Johnson, Libertarians, and Discrimination

Libertarians often have trouble in the fight against discrimination. This article describes the situation. Basically, it comes down to the libertarian belief in freedom of association, that is, that an individual has a right to associate (i.e. trade, interact, etc.) or refuse to associate with certain individuals.
   
This principle runs into a problem when people decide to arbitrary discriminate against others based on race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. and those discriminated against seem to suffer severe psychological harm and other less severe inconveniences.
 
Although libertarians do not support government force to end this type of discrimination, they could support other methods to bring about its end. My suggestion could be supported by Johnson's analysis of why people vote, even when not gaining a direct benefit from it.
   
Johnson would say a rational individual would only take an action if its direct expected benefit and other utility gained from it were greater than its costs (B+U > C). And I think there are (at least) two ways a libertarian could make B+U greater than C, say, for the racist. An anti-discrimination society could use market forces to increase B of those who do not discriminate (by only buying their products), and the society could increase U by putting social pressure on those who did discriminate. Through these methods, society could make discrimination too costly for rational individuals to discriminate in ways the society believed were wrong. (This only works in an anti-discrimination society)

Lower social pressure to vote in the VA Gubernatorial Election

Virginia is one of two states holding gubernatorial elections this year, and the race is starting to become interesting.  Most interesting to me is the recent poll that Virginia voters dislike both candidates:

"Democrat McAuliffe gets a split 38-38 percent favorability rating, compared to Republican Cuccinelli’s negative 34-51 percent rating"

This is not a good sign for either candidate, just seven weeks out from the election - and these polling numbers have an interesting effect on the voter turnout that we will see in November. 

David Johnson's article "Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance" outlines one incentive to voting as  "social approval".   We see this when "individuals vote in order to avoid the social pressures their friends, family, neighbors, and professional, philosophical, or political colleagues would place upon them if they did not."  The social pressure of an election is determined by a whole host of things, but I believe one of them is the likeability of the candidates (or how excited voters become about their candidate of choice).  To me, the low favorability ratings of the candidates imply that potential voting abstainers will face less pressure as it will be more understandable that they did not vote.  One could see how if both candidates were extremely likeable, and people were generally very excited about the election, there would be increased social pressure to vote.  If the reason a voter is driven to the polls is primarily based on a certain amount of social pressure, it is possible that in this gubernatorial election, that pressure is lessened due to the candidates' strongly unfavorable perception.