Submission: Voters should cast ballots with principles and values in mind

Bernie Sanders has mustered unprecedented support among college campuses in the 2016 Democratic primaries. Now that Sanders has lost, his supporters disagree on whether to vote for the Green Party or succumb to what many view as the lesser evil. Basically, the choice for these supporters comes down to Jill Stein or Hillary Clinton.

The leading argument behind the “Alright, I’m With Her” movement is that splitting the Democratic ballot by voting for Stein would increase the likelihood of what would far outweigh the consequences even the best Stein presidency or worst Clinton presidency – the leadership of Republican nominee Donald Trump. A relatively new approach to ethics which highlights roles sheds light on this important issue.

An example will help to explain this approach. Suppose that you call 911 because you’re about to commit suicide. 911 trains its employees to respond appropriately, but the person who answers your call arrived at work drunk and has forgotten the protocol. She ends up saving your life but only because her authenticity happened to appeal to you.

This phone operator failed at her job, which is to follow the protocol. Her job is not to save your life. After all, if she had failed to save your life but had abided by the protocol, then we wouldn’t have found fault in her conduct.

In this sense, voters are a lot like 911 operators. The goodness of a voter is determined by the degree to which she meets the standards of that role. A government legitimizes itself partly by creating the legal role of a voter, which involves certain standards or “protocol” and a level of “training” that we all receive in school, for instance, a good civics education.

However, what’s the protocol for voting? Is the standard of voting that of securing the election of the candidate who you deem most fit for office? This option seems unlikely, since if that were the standard, then a large portion of the population would always fail as a voter by failing to secure its candidate. Unless, of course, we all agreed on the same candidate, but that’s rare and contrary to the pluralist spirit of democracy.

The standard of a voter, just like that of a 911 operator, is not securing any result, like the election of a candidate, but rather voting for the candidate who, after long personal consideration, you believe would do the best job or would represent you best after the election. We should avoid conflating these two standards because, at least in my case, voting for competence would mean voting for Clinton, since she has more political efficacy. You probably need to be slightly corrupt in order to enact change in a corrupt political system. By contrast, voting for representation would mean casting in favor of Stein, because she more closely represents my views.

The story does not end there, though. Suppose that 911’s suicide protocols actually increase the chances of self-harm, but the officials are negligent and haven’t revised the protocols. In this case, the operator wouldn’t be bound by the standards of her role as an operator. After all, our government derives the authority to make institutions when those institutions discharge collective duties such as the duty to care for others, but the 911 department does the opposite of achieving its legal purpose by increasing the incidence of suicide. In truth, the operator no longer bears the governmental role of being an operator, since the negligence of the government has removed its right to uphold that role. Thus, she should act not as an operator but instead as a person – plausibly, by taking those actions which she thinks will best secure the victim’s life. In other words, the standard governing her actions might change to emphasize results.

An important question in this election season seems to be whether we’re in an analogous situation. Perhaps the government has lost the authority to uphold the institution of voting because big banks have corrupted politicians, and your vote doesn’t matter like it should anymore. If so, then the institution of voting is no longer conformed to the goal which gives voting protocol authority – namely, the goal of representing citizens. In that case, the standard by which we should vote would have to originate from elsewhere, and would likely change to emphasize results, just like it did for the 911 operator with bad protocol. For example, the standard might change to securing the best result for the people.

Therefore, a key premise oftentimes used in arguing that we should vote for Stein – namely, the corruption of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee – might actually support the opposite conclusion. After all, a vote for Clinton seems more likely to secure the best result for the people by avoiding a Trump presidency.

However, if the government has really lost the authority to uphold the institution of voting, then the government lacks authority entirely, since the proper functioning of that institution is a necessary source of political authority generally. The illegitimacy of our government seems like a tough pill to swallow. For me, it is too tough to swallow. I’ll still vote for Clinton though, since the standard regulating our voting, although not prescribing that you secure the election of the candidate who you believe would do the best job, does prescribe that you vote for that candidate.

In any case, we should stop treating voting just as a possible means to some worthwhile result, since that’s besides the point of voting. The role of a voter is a job that the government upholds. This job has its own regulative standards, which do not involve securing any result.

Austin Beltrand is a fourth-year philosophy and neuroscience undergraduate student.