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The election year is in full swing, and in the standard mode of politics throughout history, opinions are high, civility is low, and truth is on vacation somewhere far away.
It seems the modern election process has changed from voting for the candidate we feel is most qualified, to voting against the candidate we want least to win the election. Were it only a two-candidate race, it would end up being the same thing either way, but when more than two candidates are running for a certain office, it's magnitudes different.
Let me explain. Let's say that Tom, Dick, and Harry are all running for Mayor. Voter Bob thinks that Tom is the best candidate for the job, and that Harry would be the absolute worst person to elect as Mayor, ever. It would seem logical, then, that Bob would vote for Tom, but no. Bob doesn't believe Tom has much chance at winning, and that Dick is far more likely to beat Harry. He, therefore, votes for Dick, whom he doesn't think is as qualified, but is more likely to get enough votes to win.
There is some wisdom to this mentality, inasmuch as Bob might think that Dick is going to be better for the city than Harry would be. Dick might not end up being as effective as Mayor, as Tom would have been, but he'll cause less problems (in Bob's opinion) than Harry would.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that Bob is right in his appraisals of the candidates. Let's say that Tom would have been the best choice for Mayor. What if there were a lot of people who, like Bob, thought that, but voted instead for Dick because they didn't think Tom could win. If all of them had voted for Tom, like they would have preferred, maybe he would have won.
Some people are likely to read between the lines, and think I'm stumping for one candidate or the other in this column. I'm not. I've always made it a point to NOT try and tell people who to vote for, regardless of how strongly I might feel about the candidates. I am much more interested in encouraging people to vote for the candidate they think best, than in trying to convince people who I think is the best choice.
You'll probably already have noticed that this concept of "most likely to beat so-and-so" is often used in campaigning. So much of the campaigning is based on "why my opponent is worse than me," anyway, rather than why the speaker is truly qualified for the office. Given political candidates propensity for honesty and accuracy during campaigning, it's difficult to determine whether the speaker really is the most likely to beat the other candidate, or whether the candidate just thinks that's the most advantageous thing to say to the audience.
Let me propose a radical suggestion, just for consideration - what if the American voters rejected the concept of voting for the person they thought had the best chance of winning, and decided this year to instead vote for the person they thought was the best qualified for the job?
Let me clarify here, that this isn't aimed towards one particular candidate. I mean this to include the person YOU think is best qualified for the job, even if I don't agree with you. What an idea it would be, and what a shake-up it could be, if we all voted for the person we thought best, rather than voting for the person we found least odious, or voting for the candidate that ran under our party's banner, or voting for the candidate that their church, their club, their Union, their special-interest group, etc. endorses. What a delightfully novel concept it would be, from the lowest level offices in town, to the highest level offices in Washington D.C., if we started demanding qualified candidates who we then held accountable for doing the job we elected them to do.
Me, I'm going to vote for the people that I think are the best choices for the offices, rather than any other considerations people might tell me about my choices. I figure, my ballot isn't a poll asking me who is most likely to win, and I'm going to quit treating it like one.
What you decide to do is, of course, up to you. I just hope I've given you something to think about as the campaigns this year heat up. Your vote is yours. The only way you "throw it away," is to let someone else trick you into voting their way.
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