Episode 176: Voting as a Moral Act with Bryan McGraw

[0:00] Music.
[0:37] Hello and welcome to Church in Maine, the podcast at the intersection of faith and modern life. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Church in Maine is a podcast that looks for God in the midst of issues affecting the church and the larger society. You can learn more about the podcast, listen to past episodes, and donate by checking us out at two places. The first is churchinmaine.org. That's where you will find our episodes, and then also at churchinmaine.substack.com. There, you will find some articles that I've written, as well as links to episodes.
[1:15] Consider subscribing to the podcast on your favorite podcast app, and consider leaving a review, because that helps others find our podcast. I hope you're having a good day wherever you are. I'm recording this in the midst of Holy Week, so happy Holy Week. If you're listening to it at that time, um, here in Minnesota, it's a little weird that, um, we have not had, we have not had much snow this winter, which is very odd for Minnesota, except now, now we've had snow last few days. Um, we had a little bit of a snowstorm yesterday and then this morning, I don't think anyone was expecting it. We had more snow. So, good thing is, it's March, which means that the snow will go away as warmer temps are coming in the next few days. But, you know, it's spring in Minnesota.
[2:07] Anyway, our episode today is one of those issues that are affecting the church and the large society. And that issue is voting. And I can remember my first experience with voting. That took place in the fall of 1976. I remember as my parents went to St. Michael's Catholic Church nearby my house in Flint, Michigan. They were going to vote for a president in that election. If you remember, it was President Gerald Ford as a Republican versus Jimmy Carter, the Democrat. And so I went with them as they voted. And I remember that memory because of the importance. I think voting was something that was the importance of it was instilled in me at a very early age. I was seven when my parents voted in that 1976 election. And if you think about it, that was only a decade after the Voting Rights Act.
[3:13] And so I was always, in some ways, because of what had happened those decades prior, as an African American, always took voting very seriously. And I knew growing up that there were people that had sacrificed sometimes with their very lives just so that people like me could vote. And when I was able to have my first presidential election, which was 1988, I voted with enthusiasm, learning from my parents.
[3:51] Voting matters. It matters because it's an expression of democracy. But I think it also matters because it's an expression of our hopes and dreams. And, and, This year, which is a presidential election year, has me asking some questions. What happens to voting in a time of negative partisanship where we aren't defined by the party that we belong to, but by the party that we are against? And what does the vote mean when you end up with two candidates that in some ways are not very popular, such as Joe Biden and Donald Trump? They're not popular for very different reasons, but they are both not popular. And what does that vote mean when one of those candidates is considered a threat to democracy? And for those of you who have not figured that out, I am talking about Donald Trump. And then finally, what does voting mean when we are told over and over that this vote is a binary choice? What does the vote mean in this situation?
[5:06] So, in this episode, I had a chat with Brian McGraw. He is an associate professor of politics and international relations at Wheaton College. Along with fellow Wheaton political science colleague, Timothy Taylor, both of them wrote a provocative article in the National Affairs Magazine titled, How to Think About Voting. And so I end up talking with Brian about what it means to vote and how we look at voting from two different viewpoints. One is voting strategically and one is voting sincerely. And he makes a plea for voting sincerely, and he will talk about what that means in the interview. So why don't we get into talking about what it means to vote and how to think about voting differently with Brian McGraw.
[6:06] Music.
[6:43] Professor McGraw, thank you for taking the time to chat with me. Voting is always something that's been fascinating for me and ever since I was a kid, kind of growing up in the 70s in Michigan. And so this article is fascinating. But I think before we kind of go into the article, just to learn a little bit more about you and what you do at Wheaton College. Sure. So I teach political theory, which is kind of the normative side of political science. And I am dean of social sciences and education. So it means I do a lot of emailing and administering of some programs and departments here. And as well, I direct our Equitas Fellows Program, which is a program designed for sort of high-achieving students, puts them in interdisciplinary cohorts to try to give them a little more of the Wheaton experience over a four-year period. So, yeah, I stay pretty busy. Okay.
[7:48] So, I was fascinated because I heard your podcast on national affairs that came out last month. Right. And then read the article that is in National Affairs from late last year on voting. And I think what is fascinating is that I think for a lot of us, and especially this year, this election year, it's kind of important to look at how we vote and the reasons why. And I think one of the reasonings that we kind of talk about a lot is voting strategically, which you bring up. But I think before I get to talking about the different types of voting, I wanted to talk a little bit about something that you write early on in your essay. Say, and you say here, citizens of a representative democracy must undertake moral and political work that should not be considered easy or simple. The act of voting, like so many civic responsibilities, is neither. And, you know, a lot of the rhetoric, especially to try and get people to vote, is to make it easy. That's right. And so... Why do you see it not as so simple or easy?
[9:15] And what is making it particularly difficult, especially these days? Yeah, so it is funny. I mean, of course, I mean, people who are running campaigns and running candidates, right, they have an interest in suggesting that, in fact, it is easy, that the choice is simple. You know, the other candidate is obviously, the other party is obviously sort of the most most terrible set of people that we've ever, you know, encountered. And our person is just the best person who's ever existed. And, and, or that, you know, you should just like vote exactly if you've been voting in terms of kind of, you know, party affiliation or, or whatever it is. Right.
[9:55] But like many things in life, when you start scratching beyond the surface, a little below the surface, it turns out that it's not entirely clear what we're doing when we're voting. Right. Because it's not like, as I pointed out in the article, it's not like your vote actually matters.
[10:16] I mean, I guess there are occasionally this election or that election where it's like literally tied or there's like a one vote margin, but most places are not that way. Especially it's true if you live in a state where maybe you're very much in the kind of political minority and you know your candidate or your preferences are never going to be in the majority preference at least it's not you know the foreseeable future and what's more even when you think you have somebody that you might really like or they have some policies that you think oh oh, that sounds like a good idea.
[10:50] There is a distance between you voting for that person and then those policies actually getting into fruition. So I use the example of President Obama promising to close Guantanamo Bay. I actually think he genuinely wanted to do that. It turned out it wasn't worth the political capital for him. It turned out Congress was was going to impose all kinds of problems on him if he did it. And so he decided, well, I guess I'll go do other things that I'm interested in. And so if you were a voter for whom that was the predominant issue, if you think that voting is a way of sort of like effecting some sort of outcome, well, then you might as well gone and got a cup of coffee because you made the same amount of difference. There's no kind of effect there, right? And I think that's true on a whole range of issues.
[11:47] And of course, That all assumes that you can find somebody who really reflects your particular set of values, your principles, your policy priorities. And I think that it feels increasingly like over the past couple of decades, that has become more and more difficult for a wider range of people. And you see that in the polls for this election, right, where something like 60 to 70 percent of the population wishes that someone else was running for president rather than Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
[12:27] And, you know, this has a lot of different causes to it, but this is just sort of accentuated a kind of I think sort of maybe brought in a kind of really sharp relief, a problem that's always existed. Um, we just sort of were able to kind of, kind of squint and say, well, it's good enough and I'm okay. Right. Or I think in reality, what it is, is that, um, most of us grew up in schools and communities that because they were trying to create good, responsible citizens, uh, in a way, create a kind of mythology of voting that it's simple. It's simple. It's straightforward. You simply choose the candidate who's good or the party that you really like and you just do it. It's simple. Just pick those people. And that's just not true. And I think we would do well to recognize that voting actually takes some work and try to think about how do we get better at it. And then on the one side, like on the citizen side, and then towards the end of the article, we talk a little bit about sort of maybe ways in which we might make it easier for people to do it. But we'll get to that.
[13:33] So you talk about the two different ways of voting, one that is kind of the one that we are basically doing right now and what you're kind of hoping that we could do. Yeah. And so that first one is strategic voting. And you kind of talked a little bit already about with the example of President Obama. But could you kind of flesh out what is strategic voting and why hasn't it worked? Well, yeah. I mean, it's the most straightforward way to think about voting, right? And it kind of makes intuitive sense. It says, well, I want this person or this party to win. And so I'll vote for them. And so my vote is a kind of exercise of power, right? I am making that particular thing happen. And in some respect, there's a truth to that, right? It is kind of what is going on because, you know, you're one of, you know, in Illinois, I don't know, one of eight or nine million voters and you're digging that one eight millionth of a bit of power and you're saying, okay, I'm exercising it to choose that person. And our system is kind of set up that way. And that's how sort of candidates sort of operate. That's how campaigns operate. They sort of like, oh, you need to kind of put us in charge of, you know, the governorship or the presidency, you know, a representative seat, whatever it might be.
[14:57] And we know, and it kind of makes intuitive sense. I mean, it sort of reflects like other kinds of scenarios, right? So if we were, if you were in a group of friends and you were trying to figure out where to go to dinner and there are a couple of choices, well, you might say, okay, well, maybe let's take a vote. Right. Right. And OK, seven of us want to go here and three of us want to go there. So we'll go with the majority. Right. And so we like and we kind of think that that's not a bad way to do it. Right. And it's and it's not it's not a bad way to do it. I mean, it's it's better than the alternatives, which I don't know, maybe we fight and wrestle until someone like gives in. It's that that's one way to think about it. And so we kind of transfer that to elections. But the truth is with our very large districts in our very large country of 340 million people, um.
[15:46] To think of ourselves as actually exercising power is just a, it's just not quite right. It doesn't, we exercise so little that it's basically none. And what's more, as I mentioned, right, they're all sort of complicating, interfering factors. Sometimes, I know this is shocking, but sometimes candidates don't quite tell the truth about what they're going to do. Sometimes they overpromise. Sometimes they are sort of caught by circumstance. I always like when I'm teaching students and we start talking about voting or talking about campaigns and we're talking about particularly kind of like approaches to foreign policy. All my students are really young now, so I'll remark that when George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, 2000, he campaigned on a policy of a modest foreign policy. That's what he was going to do. He was not going to be, you know, going around the world and nation building. And then 9-11 kind of, you know, changed, right? Changed everything. So we don't, we don't, we can't actually do the things that we think that we're doing, even though it kind of makes intuitive sense. And I think in a broader level, right? And this is kind of, you know, we, for both Dr. Taylor and I, Tim Taylor and I, he's my co-author on here.
[17:05] There's also a way in which we can fall victim to this sense of our own kind of sovereignty, like this idea that, oh, in voting, I am exercising control over this sort of political order, right? That it's a way of me and us, if you will, kind of being in control. And that's a mistake too, right? That's kind of the biggest, deepest kind of mistakes like you know we're not sovereign right we're not and we don't we don't actually control the world um even as americans yeah so how do you see this kind of playing out especially in our current election because i think that yeah there is a lot of talk about strategic voting right um i think in both parties concerning this this um election where do you see it playing out so i think that actually it's interesting i think that i so i might actually kind of like push back a little bit on that like i think that what this election is has sort of seems to be playing out is where we realize strategic voting is actually not that good of a model and let me let me explain how i think about this and maybe i'm wrong about it but this This is kind of what I'm thinking.
[18:18] It seems to me that both campaigns are running on the sort of the model that the other guy is so terrible, that he's going to ruin America, right? That he's going to, you know, and you hear this with Donald Trump's sort of rhetoric about that Biden's full of, you know, communists and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And they're the worst people ever. And then, you know, the other side is like, well, a vote for Donald Trump means a vote against democracy, right? You are going to end democracy If you, if you vote for him and, and their, their whole framework is sort of this negative, affective partisanship, right? The other people are so bad and yet, so you have to vote for us. And the interesting thing is – and this is – other people have mentioned this. This is nothing unusual to me – is that the core base of those campaigns, the core of the kind of those sort of those movements, they're not really even part of the parties, right? Those movements, they don't even like their own parties, right? They're like – I mean, the MAGA folks, I mean, they say they've run – they've like taken over the Republican Party, but they don't really like Republicans. So they don't like the GOP. They're anti-establishment, even if they're anti-establishment now.
[19:35] And the same thing with sort of the very progressive folks. I mean, they don't really like Joe Biden. They just dislike Trump a lot more. And so in some ways, we're at the point now where we're not even doing...
[19:52] I don't know, sort of bank shot strategic voting where we're sort of like, I can't even like aim at like the thing that I want to affect. I'm just aiming at the thing I want to prevent. And that seems like a really unhealthy place to be, right? Because then we don't have kind of positive visions for what might make for a just and flourishing society, some idea of the common good, some sense of like what it might mean to live together in one kind of community, even if If we, you know, don't always like each other or get along, instead, our politics has kind of been taken over by this, like, they're the worst and we have to do whatever we must do to prevent them from being in charge. So it is kind of strategic, but it's this sort of negative, you know, negative strategy area. Or negative polarization all the way down. Right, exactly. Exactly.
[20:45] And how does that affect voting? I mean, what does voting look like in that type of kind of scheme?
[21:17] As well. I'm the one who can win, right? That's what I can do. And so they both made the judgment that the Republican primary voters were in fact not all that interested in their positive proposals or their kind of policy choices or whatever. They were mostly interested in just showing, hey, will you be more likely to beat Joe Biden? I don't know. And they could never ever convince primary voters that was true. They could never convince them that they in.
[21:51] You know, that Trump wasn't going to win, couldn't win. And so they, they lost, right? I mean, I, it would have been, it's an interesting, it's interesting hypothetical to think about if, if, uh, Trump's like polling numbers had slipped enough to where he was 10 or 15 points behind Biden, if that would have changed the primaries. I don't know, but, um, you know, it's not, not particularly clear. And, and the other, the other side is as well, right? If you think about, I mean, uh, by most account, I mean, Joe Biden has had a pretty successful presidency. He's passed a lot of, a lot of legislation. Uh, the economy is growing pretty well. Um, and yet there, I mean, I mean, he has, he has an issue where he is, you know, pretty old and, and not, and not always sort of seemingly vital or energetic or whatever. Um, uh, but he's had a lot lot of pressure from within his party and the kind of the affiliated intellectuals to step aside. Well, why?
[22:52] Because they're worried that maybe he can't beat Donald Trump, right? That's it. That's the kind of the, that's the kind of the thing. And so it, it ends up just framing everything in like, what is it that, you know, how do we keep those people out or stop that person or beat that person? And we know we don't, we don't have a conversation about what makes for what's, you know, our particular partisan vision of a good society, right? I mean, think about the – not like any election is particularly pure, but the earliest election that I remember was the sort of the Reagan-Carter election of 1980. And there you had like, I mean, competing ideas, sort of what would make for a good society, right? And there was – it's politics. It's not beanbag as they say in Chicago. But at least there were sort of articulations of that. And I just don't get that sense now. Yeah. One of the things that you talk about in the article and something that I've heard over again, and especially by Jonah Goldberg, especially dealing with people who voted for Trump, is that.
[24:07] They voted for him initially, and even though they disagreed with him, but how the over time you kind of aligned your beliefs to your vote and how that is kind of a danger. Sometimes with strategic voting is that you might think that you're kind of above the fray, but over time you become enmeshed into whatever system or belief or anything.
[24:42] And I think it could be easy to say you see that happening on the Republican side, but has that happened also on the other side, on the Democratic side? And is that kind of a – is that part of the dangers of strategic voting? Is that in some ways you aren't you anymore? You kind of become part of the quote-unquote blob or whatever. The Borg. Yeah, the Borg.
[25:07] Yeah, I think so. I mean I think that most people – I mean of course most people don't live fully morally consistent lives, right? We have bits and pieces of our life that just don't quite fit together. Um, but I think everybody to the degree they can would like to have things kind of fit together, right? They'd like to sort of the things that they, how they act and how they speak in their various parts of their lives. They would like those to be more or less coherent. Um, and so if you're on the one hand, um.
[25:38] You know, have these kind of particular principles, moral, political principles, and then you're voting for people who seem like to run afoul of them, right? Now, it does seem to me for a while you can kind of, you know, hold your nose, push a button, fill in a thing, whatever, and you can sort of live with that contradiction. And we do it in lots of parts of our lives anyway, right? And people do this. Um, but there's always, I think this kind of psychological pressure to sort of bring those things together to reconcile those things. And, and you see this, right? You see this on the particularly sort of thing with, with president Trump, and it's, it's just easier to see because he's such a kind of distinctive political character, right? I mean, there's never quite been anyone like him in national American politics. And the place where I think that's – I mean, sadly, I think the place where that has become – where it's most obvious is with American evangelicals, where you can look at – in the late 90s, American evangelicals would say moral character is absolutely important for public office, and it's a huge deal. And we were kind of on our own. Like the rest of America thought, well, you know, they're all a bunch of scoundrels anyway and whatever.
[26:59] And lo and behold, after sort of a bit of Donald Trump, evangelicals flip. And by like suddenly two-thirds of evangelicals are like, well, it's not really that important. We just don't really care. And you hear rhetoric about he's not a – we're not electing a pastor. He's not a saint or whatnot. But then you like you kind of you wonder to what degree like that.
[27:24] Does and will shape um like the moral character and the moral values of those christians and other people um as they sort of sort of say well he's not so bad because i because part of the problem is and and yeah i think like jonah goldberg has talked about this but so has you i think you've all lived in as well you kind of have to justify this to yourself like how do you keep and and And it's not just voting, it's, oh, I've really got to be in favor. I'm really kind of going to be emphatic about it. And it just, you know, it seems to me, I bet there, you know, this will take some time to kind of study, but a really interesting kind of sociology religion study would be to kind of go and start doing surveys on American Christians, and particularly kind of if you could pick out ones who, you know, a little bit more Trumpy and see if they're kind of their sense of, well, how do you think about vulgar speech? How do you think about sex outside of marriage? How do you think about gambling? How do you think about these kinds of things that are kind of, they're kind of in some ways, easy things for a lot of evangelicals to say, well, that's bad. That's kind of bad. But Trump doesn't obviously think that's kind of bad. And I would say that – I mean, but it is important to note that this is not, I think, particularly new.
[28:48] So you had – I think this happened in a number of kind of mainline congregations in the kind of the late 50s and 60s and 70s, where for a lot of them, they became sort of more progressive politically. Politically, uh, sometimes for very good reasons, right. Where they were, uh, maybe they were appalled by the treatment of African-Americans. They were sort of enthusiastic with civil rights movement. Maybe they were opposed to the Vietnam war. Uh, maybe they were sort of really enthusiastic about LBJ's great society programs, all those kinds of things. Right. Um, and sort of became enmeshed in kind of liberal progressive politics. Um, but then they had to think about, oh, oh, they have these other parts of, you know, of things that maybe I'm not so enthusiastic about, a certain kind of sense of, certain understanding of feminism, the sexual revolution, whatever it might be. Yeah.
[29:46] But do I keep, like, do I change on those things too, to kind of like stay in the fold? And I think you saw a lot of them, they did change, right? And they changed, they changed, you know, a lot of reasons, a lot of people change their minds, but they change, I think, kind of for political reasons. And I just sort of note a couple of places where this is particularly evident are the kind of the more – the Democratic politicians that changed their views on abortion as they became more prominent in national politics. So Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, the list goes on and on and on, even I think Joe Biden. And, you know, it's a bipartisan problem that people have. And it just, it seems more shocking, I think, because, you know, it's sort of churches that, you know, people that I consider my crowd, my tribe, honestly. And I, it's, it's kind of, I don't know, saddening, shocking, shocking. I don't, I don't quite, I, the, the words don't really even come to mind. I just don't, I find it bewildering actually.
[31:04] Well, there was a, an interesting article in the New York times this past weekend about some of the changing, um, mores evangelicals. And it was fascinating to see that about how there's just more tolerance for kind of more reballed stuff and things that in the 90s they would not have approved of, but now it's okay. And I think that's probably an example of that. Right. I mean, I think it's not too long ago where a political leader or whatnot who was caught out having kind of a flagrant affair would just be, you're done, right? I mean, we're Gary Hart, right? You're done. And now, I don't know. I mean, I guess there are people who are on Trump's short list to becoming a vice president and it doesn't much matter apparently.
[32:08] So the alternative that you are talking about is, is sincere voting, right? And this is voting more on not an incentive power that, you know, if we have all these many more votes, we're going to win as much as it is voting. What you believe and what maybe is your vision for more flourishing society. So can you kind of flesh that out? Yeah. So this is, again, this sort of reflects this idea that we really, I just take it that most people would like to live a kind of coherent moral life. And part of that coherent moral life, I think, always should include a sense of sort of what it means to live with other people, right? Have a society, what a good society looks like. And um and one of the blessings of living in a democratic society is that we get to, uh try to try to make that happen right we along with our fellow citizens who also have their ideas we have an opportunity to kind of deliberate and offer proposals and we can help try to choose or try to like give voice to and try to like say these are the kind of things we would like to happen.
[33:16] And other people can do, you know, can do likewise. And so my, our view is that we should really see voting as kind of part of that, right? That voting is, it's just one fairly concentrated instance of a broader kind of civic opportunity that we have to make our voice known, right? To sort of, to say what it is that we, where we think the country or state or county or city ought to to be going. And in that sense, it's of a piece with going to a city council meeting or writing a letter or email to your representative or making a phone call to lobby for a particular issue. It's not entirely distinct from those things. And so our view is that you're trying to think Think about voting as an expression of your moral sensibilities.
[34:13] You know, and there's a danger here that can kind of be narcissistic and, you know, I'm going to Instagram my vote and make you all sort of – I'm just going to express things. But since most voting is in fact secret and nobody actually ever has to know how you vote if you don't want to tell people. I think it's more the case of like it's just a – in the same way that we think that how you treat your neighbor, how you treat your family, how you work, how you sort of are a part of a church or a part of your neighborhood or whatever it might be ought to reflect – at its best ought to reflect your kind of moral convictions, so too should voting, right? And so that means a couple of different things. One thing it means is if there is a candidate or a party that has views that you think are just antithetical to what is any kind of plausible sense of a kind of a just constitutional order, they don't deserve your vote. They don't deserve your affirmation that those people – I think those people should be in power or that party should be in power or that person should be in power.
[35:28] And so it's a – in one sense, it's a kind of a – it's a check on things. That person's off. Those people are off that way. Uh, but it's also, it's also sort of a, an affirmation of like trying to find groups or parties or candidates who in fact say, okay, they are, they meet the bar, right? Maybe I don't agree with them on everything, right? Maybe there's, you know, I don't like their tax policy, but I think they're right on one, two, and three. Um, and they, they deserve, they, you know, in comparison to others, they deserve, they deserve my support. Um, and, uh, and, you know,
[36:05] I, I think that's, that's the way of living a morally integrated life. And, um, and it's just a, you can vote with a good conscience if you're, if you're doing that, I think, as opposed to, you know, voting and then feeling really bad about yourself for the rest of the day.
[36:27] Well i mean is is that kind of the the issue with the strategic voting is that it doesn't really reflect our consciences it's kind of more of a power play yeah i mean i've had i've had people who talk to me about this and and you know they will usually um uh one of the one of of the questions they'll have, the critiques they'll have is to say, well, but when we get down to it, I mean, you have to choose one or the other, right? You're either in favor of Joe Biden winning or Donald Trump winning, and you have to choose one or the other. What would happen if everybody voted their conscience? What if they all voted sincerely? And my response is usually, yeah. What would happen? Imagine that. Imagine how primaries might be different. Imagine how Imagine how candidate selections might be different. Imagine how parties and candidates might be different if instead of merely appealing to power plays or appealing to negative partisanship, they actually had to kind of articulate a vision for sort of here's how I see a good society. It's like, here's why I think, you know, you should, you should put me, you should, you know, vote for me. You should, you know, be in my team of things. Imagine that. What, what, what could that be like?
[37:52] Now, of course, I mean, I... Tim Taylor and I, we're both political scientists, so we know that most people are going to vote on the basis of self-interest, and they're going to rank their own preferences and policies. So we're not naive in that regard. And so we're just offering this kind of encouragement to people who, you know, they're conscientious, and they feel kind of trapped, right? They don't like either candidate. They don't like either party. They don't like, you know, and this is not just the national level, but maybe the state level as well. And yet every message they get about voting is you don't have a choice. You have to kind of be on this team. You choose a team. Be on a team. And it's either red team or blue team. If you're not on a team, you're really on a team. And our view is that's not true. It's just not true.
[38:49] What do you think it would look like Like if, you know, in this upcoming election that people voted more sincerely instead of strategically. So I think that, well, I think you would have some percentage of people who would vote for third party writing candidates, leave ballot lines blank and so on. I think one of the really interesting things is that even in 2016, when we had the two most unpopular candidates ever, there really wasn't much in the way of third-party voting. I think in part because people were so captured by this idea of strategic voting and this negative partisanship that they just couldn't imagine. They were like, oh my gosh, if the other person wins, I'm responsible. Like, I'm responsible. Right? Which is not true.
[39:52] But I think that you would get more of the – what would amount to a kind of protest vote. Vote, which of course wouldn't really necessarily affect the outcome, right? Either Joe Biden or Donald Trump's going to win the election, right? One of those two candidates will win the presidency. But it might – but then you think about sort of – you got to think about sort of medium term and long term.
[40:23] The American political system is set up to where it's really hard to have more more than two parties. But parties shift if they sense the need to capture votes, or at least traditionally they have, right? I mean, that doesn't, it seems at the moment to be that whole feedback thing seems to be a little broken. But I think it'll come back because you want to win elections ultimately, you really do. And so they will move to capture those. So one of my examples there is Ross Perot. I mean, Ross Perot runs in 92 and runs kind of on two issues, right? Opposition to NAFTA and the deficit. And he drops out, he goes back, he's talking about black helicopters. He's like, you know, he's kind of crazy. And he wins 19% of the vote. Well, fast forward eight years and guess what? We run a surplus.
[41:19] Now, it wasn't – lots of other things are going to that. But it's like suddenly the parties realized, wow, people really care about the deficit. it. So let's take care, let's move on that. And maybe we'll, you know, we'll get some votes in the middle and we'll, we'll win some elections. And, um, you know, that's, that's how democracy can work. Right. And so I think if, if that were the case, you would see, you might see parties,
[41:46] um, try to move in those kinds of particular directions, but, but maybe not. I mean, that is, like I said, one of the kind of the really weird things about our elections over the the last, I don't know, parties of the last 10 years is that feedback mechanism seems a little broken. I mean, I think that, you know, my judgment is that if Hillary Clinton could have just brought herself to say that she thoughts abortion should be safe, safe, legal, and rare, just, just say what her husband said, even if she didn't mean it, she wins a couple of Midwestern states and Donald Trump goes on to defeat.
[42:22] Uh, and the same thing is if, um, you know, Donald Trump could just have contained his crazy for a little bit. Um, uh, He could have beaten Biden in 20, right? I mean, there were lots of things that sort of are in his favor. And if he loses in 24, I think it'll be because he just can't stop with the, you know, everybody who doesn't worship me is terrible kind of dynamic.
[42:57] Um, so will parties kind of recapture that, that, that sense of things? I don't know. But that, that's to me, to me, when I think about sort of like at a broader political level, um, to the degree that parties are looking for votes and looking for people to try to kind of bring into the fold. If there are voters who say, you know what I'm going to go to election day I'm leaving the president line Empty, or I'm leaving a senator line Empty, or I'm leaving this empty, Because I don't find any of those choices Worthwhile You pay attention to that Those are votes That can be had, because those are people who go to the polls This isn't like getting, Some people who don't ever vote to try to get them out Which is really hard to do They're already at the polls, all you gotta do is convince them of that, no, you meet the bar, right? I'm above the bar, right? And I just, I think that that's a possibility. Yeah. You know, I think one of the interesting things this year that I have started to see is things, going to, you know, I actually even saw a headline for an article that, you know, voting third party is the coward's way out. I saw the headline, yeah. And I was kind of like.
[44:16] Um, no, I mean, I, you know, I get it. I understand some of the issues, but I don't. But there's something disturbing about trying to make this such a hard binary choice. Because in the end, to me at least, it robs people of choice because they don't really get to make what's on their hearts. It's just a power play of whatever side is the one. I mean, that's just the flip side of the Flight 93 rhetoric in 2016, right? It's the exact same thing, right? And look, I'm willing to admit that, boy, Donald Trump says some things that look like he would – if he followed through on some of that, that would be very bad for American democracy. Oh, yeah. 100%.
[45:15] But when you tell people they're being cowards, that's just – it's engaging in the exact same kind of rhetoric. And it's just silly. It doesn't seem to win people over for some reason. I don't think there is anybody who might switch a vote on the basis of that. No.
[45:36] One of the things I did find interesting, you talked a little bit about, and I'm kind of getting close to wrapping this up, is talking about how, and this is kind of the one mechanical thing you kind of brought in, is ranked choice voting. Yeah. And how that could help in helping people vote more sincerely.
[45:58] And that is something that you're starting to see here, at least on a municipal level here in Minnesota, we are doing that. And in other parts of the country, can you kind of explain how that could help people make a choice that really does vote their conscience? So it permits people to, so when you have a list of candidates, it permits people to rank them, right? And you assign that ranking. And then it's through an algorithm, right? It ends up sort of, you know, if your first choice person is sort of knocked out, like it doesn't have a chance, Then it sort of moves your vote to the second point and to third and fourth and fifth. And it allows you to essentially sort of nuance your vote where you sort of say, well, I really want this person, but if that person can't get it, then I'll take this person, then I'll take this person.
[46:50] And it is a couple of things there, right? Right. One, it it allows people to kind of have a moral voice in the sense of giving more information. Right. So they're they're they're sort of they're not just saying, well, that person. Right. Or or not that person. Right. But it also allows people to say.
[47:13] Really, really not that person, right? So they can sort of like, they can leave that person off their list and they just don't get anything, right? So it is a way to try to buffer against sort of extreme candidates that you have a deep antipathy towards. So somebody, and I think we talked about this in the article where, in our view, again, if you think somebody is running a campaign or is in some deep way sort of not compatible compatible with a just constitutional order, that person, as a moral matter, you really can't support them. That's just not okay. And so the right choice would allow you to sort of say, well, okay, I want that person out and I'll be okay with everybody else, right? As opposed to certain things. And so, you know, think about it in a primary campaign, especially, or a primary election, where you've got five, six real kind of candidates, this would prevent something where someone has 20% of the primary.
[48:16] The voters in their pocket, but is strongly opposed by everybody else that are, but the voters are split among the other four to five. In our system currently, that person of 20% is going to win, right? They're going to sort of get, and particularly in the way the Republicans run their, their primaries in many States, they're going to get all the delegates, right. They're just going to get everything. Um, and this would sort of split things up and sort of allow, allow you to kind of get a more, you know, if, if these like other, these candidates were everybody voting for these candidates was really opposed to this guy, then this guy's not going to win. Um, and you know, it, it, of course people think about this in terms of Trump, but the same thing might be true of, I don't know, say Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side or something like that, right?
[49:02] So it tends to punish candidates with high electoral negatives, so where there are lots of people who don't really sort of like them. And I think it actually has – I'll say this. I think it actually has a little bit of an educational function as well. So one of the complaints about ranked choice voting is that it's complicated, right? It's sort of like you rank all these things, it goes through some sort of algorithm and out pops this winner, even though maybe they didn't get a first pass to majority and it seems very complicated and da, da, da, da, da, and so on and so forth. But it actually asks voters to sort of have a sense of like, okay, I have four or five candidates.
[49:44] How would I rank them? On what basis would I rank them? How do I understand them? Can I get, you know, and can I do that? Now, you know, I think that, There could be a problem here of kind of information overload. I mean, here in Illinois, on a normal kind of election in November, like a presidential election, we'll end up voting for president, vice president, maybe a Senate seat, a congressional seat, a state house, state senate, city council, county sort of commission, forest preserve, school board. Landlord, coroner, you know, everybody under the sun. And you can imagine trying to do ranked choice voting for all of that would be a little overwhelming, right? So I don't think this is a panacea, but particularly for these kind of big national offices, maybe statewide offices, maybe like that, I can see it having a kind of an interesting educative effect where people are kind of forced to think a little bit more, right? It's not just binary, this one or that one, it's, oh, I've got to think about like, how do I distinguish among these things, right?
[51:01] And I should say, I really like the fact that in the United States, we are really, we're kind of experimenting at local, municipal, kind of maybe a couple of kind of statewide areas areas first, because, you know, it's one of the great gifts of federalism, allows us to do that sort of thing and see, okay, does it, what actually happens, right? Because, you know, political scientists can have their theories, but. Yeah, sometimes they don't always work out. Sometimes, apparently, you know, who knew?
[51:35] So last question is, you know, obviously this November, tens of millions of people are going going to go out and vote. Yes. Yep. And so what advice would you give to them?
[51:48] And how they should vote and voting sincerely and what does that mean? Yeah. What advice would you give them? So I think first, a couple of different things, right? One, I would say, think about how you want your society to look like in 15 years.
[52:03] Like, what would you like to see? What sort of big picture changes do you think would make your community, whether that's state, local, local state or national community, a better place? for everybody, right? And so really think about what would be good for everyone. And then try to think about, well, how does my vote, how does that express that sensibility? And whether that's not voting for candidates, because in fact, they all have bad views, or whether it means voting for a third party that you happen to do, or you have a kind of have a particular candidate who's, you know, not going to win, but I think that he or she has really great ideas. And then third, I think in the aftermath of the election, when, you know, one of the two parties wins and they win control of Congress or they win control of your governorship or whatnot, think about how, why it is that your fellow citizens think differently than you do. Voted differently than you do, maybe. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe you didn't vote the same. But there are other people who didn't vote the same that you did. And think about sort of like, well...
[53:30] How do we engage with those fellow citizens, with my neighbors who disagree with me? How do we talk about this? How, in fact, is the rest of my life, the rest of my civic life, my participation in my community, my sort of engagement with my representatives, whoever they are, right? How does that reflect what I want to see in my country? Because if your vision, for instance, is a country where people live peaceably next to people with whom they share citizenship, but maybe are a different faith or a different sort of political set of views or maybe different moral views or whatever it might be. And yet in the midst of and then after an election your sort of reaction is this and you're or worse.
[54:28] Um maybe take a minute to reflect on those that those things might not fit together, um and and recognize that maybe your neighbors have reasons for doing the things that they do And voting the way that they are. And maybe think about being kind of an answer to what you see as the problems in your own society. So that's, you know, it's not just voting, but it's, again, a part of our much broader kind of civic identity. Because I think our problems here are – the voting is a kind of a – it's a sort of a symptom of a much deeper malady in American society that is not going to be fixed by politicians. It's not going to be fixed by media personalities. Personalities uh if it's going to be fixed it's going to be fixed by ordinary people who sort of find within themselves or find within you know their communities the capacity to sort of figure out how to live together once again so.
[55:35] Good advice. And just also a reminder that voting, I mean, it's not the only part of living in a democratic society. It is not. There's a lot more things that are going on. Yep. That is probably for another conversation for another day. Probably so. All right. Well, Brian McGraw, thank you so much for taking the time. And we'd love to have you back. And thank you for this very important conversation. conversation. Right. Well, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed being here. All right. Take care.
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[56:43] Well, thanks so much for listening to this conversation. I hope that it was helpful for you, especially in this election year. That is it for this episode of Church of Maine. Remember to rate and review this episode on your favorite podcast app so that others can find it. And pass it along to family and friends who might be interested. And finally, consider donating so that we can continue to produce more great episodes for you to listen to. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Again, thank you so much for listening. Take care. Godspeed. And I will see you very soon.
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