America loves democracy so much, it’s a wonder that the founding fathers didn’t name the country The Democratic Republic of the United States of America (The DRUSA. Droo-sah. Huh. I kind of like that). On paper, democracy is relatively simple. The people vote for the decision or initiative they want, and if the majority agrees, it gets done. Surprisingly though, the United States of America is NOT a democracy. It’s a democratic-republic (hence the alternative name above). What’s the difference, one might ask? Simply speaking, instead of the people voting and making decisions, the people elect representatives and heads of state to make decisions for them. This does make the people have to give up a little bit of power, but it also makes running a large nation much easier. After all, getting 342 million people to agree is no easy feat. In fact, considering how effective Congress is, getting 342 million people to agree on something is next-to-impossible. But I digress.
The idea of a democratic republic is that each individual chooses the representative who they think will represent them the best. Whoever gets the most votes wins. And that’s all fine and dandy when there are only two candidates, since whoever got the most votes also got over 50% of them, but in a nation as large as the United States (or anywhere, really) two candidates are not enough to accurately represent every individual. Inevitably, some people will agree with some of Candidate One’s policies AND some of Candidate Two’s policies. That’s why, in the United States, there are multiple parties that run for various political positions.
“Wait,” you might say, “There are more than TWO political parties in the US?”
Yes. And while that is a little ignorant of you, it does point out an… issue in the American political system. While there are multiple political parties in the US, only two really have a chance of winning any election: The Democrats and The Republicans. (See? The US loves those words. Why not include them in the country name? Droo-sah! Droo-sah! Droo-sah! No? Never mind)(And yes, I know sometimes other parties do win. Bear with me here) This multi-but-really-just-two-party system means that, most of the time, the winner does get over 50% of the vote, which is a little odd, considering how diverse the political views of the citizens of the US are. Even odder, sometimes over 50% of the population is unhappy with the representative that they elected. WHY? That’s because of a little thing called the Tactical Vote, a direct result of the kind-of-two-party system. See, the reason that the Democrats and the Republicans are so successful is because they are essentially direct opposites. If the Democrats want something, the Republicans probably want the exact opposite. This is for a variety of reasons that I’m not going to get into (That’s a column for another day and another, more informed person) but the result is that most Americans have a very serious preference for one party over the other. This is where the Tactical Vote comes in.
Simply speaking, the Tactical Vote is when a voter votes for a candidate who is likely to win to prevent another candidate from winning, but not necessarily because they want said candidate to win. For example, imagine a high school presidential election with three candidates. Let’s call them Billy, Kate, and Hugo. There’s another student (Let’s call her Maya) who wants Hugo to win. There is, however, one issue: Billy and Kate are really popular, so Hugo has next to no chance of winning. Maya doesn’t like Billy (He’s a bit of a jerk) but she really doesn’t want Kate to win. So instead of voting for who she wants to be class president, she votes for Billy to make sure that Kate doesn’t become president. Billy wins, but Maya isn’t happy with him as class president, even though she voted for him. This is the issue presented by the tactical vote. In order to prevent one candidate from winning, Maya elevated a candidate that she didn’t like and doesn’t agree with.
A voter should not have to choose between two bad options, especially when there are other, better options. A voter should vote for the person that they want to win, regardless of party affiliation. If a voter votes for the Republican candidate in their local election, it should be because they like the Republican candidate, not because they want to prevent the Democrat from winning. This system keeps these two parties in power and messes with democracy, because a multi-party system where the same two parties always win is no better than a one party system. Inevitably, there will be an election where voters are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and it’s in situations like that that a dictator (or just a really bad politician) can come to power. So next time there’s an election, make sure to vote for the best candidate, not the Democrat or Republican that you hate the least.
