Unstructured Politics

I was watching a show, on the National Geographic network, about multiple births that focused on their embryological development. The show does an excellent job of showing actual (and high-quality CGI) images of embryos as they're developing.

As I was watching it I found myself growing increasingly uncomfortable. I had a very hard time looking at the images, which was odd since I'm not particularly squeemish about these things. In point of fact, I think that embryology is one of those genuinely fascinating topics that I want to know more about.

I took a moment to examine my feelings when it hit me. The source of my aversion wasn't the images, per se, it was the fact that 90% of the time I see images of embryos in the context of abortion protests which is one of my least favorite topics.

The irony, of course, is that the people who are trying the hardest to protect embryos have made them something that I -- a person who finds them interesting -- find difficult to even look at because, in my mind, they've become associated with a political topic that I don't find enjoyable.

This leads me to wonder what other sort of things we might be creating negative associations for by politicizing them. The one that leaps immediately to mind is the animal rights movement. I know quite a few people who have (what I think are) perfectly sane views on the subject of animal rights and our ethical responsibilities towards animals who, never the less, will immediately launch into self-defensive jokes about frying up critters and eating them simply because the topic is indelibly associated with PeTA, an organization that most people (animal lovers or not) can't stand.

I suspect that environmentalists have done the same thing. One can't even begin to discuss the importance of environmental protection without having to cut through layers of negative association brought about by radicalist organizations such as Earth First.

I think that this can be taken as further evidence that politicization tends to damage debate. Rather than promoting discussion of difficult topics, we resort to emotionalism and iconolization (if I may coin a word) which not only hampers rational discussion but which actually creates a sense of aversion in those who might be most inclined to discuss the topics, nor do such efforts ultimately help those who deploy them. The fact that I have developed a negative association towards embryos doesn't help those who want to protect them, nor is PeTA helping animals by making people feel subconsciously angry whenever they see a picture of a cow.

The terminal effect is that debate is ceded to the extremes and any hopes of moderation become lost in the shouting. Somehow those of use that don't find ourselves at the poles of a debate need to come up with a way to reclaim the center and to carve out a space for rational discussion.

On Liberalism and Conservatism

A good long time ago, I was surprised to find that my friend Kyle considers himself to be a conservative. This surprised me given that he's a Wiccan and that he holds a number of beliefs that would seem to fall under the traditional umbrella of liberal values, so I asked him why he considered himself a Conservative.

In his reply to me he caught me off-guard with a counter-question: "how do you understand those words, and why do you call yourself liberal?".

Like many seemingly simple questions, this one contained a lot of depth. At first, I thought that I'd be able to give a quick answer but, the more I thought about it, the more difficult I found it to actually answer that question. Indeed, I've been pondering the question since last March. I think that I've finally come up with something that works, at least for me.

Since it's usually a good idea to start with a dictionary (and always a bad idea to end with one) when trying to understand a concept, let's see what Webster's has to say:

Main Entry: lib·er·al·ism
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being liberal
2 a often capitalized : a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity b : a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard c : a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties d capitalized : the principles and policies of a Liberal party

I think that it should be apparent that definition 1 is fairly useless and that 2a only applies to the realm of theology, which isn't under discussion. 2b is interesting mainly because it's a fairly close description of the economic theories that tend to be advanced by American conservatives. Parts of 2c seems to have potential, but, to me, it seems to miss the mark a bit, not least because the idea of individual autonomy and political and civil liberty is also embraced by many who call themselves conservative. I'm also not willing to assume that conservatives don't believe in the essential goodness of the human race, nor am I convinced that liberals are necessarily going to accept the premise. 2d seems to me to be circular: What's liberalism? It's what Liberal parties adhere to.

Main Entry: con·ser·va·tism
Function: noun
1 capitalized a : the principles and policies of a Conservative party b : the Conservative party
2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change
3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

The 1a definition of conservatism has the same issues as the 3d definition of liberalism: it seems circular. 1b is even worse. 2a seems to have potential but, again, it seems to miss the mark as well. 2b also seems to have potential but, like 2a, seems to lack something. 3 seems to recapitulate 2a and 2b, only extending them outside of the political realm.

It quickly became apparent to me that one of the biggest problems with discussing liberalism vs. conservatism is that the discussion often gets side-tracked into discussions of political positions, many of which don't have any necessary mapping to either side.

Let's take conservation as an example. In modern American politics, conservation (often referred to as environmentalism) is considered a liberal position and is, in fact, one of the central planks of the Democratic party (which is generally considered to be the major left-wing party in the American political landscape). Opposition to environmental regulation is typically associated with conservative politics and the Republican party in particular. However, the history of conservation does not make these obvious associations. Many conservation movements (especially German and Japanese sylvan stewardship) has strong conservative roots and, even in the United States, the National Parks system got its start under Lincoln and was expanded by more than a few conservative presidents (up to and including George W. Bush). It wasn't until the publication of Silent Spring and the subsequent association with anti-corporatism that environmentalism came to be thought of as a leftist movement.

I think that the conventional associations of many positions that are presumed to be on the left or the right also lack any necessary association with their assignments. I can, for instance, envision a world where the right to bear arms is championed as a liberal cause under the theory that, in its absence, society has no recourse to advance against repressive institutions. I can also imagine worlds where gay rights are considered a conservative stance, perhaps because they are enshrined in the dominant religion.

A second and more subtle problem is that there is a general perception that liberalism and conservatism are mutually exclusive. The two philosophies are considered to be antagonistic, holding opposite stances on all major issues. I found myself asking if this was necessarily so and coming to the conclusion that it was not. (More on this later.)

So how do I answer Kyle's question? With much thought I think that it is a question of core values. What is it that matters most to either side? Let's start with conservatism.

I think that the core value of conservatism is the preservation of the Good. A conservative looks at the world and sees that there are many institutions and traditions that are good and he is loath to change those things for fear that altering them, even with good intentions, could have the effect of replacing that which is good about them with something that is less desirable or even evil. This is a fear that finds empirical justification given the ample evidence that unintended consequences frequently subvert attempts to enhance a system and that, the more complex the system, the greater the chance that unintended consequences will crop up. Given that society is the most complex system of them all, efforts to make changes to it should be given the utmost contemplation and consideration before we move on to implementation. That said, conservatism doesn't require the preservation of all institutions. Few modern conservatives would argue, for instance, that ending slavery was wrong. Since slavery was a manifest evil, eradicating it was the correct and just course of action in spite of the upheavals that its eradication caused and despite the myriad consequences that stem from its elimination.
The core value of liberalism is harder to define. I think that liberalism predicates itself on a theory, which I would call the theory of the Just Society. What is the Just Society? The Just Society is the one all people are treated fairly, where all institutions support the common good and where all laws are just.

The Just Society does not exist. Instead, it's a sort of ideal. It is a frankly Utopian vision. Indeed, one of the most frequent criticisms of liberalism is that it's unrealistic. Sure, it's nice to imagine a perfect world but, in the meanwhile, we have to get our heads out of the clouds and deal with the real world. Although the concept of the Just Society is Utopian, it does not follow that liberalism is necessarily Utopian. One can concede that the Just Society can never be truly obtained while never the less asserting that any changes that move us closer to the ideal should be encouraged.

From the theory of the Just Society, I think we can describe the core value of liberalism as progress towards the Just Society. If I were to give liberalism a bumper sticker motto, it would be, "If the world could be a better place then it should be a better place."

(If anyone would like to suggest a non-pejorative conservative motto, please feel free to do so.)

I think that the advantage of these definitions is that they are descriptive while, never the less, allowing for a great deal of flexibility in practice. What exactly is the Just Society? Is it a society where all wealth is redistributed? Some may say yes while others would certainly say no. What is the Good? Is racial segregation a good thing? Many thought it was and now many don't.

Although it may be tempting to try to come up with core definitions which aren't open to dispute, neither liberals nor conservatives are monolithic which tell me that the core values of either philosophy must be subject to interpretive disputation, which is precisely what we find in the real world. Two liberals can agree that moving towards a just society is necessary without having to agree to what that society is or how to reach it. A pair of conservatives can have a dispute over what, exactly, is good and deserving of preservation while still holding the preservation of the Good as a central value.

Even if a majority of liberals subscribe to a given viewpoint, it doesn't follow that that viewpoint must be adopted by all liberals or rejected by all conservatives, which is why I think that efforts to catalog a person's position by their stance on various issues often leads to seeming paradoxes (such as the existence of conservative Wiccans). The apparent paradoxes are artifacts of perception that have no bearing on the reality. Even though most conservatives aren't Wiccans (and are, indeed, fairly hostile to Wiccans), if a person, who happens to be a Wiccan, accepts the core value of preserving the Good then that person has every right and cause to call themselves a conservatives. The same can be said of liberals who oppose abortion (and so forth and so on).

If we do accept these definitions we find an interesting thing happens: it becomes apparent that neither philosophy is necessarily antagonistic towards the other. One who values social progress can concede that there are institutions that should be preserved. The Just Society could (and almost certainly world) encompass many values that we currently hold. Likewise, one who desires the preservation of the Good can admit that there are institutions that should be overturned and that it's even possible, and desirable, to replace a current Good with an even greater Good (although we shall want to approach the proposition with caution).

These definitions suggest a shift in our perception of the relationship between liberalism and conservatism. Instead of viewing them as naturally antagonistic we, instead, can see them as part of a larger process; a sort of social dialectic, in fact. There is a kind of practical antagonism given that liberal philosophies will inevitably call for the overthrow of institutions that conservatives are wary of discarding, but this antagonism describes a conflict of plans as opposed to a fundamentally ideological conflict. To be sure, the ideologies tend to generate conflict but they don't require conflict.

One can imagine society as being a bit like a car. Conservatism acts as a social brake while liberalism is a kind of accelerator. Just as with a car doesn't move at all if you only hold down the brake, and just as it is apt to spin out of control and crash if you only press the accelerator, the Vehicle of Society needs to have both elements to move forward at a prudent rate. Of course this is an inexact analogy. In the real Vehicle of Society, you have millions of people stomping down as hard as possible on both pedals while simultaneously trying to jerk the steering wheel to one side or another. (It also has the curious feature that if you press down on the brake hard enough, it can actually go backwards, and the same is true of the accelerator!)

Be that as it may, there is no fundamental reason that liberals and conservatives have that requires them to be in conflict over any given goal. Every so often we should expect that the interests of the two groups should align. More importantly, we should find mutual value is trying to find those cases of alignment. Liberals should be willing to admit that all progress is not good progress and conservatives should be willing to concede that not all that is preserved is worth preserving.

This leads to Kyle's question: why do I call myself a liberal?

Truthfully, I'm tempted to toss aside the label altogether. Even though I still value the theory of the Just Society and sincerely want us to move towards, I also concede that preserving the Good is not only laudable but critical. It would be simple to say that I am neither. I would also be disingenuous.

Although I can see both sides, the truth is that I tend to come down on the side of progress far more often than I come down on the side of preservation. I sincerely believe that more institutions ought to be either overturned or improved than preserved and that efforts to preserve social institutions seem to disproportionately favor the perpetuation of injustices. At the same time, I can be glad that there are people like Kyle who stand on the other side of the fence checking my desire to gun the engine. I believe that we are both a necessary part of the whole and even if I get frustrated by the specific rate and nature of my culture's progress (to say nothing of the occasional regress) I have confidence that, in the long run, society does move forward, inching its way towards that infinitely distant utopia that I dream of.

The Year That Was

Jib-Jab's wrap up of the year.

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party

Hi guys. First of all, let me say congratulations. You've been out of power for a very long time and I know you've been waiting for the pendulum to swing. So, kudos and all that.

I'd also like to say that I'm, personally, happy that you took back Congress. Even if I didn't already have deep misgivings about Bush, I don't believe that it's healthy for a single party to control all three branches of government. I'm a big fan of checks and balances and I think that having one party in control erodes them.

I'll also be upfront and state that I am a liberal. I should caution you that being a liberal does not mean that I'm a Democrat. In point of fact, I think that the mapping of Democratic principles and Liberal ideals is inexact and that the contention that Democrats are a liberal party is misleading. That said, I recognize that you are the more liberal of the two parties and that having you in office does a better (albeit far from perfect) job of representing my interests and values.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, please don't blow it.

You have a long, long history of sabotaging yourselves and I'll be frank: I think a big part of that is that I don't really think that your leadership has either a strong sense of commitment to your own purported values or the skill to pragmatically pursue your agenda items. Way too often you come across as a The Three Stooges by way of Machiavelli, which is a big part of the reason that people just don't trust you.

That said, let's talk about some specific issues.

The War

This is the big one. This election was, in fact, a major referendum on the war and I think that everyone appreciates that, including the president (why else would Rumsfeld "resign" the very next day). I think that you may not understand what, precisely, it is that people want, though.

The public has decided that the war has gone on for too long. They want it to end, and the sooner the better. However, there's two ways that it can end: victory or withdrawal.

Americans like to win. We hate losing at anything, especially wars. The reason Vietnam worked so hard against Kerry was because Americans still have a bitter taste in their mouths over the fact that we "lost" and Kerry's enemies were able to successfully associate him with the side that promoted defeat.

Given an alternative, Americans would like for us to be able to declare some sort of victory. You need to work with the president (yeah, I know -- a bitter thing to do but, unfortunately, he's still the Commander in Chief) to define a victory condition and to do what it takes to achieve it. That may well mean putting a whole lot more troops on the ground. Obviously you'll need to avoid a draft (again, that would bring up too many associations with Vietnam, to say nothing of making your base go ape shit) but do everything you can to get the job done.

I am going to strongly warn you against pushing for immediate withdrawal. I think that it would work against your interests and I also think that it would be wrong in terms of our national security (leaving behind an anti-American Islamic theocracy would be bad, m'kay?) as well as morally wrong. I think that the war was a mistake but that doesn't negate the fact that we brought about the environment for the current chaos.

If you, never the less, do make this your goal, you are going to need to figure out a way that we can do so honorably. Figure out a way that we can leave without giving every American the feeling that we have egg on our face. If you can't do that you will lose in 2008 everything that you've gained in 2006.

Immigration

This is another hot-button issue which ended up costing the Republicans a lot of votes. The problem is that they correctly gauged that this is something that Americans care about and are upset about, but they misjudged how we want to deal with it.

Let's be very clear: the thought that illegal immigrants are coming to America and enjoying legal benefits pisses people off. I'll grant that a lot of the anger is over exaggerations but that doesn't alter the fact that people hate the idea of illegals enjoying a better life by violating the law.

I know that you're afraid of losing the support of the Hispanic community. You need to be aware, though, that what lost the Republicans the support of that community wasn't that they were in favor of curtailing illegal immigration. What lost them support was the over xenophobia and racism that pervaded their message.

Someone who has gone to the trouble of obtaining citizenship isn't going to be opposed to the idea that illegal aliens need to be discouraged, as long as they don't feel like they're being attacked as well.

I hate to say it but the Presidents plan actually has quite a bit of merit. Make it easy for foreign laborers to get work permits and streamline the process for obtaining legal citizenship while you're at it. Go ahead and offer amnesties to the illegals who are already here but then get serious about punishing and evicting the ones that don't follow legal routs afterwards.

Taxes

This is a tough one. You and I both know that the tax rate has been kept artificially low at the expense of a rising debt. The Republicans are sincerely hoping that you will be the ones to raise taxes because they know that one of the biggest things to influence voters is their pocketbooks.

This is one case where I'm going to say that you need to be ruthless. You and the Republicans are in a game of chicken. You can not be the party to raise taxes, especially not in the first two years. Beat them at their own game. Slash spending. You can get some happiness out of this by going after their own pet programs. You might also be able to get away with letting certain tax cuts expire. If you do, only do the ones that directly benefit the wealthy (and make it loud and clear that you are). You can also score a whole lot of points by aggressively going after pork. That damned Bridge to Nowhere got you more traction than you realize. Resist the urge to gorge on your own pork and publicly criticize Republicans who pork their own districts and you can, once and for all, demolish the perception that the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility.

Terrorism

The big T. The threat of terrorism is exaggerated but the people's fear of terrorism is sincere. You can not afford to be soft on this subject. You need to aggressively promote efficient programs to combat terrorism. At the same time, though, you need to start standing up for the Constitution. I don't think that Americans are really comfortable with secret prisons and torture. Push to have terrorists brought out in the light, tried in public, and put away permanently (and yes, that means executions). You need to prove that we can fight the enemy without becoming the enemy. This is the single most important task you have before you, so don't fuck it up. If you can't make that case then I fear that the end result will be a police state. This is a matter that genuinely transcends politics, so don't be afraid to reach across the aisle. There are plenty of Republicans who don't like Bush and Company's Stasi tactics. Find them and work with them.

Retribution

One word: don't. I know that the Republicans have been bashing you down unscrupulously and I know that the temptation for payback must be immense but now is not the time for it. Fortunately, you've already taken impeachment off of the table. That was a very smart thing to do. I'm worried, however, that you're still planning investigations.

Heaven knows that we need some investigations (especially if we're going to solve anything), but I know how you guys can get carried away by this.

In particular, you can not give the people the impression that you're just going to spend the next two years getting even. That's not why you were elected and that's not what America wants. If you do give in to this temptation I will guarantee that the Republicans will do a better job than you did of making it look mean and spiteful. They're just more competent when it comes to that kind of thing.

Keep your focus on what matters.

Other Issues

You need to reconnect with your core values. You are supposed to be the party of the little people. The party that stands up to big business. The party that opposes authoritarianism. You've lost that vision over the years. What crumbs you've retained are just stale relics. Rediscover yourselves and return to that which gave you meaning. That means that you need to take a hard look in the mirror.

I think a good place to start would be to take a hard, objective look at what things are important to the youth of the nation. Right now they are a very cynical bunch, which is rather strange given that youth is usually the font of idealism. Try to figure out why they are so cynical. I think you'll discover that a big part of it is that they feel that no one represents them and that no one, even more fundamentally, cares. They see you are being just another branch of the Republican party. That is a bad thing. Worse: they have a point. You can't ignore the middle but there is a point where you need to draw a line and say, "We believe this to be true!"

One of the reasons that the Republicans have been so successful is that they genuinely believe their message (they don't always practice it, but that's another story). They have a set of values that they want to promote. They have an honest to God mission. You did too, once, but you seem to have lost that. If you don't have something that you believe in, no one is going to believe in you.

Conclusion

These are not happy times. Humanity needs a better world than this, and America has more influence than any other country in determining whether or not that will happen. This is an historical time. Such times call for people to do better and to be better. You have an opportunity to do just that. You have the chance to help make the world a better place. It is an awesome responsibility and history will judge you by how well you handle it.

One more time: don't blow it.

Boo!

Once upon a time the State of the Union address was just that... a report of the state of the Union by the President to congress. Since the television age, however, it's become a way for the president to get some free air time and, as a consequence, every president in recent history has used it as a political soapbox to push the party agenda rather than being an actual and objective report on how the country is doing.

I really can't fault G.W. for using it the same way as his predecesors have, although I am getting rather tired of 9/11 being trotted out and put in the spot-light every time there's an election year. I'm also astonished that 9/11 is still being used as a justification for the war in Iraq given that the administration has openly stated that there was no connection between the attacks of 9/11 and the former regime of Iraq... but not half as astonished as I am by the fact that a significant fraction of the public believes that such a connection did exist, all evidence to the contrary.

Be that as it may, here's a rather interesting video montage of the last SotU with everything but the hot-button words and phrases edited out. Of course this comes with the usual caveat that it is important to read the whole speech in context (and I do recommend reading it rather than listening to it -- it leaches it of alot of the unnecessary emotional overtones that can be conveyed by voice and expression). Never the less, it's absolutely fascinating to see how many times he hits those specific words and phrases.

Draw your own conclusions.

Red vs. Blue

We've all see the standard maps of the latest presidential election that show a very "red" country with fringes of "blue" in the northeast and along the west coast. The implication being that only a few heavily populated democratic states voted for Kerry and that the rest of the nation was solidly for Bush.

Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan have produced some interesting maps that show that the actual breakdown, once you look past the winner-take-all results of the electoral college, are actually more complex and interesting and that the geographical political divisions are not so apparent.

There results can be found at Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results

Unstructured Politics

In the United States, today is Election Day. In addition to making choices concerning propositions, state amendments, and sundry political offices, this is also the quad-annual election of the presidency.

Unless you've been living in a state of sedation for the last year (and lucky you if you have!), you are doubtlessly aware that this is an intensely close election. So close indeed that the infamous undecided block will play a critical role in swinging the vote one way or the other.

If you do happen to be one of those undecideds, I thought that I'd help you out a bit by pointing you to the Political Compass. The Compass won't tell you how to vote, but, if you take its test, it will give you a clearer idea of where you stand politically. (In the interest of full disclosure, my coordinates are (-1,-5) — which will make a whole lot more sense to you once you get your own results.)

If this still doesn't help you decide, maybe this latest cartoon from JibJab will do the trick.

The Voter's Paradox (or Why I'm Glad That My Vote Doesn't Matter)

I am about to make you very angry. Are you ready? Okay, here goes: your vote doesn't really matter.

If you are like the majority of people, the least contention that your vote isn't vital and significant will, most likely, raise hackles. Never the less, it's a mathematically demonstrable fact that in the majority of elections, your vote will, literally, not make any difference to the outcome. I'll be explaining why but, just in case your blood pressure starts to get the better of you, it is my intention to show you that this is a good and liberating thing that will actually end up giving you a greater feeling of empowerment at the voting booth.

The idea that individual votes don't matter in large elections is typically referred to as The Voter's Paradox. There are actually a numbers of voter's paradoxes that deal with various counter-intuitive features of democratic government. The particular version that I am referencing is part of a class of social paradoxes where the cost of individual action in a group endeavor is not matched by the specific benefits of the action.

The reason that voting falls into this category is that cost and effort of actually going to cast one's vote is not matched by the value of the vote that is cast. This runs contrary to what most people are taught from a very young age, which is the view that voting is not only a cornerstone of democracy but that it is utterly vital for every person to vote because each person's vote matters.

The objective value of any given vote can be measured as the likelihood that the vote will swing the election. Let us suppose that there is a two person race for candidate A and B and there are three persons voting (we'll suppose, for the sake of simplification that the candidates are not, themselves, voting). In such a contest, there are two ways for your fellow voters to agree with each other (they both like A or they both like B), in which case your vote is irrelevant, but there are also two ways for them to disagree (one likes A and the other likes B, or vice versa), in which case your vote is the deciding vote. As such, your vote has a base value of .5, meaning that 50% of the time, your vote will determine the winner.

Of course, this is a gross simplification of how probabilities work in the real world. Never the less, it is an incontrovertible fact that the more people there are participating in a given election, the less probable it is that your particular vote will be able to decide the election. An intuitive way to grasp this fact is to play a what-if game with yourself. Think about all of the elections you have cast a vote in. Now ask yourself which, of all those elections, would have had a different outcome if you had stayed home, instead. The answer, if you are being honest with yourself, is probably that none of them would have. If your vote would have decided an election, it is almost certain that it must have been a very small election.

This is the point of the argument where a lot of people start to get upset. The implication seems to be that voting is worthless. Many people counter with bad analogies involving such things as rain drops and oceans. The paradox, however, is not that voting is worthless but that any given vote is worthless in terms of making a difference to the outcome of a sufficiently large election. Bluntly, the contention that each vote is an important factor in terms of electing a given candidate is a myth. It is a potent and cherished myth but a myth all the same.

But wait, what about Florida? The presidential election of 2000 was, in fact, exceedingly close. The final count of the critical Florida ballots gave the state to Bush on the basis of only 537 votes. New Mexico's margin was even thinner at 363 votes (although New Mexico could not, by itself, have swung the Presidency for Gore). In such a large election as this was, such small margins are nearly without precedent. It is, therefore, accurate to say that the worth of the individual votes for the citizens of Florida was far higher than usual. However, far from being a repudiation of the Voter's Paradox, Florida is a demonstration of its reality.

Once more, we have to ask ourselves, which one of those votes would have changed the outcome. While 537 people, in the aggregate, could have changed the outcome of the election, no single one of them could have, in spite of the closeness of the results. In fact, one of the things that lead to the tedious cycle of recounts was the fact that the margin of victory was within the typical margins of error for counting votes. In a normal election contest of this magnitude, no one would care about getting the numbers precisely accurate because the margin of victory would be wide enough that five hundred votes, plus or minus, wouldn't be significant enough to consider (never mind the specific vote of a particular person).

Many of the articles that I've read that pertain to the Voter's tend to take a pessimistic view because of it. This is, of course, a natural conclusion. On the one hand, we have a form of government that requires people to vote, en mass, but which can not justify the effort to vote on a per voter basis. If my vote literally does not matter, why should I bother? It is my belief, however, that a proper understanding of the value of your vote can, in fact, liberate it.

Often people bemoan the fact that we have a de facto two party system. Numerous opinion polls have shown that many people would like to vote for so-called third party candidates but that they are reluctant to do so because they don't want to "throw away" their vote. Such a stance is a rational conclusion based on a faulty evaluation. If your vote did have a realistic probability of swinging an election, it would be foolish to squander it on a vote of a candidate who couldn't use your vote to carry the race. In such a circumstance, rational self-interest dictates that you should vote for whichever of the electable candidates most closely represents your interests. Such a tactic does, unfortunately, have the practical result that you are often forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.

When your vote doesn't have any real chance of influencing the outcome, however, there is no barrier to voting your conscience. An uninfluential vote remains uninfluential regardless of how it's spent. So long as you are voting at all, you can vote for the candidate that you believe is the best qualified without any fear that you've sabotaged your rational interests.

One might reasonably ask why one should vote at all, if this is true. I think that the best answer to that is that voting serves two functions. The primary function is, in fact, to elect candidates to public office. In those terms, whether or not an individual votes is largely irrelevant. The more subtle secondary function, however, is that voting ideally provides a snapshot of the public psyche. In order for that to work, however, it is critical that people do vote their consciences. By looking at the full range of votes, those who do take office can better understand their constituencies. For this purpose, every additional vote enhances the “resolution” of the process, providing a cumulatively more accurate picture of the electorate's will.

In truth, even for this purpose, the real worth of a given vote is small enough that one could, in good conscience, abstain from the process entirely without having to feel guilty. As such, the question remains: why vote?

Ultimately, the act of voting is something that we do because it makes us feel good. We have every right to feel good about it because, however attenuated our own votes may be, the act of voting connects us to the political process in a very literal and direct sense. I believe that there is value in this that goes beyond the magnitude of our individual contributions and which also makes it more than worth the effort that it takes to vote. The value may, in a strictly objective sense, be more symbolic than practical, but symbols and symbolic acts can have a potency all to their own.

It is because I consider my vote to have this kind of worth that I am loath to squander it on the foolish supposition that I could "throw it away" by voting for the person who I honestly believe to be the best for the job. The Voter's Paradox assures me that I can cast an honest vote with an entirely clear conscience.

Now just imagine what might happen if everyone had the confidence to do that instead of wasting their votes on lesser evils.