for the few who do self-fund, it often represents an enormous financial burden. But, Bloomberg has a net worth of over $60 billion. The money he has spent so far represents only 0.7 percent of his net worth. The median American has a net worth of $97,300. For him, an amount comparable to Bloomberg’s spending on the election would be around $700. Thus, this is no great sacrifice for Bloomberg.

Another objection to Bloomberg’s campaign has to do with the self-funding candidate’s desire to avoid ties to special interests. We typically define a special interest as “a person, group, or organization that tries to influence government decisions to benefit itself.” These may be large lobbying groups for, say, tobacco or oil companies. Or, they may be extraordinarily wealthy individuals who wish to advance the interests of their companies, or to limit their taxes. The problem with Bloomberg may be that he is, himself, a special interest. Or perhaps, as Jim Newell argues, the issue with Bloomberg’s campaign is not its avoidance of special interests, but of “indifference to ‘interests’ altogether.” The practice of politics in a democracy assumes as axiomatic the idea that change cannot be accomplished on one’s own. Only through working together, compromising, and acting in accordance with the harmonized interest of a great deal of citizens can elections be won and change be wrought. Bloomberg’s campaign is an affront to this idea of democratic politics and is thus objectionable on those grounds.

But, what does this matter anyhow? In some sense, it is absurd to say that Bloomberg, or anyone, could “buy” an election. Unless the election process is wholly corrupted, elections are won in democracies by votes. Those votes can be affected by campaigns and advertisements for candidates, but an unlikable candidate whose political positions are antithetical to the majority of voters’ values cannot win at the ballot box, regardless of the amount of money they spend. People are not mindless drones whose votes are determined by dollar amount of campaign spending: Hillary Clinton spent nearly fifty percent more on the 2016 election than Trump and still lost. Furthermore, voters have a number of other ways to learn about candidates besides advertisement. And, in Bloomberg’s case, these have proven harmful.

At the debate just prior to the Nevada Democratic caucuses, all the other candidates thrashed Bloomberg for minutes on end. While there is no objective measure of victory in a debate like this, The Washington Post placed Bloomberg under the “loser” category, particularly for coming off as “technocratic,” a word that signifies that Bloomberg seemed out-of-touch or elitist. If The Washington Post is right, it does not matter how much Bloomberg spends: if the people don’t like him, they won’t vote for him. And, if they do, they should vote for him, regardless of the money he spent, since citizens of a democracy are assumed to vote for the candidates they think are best (though this doesn’t always play out).

Bloomberg has the right to free speech, to advocate for himself, and to encourage others to vote for him. As the Supreme Court has consistently ruled, campaign spending is protected speech up until it is, or implies, corruption. Essentially, the debate comes down to how one believes candidates, and ultimately those in power, should be selected. Citizens of a democracy should obviously vote for who they think is best. But, that judgment of “who is best” is complicated by the various factors that go into it. Ideally, voters would make their decisions with perfect knowledge of the candidates’ positions and characters. In reality, only a small amount of the relevant information makes it to most voters. And, when that is the case, it matters who has the largest loudspeaker to communicate. Money matters because it allows candidates to reach voters more effectively. In some cases, this means money can decide elections, not because citizens are unable to decide for themselves which candidate is best given what they know, but because political advertising can affect what it is they know in the first place. Particularly if the political advertising is deceptive as to the positions and character of a candidate, or as to the positions and characters of their opponents, voters will be making bad decisions. They will make rational decisions, but not well-justified ones. Since lying in political advertisements is legal, this is a grievous concern.

When June rolls around, we will know if Bloomberg’s self-funded campaign was ultimately successful. Voters will decide, even if their decisions are not based on facts. An ABC News/Washington Post poll from February 14-17 shows Bloomberg being most popular among 15 percent of the national population, second only to Bernie Sanders, a man known for decrying the billionaire class, and equal to former Vice President Joe Biden, thought only months ago to be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination. Whether Bloomberg wins or not, it is safe to say his actions will shape the status quo for the future, showing other billionaires that it is possible to participate in elections in a significant way, just by spending huge amounts of money.

January 24, 2020December 14, 2022

On Political Purity Tests

With the 2020 presidential election less than a year away, talk of “purity” tests for political candidates – so-called requirements, expectations, or “deal-breakers” for voters’ support – has become curiously common.

On the Democratic side, where more than a dozen contenders are still vying for their party’s nomination (and have begun to challenge each other more openly about their progressive bona fides), concerns about flexibility and eventual electability have led some figures to warn against holding impossibly high standards for the eventual Democratic standard-bearer. Just before Thanksgiving, at a question-and-answer session in California, Former President Barack Obama explained that “We will not win just by increasing the turnout of the people who already agree with us completely on everything – which is why I am always suspicious of purity tests during elections. Because, you know what, the country is complicated.” Instead of requiring a political candidate to perfectly match your ideals in every way, this position suggests a more pragmatic approach that allows for (at least some) ideological compromise.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have spent much of the last three years practicing precisely that sort of compromise, frequently (and sometimes even proudly) admitting that President Donald Trump is, in many ways, far from the conservative ideal in his personal life, but is, nevertheless, the most useful figure for accomplishing politically conservative goals. Despite long-popular rhetoric amongst Republicans about faith and family values, the children of the Moral Majority have committed themselves to defending a thrice-married philanderer because, for example, Trump’s ability to appoint conservative judges to federal positions outweighs his inability to name a book of the Bible. When Christianity Today, a leading magazine for Evangelical Christians, recently published an opinion piece arguing, in part, that Trump’s unapologetic immorality damages the credibility of his religious defenders, it was lambasted amongst the party faithful as proof that the periodical represents the “elitist liberal wing” of their denomination.

The question of purity indeed poses an interesting (potential) ethical dilemma: either you get your hands dirty to take what you want, or you find that your clean hands remain empty in the end – which is preferable?

In its crudest form, this dilemma is not unlike the classic “trolley problem,” where a person is tasked to choose whether it is better to act in a way that condemns one person to die or, instead, to refrain from action in a way that results in five deaths. Although the former requires bloodying your own hands by involving yourself in a causal chain resulting in the death of a person, it brings about a set of consequences which involves fewer deaths overall; the latter allows you to avoid direct responsibility, but results in a significantly less palatable end. Which of these options is the right one to choose?

Instead of circling debates around various ethical theories, Alexis Shotwell, professor of sociology, anthropology, and philosophy at Carleton University, offers a different solution altogether: rejecting the possibility of “purity” as an attainable quality, period. In her 2016 book Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times, Shotwell argues that the perception of moral purity as a genuine goal is, in principle, illusory, so the sort of clean-cut options supposed by trolley-style dilemmas are simply unrealistic. Instead, our embeddedness in social contexts requires an amount of interdependency with others that will always, as a general rule, require ideological compromise to at least some degree. Given that everyone has slightly different desires, interests, and goals, “an ethical approach aiming for personal purity is inadequate,” and, ultimately, “impossible and politically dangerous for shared projects of living on earth.”

This sort of approach neither draws lines in the sand across which certain people are not welcome, nor does it try to give some ends-based excuse for allowing deplorable people into one’s inner circle: instead, it recognizes that – like it or not – we’re already all in this together. As Shotwell explains, the idea is rather that

“I’m going to work on this thing and I’m definitely going to make a mistake. I’m already part of a really messed up situation, so I’m not going to be able to personally bend the arc of the universe toward justice. But I might be able to work with other people so that all together we can do that.”

Perhaps the main way that someone can ethically fail on such a model is to reject trying to work together at all.

So, importantly, Shotwell’s approach does not license an individual to behave however they choose: the emphasis on collective and relational approaches to problem-solving (as not only pragmatic requirements, but as the logically prior element of moral exchanges altogether) means that moral agents are inextricably bound to certain moral expectations based on the communities in which we find ourselves – these relationships (more so than our individual intentions or the direct consequences of our own actions) ground our moral judgments – as well as our political choices. So, candidates who transgress these sorts of communal expectations for cooperative and mutual care can indeed still be held accountable, but in a manner notably more ecumenical than either the myopic purity tests of the Democrats or the sycophantic apologetics of the Republicans.

Although the outcome of the 2020 election cycle is still far from determined, one thing seems clear: it’s messy already and the chaos will only get worse. Rather than pretending that “the Right candidate will be Good” or that “the best candidate doesn’t actually have to be good,” Shotwell’s “politics of imperfection” suggests that everyone needs to hold each other accountable to work together in the project of creating a world for us all.

January 22, 2020December 14, 2022

Campaign Donations, Caveat Emptor, and #RefundPete

photograph of Mayor Pete at an even flipping pork chops in Iowa Pork apron

The second week of December saw another unusual wrinkle in an already-complicated Democratic primary season: grassroots donors began demanding refunds for political contributions made to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. Citing concerns about Buttigieg’s pursuit of high-dollar donors, defenses of corporate interests, and dismissive attitudes towards questions regarding these tactics, as well as specific revelations regarding his work at the management consulting group McKinsey and Company, some voters who had once considered Buttigieg an interesting newcomer to the national stage are changing their minds. Although the Buttigieg campaign has declined to release data on the number of refunds requested, the movement appears to be growing as the hashtag #RefundPete began trending online.

As it stands, presidential campaigns are only legally obligated to refund a campaign donation if that donation somehow violates legal requirements (such as if it exceeds the FEC’s contribution limits) – no provision requires refunds simply because donors have had a change of heart. However, might Buttigieg’s campaign have a moral obligation to dispense refunds? Or does the Latin warning “Caveat Emptor” – “let the buyer beware” – apply to political donations just as much as it might to property sales?

On the one hand, you might think that a political donation is simply a non-binding show of support – a flat contribution demonstrating a thin sort of sponsorship that does not commit either a donor or a candidate to anything further. Put differently, this view sees a campaign donation as simply a gift with no strings attached. Even though a voter might give money to one (or even multiple) campaigns, that would in no way indicate how the donor would end up voting at the ballot box and, conversely, the candidate can use that money at-will.

On the other hand, it might be that making a campaign contribution thereby initiates the donor into the candidate’s group of supporters, creating a net of (at least some) obligations between the donor and the candidate – such as the expectation that the candidate represent the will of the donors/supporters. On this view, a donation is more like a contract or a promise that a candidate must perpetually merit. Presumably, on this second, thicker view, if the candidate breaks the contract (perhaps by initially misrepresenting themselves or by changing their positions), then the donor could have grounds to demand repayment.

If these choices are right, then it would seem like the #RefundPete movement is assuming the second option to ground their reimbursement expectations: although someone may have contributed to Buttigieg when he was presenting himself as a progressive, small-town mayor looking for grassroots support, that same contributor could easily feel deceived when Buttigieg later adopts a more openly centrist position, chases elitist funding, and cavalierly ignores questions regarding that shift. Because of that perceived deception, former Buttigieg donors might think they are entitled to a refund.

However, it is the first option which seems like the most natural understanding of how campaign donations actually function. Given that there is a clear difference between contributing to a campaign and actively campaigning for a candidate (via rallying, door-knocking, sign-posting, or a myriad of other approaches), it’s not clear that a simple financial transaction (often done impersonally through an online payment portal) is able to automatically create the thick sorts of relational obligations between a candidate and his supporters required to ground a reimbursement request. That is to say, although campaign donors and campaign workers are both supporters of a candidate, they are not identical political agents (someone can easily be one without being the other). If former Buttigieg-donors also put in the effort to build relational ties with the Buttigieg campaign (thereby becoming Buttigieg-campaign-workers), then they might indeed have standing to expect some form of recompense for their wasted efforts (given what they now know); if those former donors are now simply regretting their choice to toss some “pocket change” at a candidate that they now don’t like, then it’s much less clear that they deserve the refunds they’re requesting. Indeed, this second scenario seems fairly familiar to any voter who has ever ended up dissatisfied with the results of representative democracy.

To be fair, it seems like much of the #RefundPete hashtag is motivated by the opportunity to make a political statement about Buttigieg’s campaign tactics, policy positions, and general demeanor: for example, the hashtag was sparked by a campaign worker for Elizabeth Warren and one of the inspirations of the #RefundPete hashtag had only donated $1 to help Buttigieg qualify for an early debate. Particularly in a race where grassroots support has become a defining wedge issue among Democratic candidates (as Bernie Sanders joked about in the December debate), such statements might be perfectly legitimate – but that’s a far cry from saying that the concept of a campaign donation refund is, in principle, legitimate.

September 26, 2019October 24, 2023

The Trump/Zelensky Exchange: The “Though” Makes It Quid Pro Quo

photograph of Trump and Zelensky posing for cameras, seated and shaking hands

The Trump administration released a “transcript” of the recent phone call between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump. The administration seems to think that the document proves there was no quid pro quo arrangement suggested by the president. They claim that defense funding was never made conditional on Ukraine investigating Joe Biden or his son. Supporters of the president have dismissed the uproar as motivated by partisan politics, and regard any suggestion that the memo might represent an impeachable offence “a huge overreach” by Democrats.

But the accusation of a quid pro quo arrangement between a sitting president and a foreign government is a big deal. Asking the Ukrainian president to investigate a political rival by itself is sketchy. But to dangle defense funding in front of Ukraine and suggest that Ukraine won’t get it unless they come through is clearly an abuse of power. These types of political dealings were precisely the kind the founding fathers thought essential to keep out of our democracy. To use the power of the presidency for personal gain or to undermine a political rival is precisely the kind of power the founding fathers meant to curb with the constraints they placed on the executive branch. As Zack Beauchamp of Vox has argued,

The president is trying to get a foreign power to open an investigation into the highest-polling Democratic candidate, perhaps Trump’s likeliest opponent for reelection in 2020, on an extremely flimsy pretext — to turn Biden’s fake Ukraine scandal into “her emails” 2.0. He is actively working to weaponize the presidency to boost his political fortunes.

Not only would this constitute election interference, it further threatens to give a foreign power leverage over another nation’s commander-in-chief.

The administration has been adamant that no such deal was officially presented. In Trump’s own words he said, “I didn’t do it. There was no quid pro quo.” Many news outlets have tended to confirm this account; without anything more explicit it’s hard to say definitively whether an offer was intended or whether it was interpreted as such. This ambiguity has led the Justice Department to conclude that prosecutors “did not and could not make out a criminal campaign finance violation.” Without a clearer picture of the actual goods on offer and any clear-cut proposal, the DOJ found it difficult to hold the president accountable for soliciting foreign support in his upcoming presidential campaign.

But there is one word in the transcript of the phone call between Donald Trump and Zelensky that makes it pretty clear that Donald Trump threatened to withhold defense funding from Ukraine if Ukraine did not investigate Joe Biden and his son. It’s the word “though”.

Here is the excerpt that matters:

President Zelenskyy

I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

The President

I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people..

President Zelinskyy thanked President Trump for defense support and mentioned that he would like to continue this cooperation. The first sentence out of Trump’s mouth is “I would like you to do us a favor though.” He goes on to ask for an investigation of Biden as part of this favor. In this context, “though” would literally be defined as “placing a restriction or condition on what was previously said.”

Had Trump left that word out, this still looks pretty close to quid pro quo, but there is still the possibility of inferring some weaker claim. On the other hand, one might infer that though he didn’t explicitly threaten to withhold funding unless an investigation happened, it’s implied by asking for the favor. The “though” is what actually makes this an explicit threat; it’s what removes this ambiguity.

It’s up to Congress and the American People to decide what should be done next. As a matter of political expediency, we can argue about whether impeachment is a good idea or not. But whatever is decided, let’s not pretend that this phone call was anything other than an explicit threat by a sitting US President to stop cooperating with Ukraine on their military defense unless they investigated his political rival. The “though” makes this clearly a quid pro quo exchange.

October 13, 2016December 14, 2022

In Ferguson, Divides Remain as a Community Moves Forward

Editor’s Note: This piece contains explicit language. Additional reporting by Amy Brown.

Bree, an African-American resident of Ferguson, Missouri, says he has been involved in activism for years. For the time being, that means selling buttons condemning the presidential candidates, namely Donald Trump, to passersby at a Ferguson strip mall. On a good day, he sells around 70 of the buttons, and, despite their politically charged content, he said rarely runs into any controversy – in majority black neighborhoods, at least.

“I keep myself in areas where my reception’s gonna be pretty cool,” Bree said. “Believe me, the whiter the area, the more of a problem I get.”

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