Back in 2016 when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ran for president, many of my conservative friends expressed horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency. My liberal friends were less horrified by Hillary, but many of them expressed the view that she is evil and, not surprisingly, wanted Bernie Sanders.
In 2016 K. York, who argued that Hillary would be the lesser of two evils relative to Trump, asked me to address an important moral question about that election: “is there value in supporting the lesser of two evils?” While Trump won in 2016, lost in 2020 and then won again in 2024, the general question always remains relevant. While there is a multitude of approaches to ethics, the two that fit the best here are consequentialist ethics and action ethics. I will consider each in turn.
While there are many consequentialist theories of ethics, they all share the principle that the action that should be taken is the one that maximizes positive value for morally relevant beings. A consequentialist must specify the measure of value as well as define who counts, thus defining the scope of morality.
This view has intuitive appeal: if something has positive value (like cake), then having more of it is preferable to having less. Likewise, if something has negative value (like cancer), then having less is preferable to having more. People also seem to intuitively accept that there are entities that count more or less. For example, we tend to value our fellow humans more than we value mosquitoes.
Perhaps the best-known example of consequentialist ethics is utilitarianism of the sort professed by John Stuart Mill. According to Mill, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Mill is rather generous in terms of who counts as happiness should be brought to “…all mankind and so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.”
A significant competitor to utilitarianism of the sort advocated by Mill is ethical egoism. This is a consequentialist approach in which each person limits the scope of morality to himself. Ayn Rand, once a favorite of the now dead Tea Party and Paul Ryan, is perhaps the best known ethical egoist. As she saw it, each person should act from selfishness.
As should be expected, a consequentialist approach provides an easy way to make a moral argument in support of voting for the lesser evil. Doing so would make it more likely that the least harm would be done to those who matter. As such, voting for the lesser evil would be the least bad choice. It would also be the rational choice, at least under the definition of rationality that focuses on maximizing value (which is also a consequentialist position).
There are two main alternatives to voting for the lesser evil (aside from voting for the greater evil) on the assumption that an election has only two viable candidates. At the presidential level, this is a reasonable assumption as the election is always locked down by the Republicans and Democrats. One option is to not vote at all. This has the consequence of reducing the chances that the candidate you regard as the lesser evil will win, thus microscopically increasing the chance that the one you regard as the greater evil will triumph. As such, not voting is effectively choosing the greater evil.
The second option is to vote for a third candidate, who will not win, that you regard as non-evil. This could be a third-party candidate on the ballot or a write in candidate. The consequence of this is about the same as not voting as it is effectively choosing the greater evil if you would have otherwise voted for the lesser evil. It can be argued that some positive result might arise from voting for a third candidate. It might make a statement that influences whoever is elected (but probably not) or encourage a third party to run in the next election to challenge the two party system (but probably not). Considering the above, the ethical vote is to vote for the lesser evil. If there is a non-evil third candidate who could win, then the choice is obvious: vote for that candidate.
While a voter who decides to vote based on consequences would have selected her moral approach to the decision, the voter would still need to decide on a measure of value, estimate which candidate would do the least damage, and sort out who she thinks counts. Any two consequentialist voters could make radically different assessments. For example, a voter who is concerned about all Americans would assess candidates differently from a person who is only concerned about white Americans.
While the consequentialist approach is intuitively appealing, there is also some weight to the view that actions are just wrong (or right), regardless of the consequences. Those who accept action ethics hold, as Kant claimed in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, that “the moral worth of an action is not in its expected effect nor a principle of action motivated by its expected effect.” Put roughly, the action itself is good or bad. So, if a person chooses an action that is good, “this good is already present in the person and there is no need to wait for it to appear in the result.” Likewise, bad actions are already bad and are not bad because of harmful consequences.
While this could be debated, voting in favor of a candidate one regards as evil would seem to be morally wrong, albeit a very weak form of wrongness. This assumes that supporting evil is evil. This seems reasonable and an analogy can be drawn to the legal notion of aiding and abetting a criminal. Voting for an evil candidate is aiding them, thus making one a party to their crimes.
Voting for the lesser evil would be less evil than supporting the greater evil; but would still be an evil action. Fortunately, a person can avoid supporting even the lesser evil by not voting or casting a vote for someone who is not evil. As such, if a person regards the only viable candidates as evil, then the right thing to do would be to not vote for any of them, thus avoiding the risk of becoming a party to their evil.
This can, however, be countered by pointing out that one of the two evils will win the election, so the voter should vote for the lesser evil. This is like situations in which doing something wrong is justified on the grounds that someone else would do it or do something even worse. For example, consider a common fictional villain move: the villain offers the hero a choice between killing one person or “making” the villain kill many people. While a consequentialist approach would generally favor killing the one, choosing the lesser evil would still appear to be an evil action. The hero is, obviously, not to blame for the villain killing the many as that is all on the villain. Likewise, if a voter decides to not vote for any evil and the greater evil is elected, the responsibility lies on the candidate for being evil and those who supported the greater evil.
The criticism can be raised that making the moral choice of not voting for any evil would be the wrong choice if it helps the greater evil win the election. This criticism is, not surprisingly, almost always based on consequentialist considerations: the choice was wrong not because the person supported evil, but because the voter’s failure to back the lesser evil contributed to greater evil. Going back to the villain example, the choice not to kill the one person was wrong not because the hero killed the many, but because his choice resulted in the death of many rather than one.
My own moral view is that voting for a person I regard as evil is an evil action. However, in the case of politics I must think of more than just myself and my moral choice as I must also consider what will happen to others. As such, I am willing to bear the tiny burden of voting while holding my nose to try to protect others from what I regard as a greater evil. So, it while is wrong to vote for the lesser evil it is worse not to. After all, the lesser evil is the lesser evil. So, my advice is that if you regard two candidates as evil, vote for the one you think is the lesser evil.
If you think they are equal in their evil, do not vote for either. Going back to the villain example, if the villain offers two equal evils (the hero kills everyone or the villain kills everyone) then choosing neither evil is the best choice: everyone is dead either way, but at least the hero is not a murderer if she refuses to murder. In the case of the candidates, if both are equally evil, then voting for either would be worse than not voting for either. This is because the evil of your choice would be added to the evil of the candidate being elected, thus creating more evil. So, if there are two equal evils, not voting is the right choice. But you should be wary of the tactic of false equivalence and political parties will try to mislead voters likely to vote against them into not voting.
I have only voted three times in decades, and only when I have exhaustively researched the candidates. Which means, of course, mostly disregarding whatever they say or claim, and find out about them from less biased sources, such as Wikipedia.
Incidentally, I read today that Trumpy pretended a Nobel Prize. This delusional man truly thinks he’s a benefactor and a gift to the world. It’s no coincidence that, as far as I know, this prize is always awarded to the ones who do NOT pretend it.
PS. the reasons why I generally never bothered to vote, is simply laziness: I knew that in order to vote, I would first have to make the effort of researching in detail who the candidates were, their biography, beliefs, etc, and I did not feel I wanted to spend several days doing that, preferring to put the time into other personal objectives such as writing music.
As a samurai saying goes: ‘in general, when undecided between doing something and not doing it, it’s best not to do it.’. The reason is clear: by not doing something, one cannot make things worse, which might well happen if one decides to do something.
Although, like many, I have always thought poorly of Trump, I must say that perhaps even someone like him can do some good, he just seemed to have stopped a war for real. Perhaps there’s details I don’t know of, that would give him less credit than seem due, someone must have done an analysis somewhere. But if things stand as they seem, even I think that Trump can do some good. Maybe not to America, I don’t know, only time will tell. But good is good, and saved peopl are saved people. I don’t care where they come from: in the end, we all end up in the same place, after a short life.
Why all the fuss?