Utility Maximization Exercise: A Center-Left Independent Votes in (Safe Blue) NJ
Last week I shared a provocative POV, which turned out to be even more controversial than I anticipated: “I'm Not Voting For Kamala, But I Still Hope She Wins".
I got a lot of feedback (much more on FB than LinkedIn) - all of it passionate, most of it quite thoughtful, but IMO mostly addressing my arguments piecemeal with reasonable yet fairly standard talking points which I believe missed the combination of nuances in my POV. With that said, the overwhelming message I received was "Your vote counts. Don't waste it." Of course, the second most common message was "Trump is Hitler so you have to vote for Kamala." Ignoring that 2nd message for a moment, let's focus on the first, that I shouldn't "waste my vote." With that in mind, I decided to simplify and elaborate on the game theory I've played out on how to make the most of my precious vote. I don’t expect this to convince my detractors, but I suspect more than a few people will at least understand or respect why I am making this decision.
To start, I want to acknowledge one very important assumption I'm making, which I believe is ~99% guaranteed. If anybody wants to challenge my POV here, please do so with this same assumption in mind, or make a separate argument for why/how NJ might drastically shift from blue to red in a single election cycle. If you can't, let's agree on this:
The vote in NJ is already decided. Kamala will win NJ by a wide margin, and with it, all of NJ's winner-take-all Electoral College votes.
With that assumption in place, which makes my POTUS vote inconsequential to determine the winner for this cycle, as well as my intention to vote almost entirely for Dems down the ballot, and my professed desire to see Kamala win, how can I maximize the utility of my vote for POTUS, if not in any sort of decisive way, but as a signal to the parties for future elections and to my fellow Americans for this and future elections*?
Ultimately, I believe this is a binary decision: either vote for Kamala or don't. The latter option splinters into a few different options, and we can explore each one:
1. Vote for Kamala. This will pad her #s in NJ and nationally but have no impact on the actual race. The signal for Democrats is that this former-Dem-turned-Independent still voted for (mostly) Dem up and down ballot. As long as Republicans keep nominating a crazy demagogue, Dems don't need to change anything. If I'm not impacting even in a tiny way the outcome of this election, why send the Dems this signal that I believe feeds their perverse incentives?
2. Don't vote for Kamala. Options here are:
- 2a. Vote for Trump.
- 2b. Leave POTUS vote blank.
- 2c. Vote for an Established Third Party.
- 2d. Write in a moderate Dem I like for POTUS.
With nearly all of these #2 options, if enough people did this, I believe that Dems would see this signal and (hopefully) interpret it as "Our registered Dems and former-Democrat-turned-Independents still support Dem platforms/candidates, and despite a terrible candidate on the GOP side, they still didn't vote for us. What can we do to appeal to this type of voter in the future?" FWIW, with any option but 2a (a vote for Trump), I think the GOP would also hopefully interpret this as "This Dem/Independent was clearly unhappy with who they put at the top of the Dem ticket, but not enough to vote for us. Perhaps if we moderated some, we could win them over next time."
Generally speaking, it seems like I get more utility out of my vote going with Option 2 than with Option 1. So now, let's look at the various Option 2 choices I can make, from worst to best:
2a. Vote for Trump. I don't think I can bring myself to do it, no matter how much the Dems have disappointed me, no matter how little I believe my vote counts in NJ. Even if I could look past that, ultimately such a vote would likely be a positive signal to the GOP that I support Trump(ism), and that is absolutely not a faction/ideology I want to feed.
2b. Leave POTUS vote blank. A signal that neither party was able to earn my vote. I suspect this is a weak signal that is too open to interpretation.
2c. Vote for an Established Third Party. If there was one I really liked and wanted to signal support for, this would be the best option as it could potentially result in more credibility/funds/support for that party moving forward if they exceeded a certain threshold. Unfortunately, I don't like any of the third party options I can vote for in NJ this year.
2d. Write in a moderate Dem I like for POTUS. By choosing a moderate who displays the type of moral leadership I want to see across the party, I signal to both parties that they can win my vote in the future by nominating more moderate candidates.
So, with all of that, I think my choice becomes very clear that the greatest utility of my vote, aligned to my belief system, is with Option 2D, where I will write in Ritchie Torres (if I can write in a running mate, I'll go with Jon Fetterman).
I’m certain many of you reading this will hate this argument, maybe because you want to hate this argument, and maybe just because you don’t think about this the same way I do. That is 100% acceptable and I absolutely don’t expect everyone to rationalize this the same way I do. That doesn’t make one of us right and the other one wrong, though I am always willing to entertain constructive feedback that I may in fact be thinking about this the wrong way.
* Below are a couple of additional thoughts, which admittedly are proactive defenses against what I suspect will be the most common reactions to this post:
Below is a September (subscriber's only) post from Isaac Saul of Tangle News titled "Yes, you should vote." It's a really good piece that I thought paired well with my own one above. Most importantly, Isaac is one of the few people I know who is genuinely saying: "I don't care who you vote for, just go vote."
Yes, you should vote.
There are a lot of excuses not to. None of them are that great.
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take”
Today's read: 7 minutes.
Believe it or not, voting for the 2024 election is about to begin.
One of my fundamental personal beliefs is that everyone who can should exercise their right to vote — not by law, but by choice. I also think that most of the reasons people cite for choosing to not vote are just not good enough.
So, since 2020, in the run-up to every big election, I’ve tried to make that case to readers in a piece titled “Yes, you should vote.” The last time we published one was in 2022, and today I’m publishing another. Each time we do this, I update the piece a little bit — hoping to improve the persuasiveness of my argument.
Here is the 2024 version. I hope you enjoy it.
An interesting thing happened to me in 2020.
While the George Floyd protests spread across the U.S., I watched some in my social circle snap to attention and dedicate themselves to understanding police violence, racial injustice, and politics in the places where they lived. For months on end, my social media feeds were filled with posts of support, explainers, and opinions. This was not just on the left; people from across the political spectrum were debating issues that Floyd’s murder brought to the forefront. My inbox was full of questions. My dinners out and nights at the bar were dominated by explicitly political conversations — difficult, nuanced, informed discussions.
Everyone wanted to do something.
In New York City, with its predominantly liberal population, this movement was palpable. And if there was one important event to latch onto in hopes of effecting some change, it was the impending mayoral race. Local politics have long been the most effective way to affect policing and the judicial system (and, generally speaking, your day-to-day life), and New York was about to enter one of the wildest, most watched mayoral races in recent memory, with a slew of progressives speaking the language of reform running against a moderate former presidential candidate (Andrew Yang) and a tough-on-crime former cop, who also happened to be black (Eric Adams).
As in most cities, New York City's Democratic primary is — for all intents and purposes — the actual mayoral election. But when primary day came around, I noticed something peculiar and, frankly, shocking: Very few of my friends actually voted.
When I asked people if they had voted, the most common response I got was, "The election was today?" There were very few "I Voted" stickers in my social media feeds, and there was very little political discussion about the race over dinners or at the bar. It was confounding to me. But sadly, it was not at all unique.
It's not a secret that many Americans are cynical about the value of their votes.
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Whether you track voter participation by the percentage of registered voters or the percentage of the voting-age population who actually vote, the U.S. tends to sit pretty far down the list of developed nations. Some countries near the top, like Australia or Belgium, require voting by law; but most do not.
Broadly speaking, there are two buckets that voters fall into when they talk about why they don't vote: Barriers and apathy. Barriers are the structural issues that prevent people from voting, while apathy is the lack of interest, enthusiasm, or belief that their vote will change anything.
One of the most extensive examinations of these buckets was done by FiveThirtyEight, which in 2020 put together a survey of over 8,000 people while also tracking their voting history to understand how they participated in elections over time.
You probably know the barriers by now. Registering to vote can be cumbersome. It requires meeting deadlines, having a stable home address, sending in paperwork, (sometimes) providing identification, and paying close attention to when elections are coming. The act of voting can be difficult, too: It requires taking time off of work, or getting to a polling place before or after work. For many parents, it requires finding child care. For most voters, it requires actually getting to the polling place — sometimes via public transportation if you don't have a car — and getting in and out in a timely fashion.
The result is that in any given election in the U.S., somewhere between 35% and 60% of eligible voters never cast a ballot.
Thanks to these barriers, as FiveThirtyEight points out, the people who do vote tend to be higher income and better educated; this usually means they are more likely to be white and to identify with a political party. Nonvoters tend to be low-income and less educated, and are more likely to be young and to lack party affiliation.
When asked about the barriers to voting, those surveyed by FiveThirtyEight most often cited lines that lasted more than an hour, missing a voter registration deadline, not being able to get off work, and not being able to find or physically access their polling place (which is a major issue for Americans with disabilities).
These barriers are real, insidious, and clearly play a large role in why many people don't vote. Ironically, the best way to change them is to vote — for candidates who want to improve how elections are administered or for ballot measures that make it easier for voters to get to the polls. We could also all do a better job of pressuring our current representatives and local governments to make voting less cumbersome.?
But while barriers to voting are a big issue, the apathy bucket is even bigger. So it's the one I am going to focus on most today.
In the FiveThirtyEight survey, nearly a quarter of the non-voters or irregular voters mentioned one of the barriers above; but the majority were apathetic. 31% said that they decided not to vote because they disliked the candidates, while another 26% said they decided not to vote because they thought nothing would change as a result of the election.
It's hard to blame people for this feeling. When you ask people why they don't vote, the responses are familiar:
No matter who wins, nothing will change. I didn't like any of the candidates. The system is too broken to be fixed by voting. All the candidates are the same. I wanted to vote but something came up. I don't believe in voting. Because of where I live, my vote doesn't matter. Nobody talks about issues that are important to me. I'm not sure if I can vote.
There is truth in all of this. Just 60 of the 435 congressional races in the United States were considered competitive in 2020; this year, Cook Political Report rates just 43 races as competitive. If you live in a deep blue or red state like New York or Louisiana, it can seem obvious that your vote in a presidential race doesn't matter.?
All this is to say: I think the “apathy” group has some legitimate gripes.
Now let me tell you why you should still vote.
For starters, most elections involve much more than just one race. If you're a liberal living in Wyoming, where Trump won 70% of the vote in 2020, your participation in the presidential race might feel pointless. But that 2020 election also included races in Congress, the State Legislature, and the State Supreme Court.
In 2020, for instance, there were also a huge number of ballot initiatives — single-issue “yes or no” votes — on everything from marijuana legalization to whether gig workers should be employees to raising the minimum wage to $15. These are not votes for candidates you don’t have faith in — they are literally an opportunity to, overnight, change the law in your state. Ballot initiatives, on their own, should be reason enough for you to show up at the polls in most elections (in 2024, there are a slew of important ones, which we’ll break down in an upcoming Friday edition). Those ballot initiatives are often directly related to the barriers we wrote about above — meaning your vote could potentially reduce the number of barriers that other people face. They could also change elections, like the initiative in Alaska that implemented ranked-choice voting.
If you need any convincing your vote does matter, though, you should know there were a huge number of close races for Congress in 2020. Georgia, New York, and Iowa all had key races whose results were so close they took weeks after election day to finalize. And across the country, every year, there are local races that are decided by fewer than 100 votes. In fact, there have been several significant elections decided by a single vote. NPR has helpfully put together a list of those results here.
Assuming for a moment that you live in an area where your vote is unlikely to change the result of any race, consider this: Politicians respond to trends.
In 2020, for instance, Democrats won the presidency, the House, and the Senate. But what did they do for the months after the election? They fretted over how many Hispanic voters they were losing. Why? Because even though they won all those elections, they saw a trend they didn't like — one that compelled them to rethink their strategy.
It's important to know that politics is not simply about wins and losses. It’s about electorates, strategies, the future, and analyzing those dreadful trends. When you go to vote in an election, even if your vote doesn't produce the outcome you want, it can be part of a trend that forces your legislators to take notice. This is why Republicans worry about winning over black voters and suburban moms and why Democrats worry about Hispanic voters and white men without college degrees.
The result of that worry can be actual, legitimate change. Over time, parties will change their policy platforms, where they campaign, or their stances on issues to win over certain voting blocs (see: Trump changing his position on abortion, or Harris changing her position on fracking). Your vote, and the trend it helps produce, can inspire change in a party's platform, even if it doesn't produce the electoral outcome you want.
These are all practical, tangible reasons to vote. You can incite change, inspire politicians to be more responsive, and almost certainly move the needle on issues that could impact your life. Today, independents are now the largest political bloc in America (41%) when people are asked to self-identify (Republicans: 30% and Democrats: 28%, according to July 2024 Gallup polling). This implies that if a larger share of the electorate voted, the outcomes in all these races would be less of a foregone conclusion and more influenced by the desires of the electorate.?
Now onto the less tangible.
Many non-voters express the belief that every politician is the same. I am not entirely sure how to shatter that cliché of a generalization, so allow me to be blunt: They are not. I have interviewed dozens of politicians. I have watched hundreds of debates. I have seen how bills are drafted and move through Congress or state houses or city councils.
Politicians are not all the same.
Some are smart, qualified, honest, and motivated by sincere beliefs and a desire to serve. Some are dishonest, opportunistic, unqualified, and have fewer problem-solving skills than your average American. Some have very clear ideological stances on capitalism or religious liberty or constitutionalism. Some have equally deep ideological stances on equity or civil rights or progress. Some don’t have ideological stances at all: They will say or do whatever they think wins them elections.
As Tangle demonstrates daily, two ideologies in the United States dominate: Conservative and Liberal. This duopoly is not perfect either, and I sometimes feel that I shouldn’t be breaking certain issues down along those lines — the last thing I want to do is reinforce our divide. But it is undeniable that these two major political tribes are the most powerful. Because so many Americans hold incongruent and mixed views, that divide is also not simple — but many elected leaders earnestly hold onto views that place them squarely within one of our two major political parties. After they gain their party’s nomination, how politicians represent their views, the conviction with which they hold or evolve them, the principles they prioritize, and the strength with which they defend them all vary greatly from person to person. All politicians are not the same.
Now, let's assume for a moment that you are not buying any of this. Let's assume that you're still wholly convinced your vote doesn't matter and that all politicians are the same.
Let me propose the following: The politicians that you loathe and that duopoly system you are deriding — they depend on your apathy. They need it to succeed. They need you to believe what you believe in order to stay in power and to maintain the status quo. Quite literally, one of the only ways you can fight them — in a tangible way — is to vote.
Like him or not, Andrew Yang actually explained why this is so important quite clearly to me during our interview in 2021. When discussing how politicians hold onto power, Yang said this about being an incumbent candidate in a primary race: "All I have to do is keep myself from getting primaried among the 10% to 15% most extreme people in my district and then I win! So I'll act like a little bit more of a zealot or jackass or whatever, or just duck certain questions. Our democracy is structurally broken, and most of us know it on some level and so we're checking out."?
In other words, because the only people who are voting are those with super strong political beliefs — far to one side of the left-right spectrum — that's who politicians campaign to. The apathy from everyone else is a tool they use to stay in power and an incentive for them to move to the fringes. Of course, he was talking about primary elections — which you should also vote in. They’ve already passed this year, but they happen in every election year. Yang's solution is to switch to open primaries and ranked-choice voting — ideas we mostly agree with. But the single most important reform is that you just vote. I'd actually argue that every primary reform solution is essentially impossible without more people voting.
Finally, I'll give you the flag-loving mush: You should vote because you can.
Of all the moments in history to reflect on this freedom we have, this moment should drive it home. In Gaza, Palestinians are being ruled by a group that was last elected in 2005 and has murderously maintained their power ever since. In Ukraine, we're watching a foreign leader who imprisons and kills his political opponents and dissidents try to remove Ukranians’ ability to choose their own elected leaders. In Iran, protesters have been dying in the streets fighting a regime that polices everything they do, down to how they dress. In Venezuela, voters have so totally lost faith in an obviously corrupt system that they are risking their lives demanding a legitimate count of their ballots.
This right that we have did not come cheaply. Many people died fighting for it. Many people are currently risking their lives to come here and enjoy it. You can mock this as American exceptionalism, but it’s really the opposite — our democracy isn’t guaranteed. If we stop participating in it, it will die. We are currently in a raucous, dangerous place, where many voters don’t believe election outcomes and gerrymandering has become a legitimate crisis.
That’s all the more reason to participate.
Anyone reading this who lives in a democratic country where you still get to pick your leaders should feel immense gratitude. Being born into a country where you get to choose your representatives is a privilege, like being born into a family with financial stability or being born with a healthy, functioning body. Do not waste it in the name of apathy — seize it, make it better.
Starting this month, states across the country will begin voting in the 2024 election — the presidential race, House and Senate races, local races, and ballot initiatives. Hundreds of thousands will vote this month. If you’re not sure what is happening in your state, this website is a helpful resource.
As you probably know by now, I don't care who you vote for. But I do care that you vote. And I hope, deeply, that more and more people participate in our democratic process.
So, if you aren't planning to vote, consider this my plea for you to join the fray.
Please: Go vote.