When we started discussing different voting systems in class a few weeks ago, I realized that my current project would not work in a ranked choice voting (Hare) system. A few months ago, I co-founded The Decency Project PAC, a pro-Biden independent expenditure political action committee (super PAC) ahead of November’s election. We are creating and running targeted ads for progressive youth voters in swing states in order to help flip these states blue in this presidential election. We encourage strategic voting.
Our target audience is full of young people who are vehemently anti-Trump, but might be hesitant about voting for Biden. Our premier message demonstrates our project’s belief that in order to be truly anti-Trump in this election you ought to be voting for Joe Biden. It can be found at the top of our website here. This messaging works to promote strategic voting because it is predicated on the idea that a vote for any candidate other than Joe Biden, or a refusal to vote, however well-meaning, effectively functions to aid Trump’s chance of winning re-election. We have also worked closely with another group named, “Settle For Biden.” Although our messaging is slightly different (they are more begrudgingly pro-Biden), they also encourage the same strategic voting that we do.
Placing aside the critique of our work based on the rational voter hypothesis, I realize that our project would not work in a ranked-choice voting system, because in this system voters would not be incentivized to pick the “lesser of two evils” or be afraid of “throwing away their vote.” Voters would be able to vote according to their preferences without concern of potentially “helping out” the candidate they despise the most.
Mueller writes about strategic voting under the plurality rule on pg. 296, stating “for strategic voting to lead to two dominant parties, however, voters must judge the chances of the third party’s candidate winning a seat to be significantly lower than for the second-place candidate.” We know this is the case in this election, and thus are confident in the importance of our message.
A quick note: We realize that some people reading our messaging might be deciding between voting for Trump and voting third party, not voting, etc. Our messaging is not intended for this audience (and will be largely absent from their feeds from our advertisements), but it seems that our logical stance would be to support these voters in voting third party in order to take away would-be Trump votes.
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