Elections as hiring decisions

People tend to think of elections for high office as sui generis rather than as what they are: hiring decisions, for a particularly onerous but important job.

Once we see elections for high office as hiring decisions, some things become a bit puzzling.

1. It is often seen as important that a candidate for high office have a strong and sincere personal commitment to a platform. But why? Suppose I hire a lawyer to represent my interests. It might be nice if the lawyer had a strong and sincere personal commitment to the things I want the lawyer to represent me in respect of, but it is not at all necessary. What is needed is that the lawyer further my interests, and do so along rough lines that I may sketch, in a professional and effective way. The lawyer does not need to think that it would be better for the world if I get what I want—she may simply think that it is good to have in place a legal system where almost everyone gets able legal representation for the furtherance of their interests, and that what I want isn’t so bad as to make it immoral for her to represent me. One can even imagine a lawyer who specializes in representing a particular kind of interest without actually sharing that interest, but holding that nonetheless it is important that an interest of that sort should be represented.

2. There is an interest in the personal life of candidates that would be seen as creepy and likely illegal in most other hiring decisions.

Of course, these kinds of things might be appropriate in light of the specific features of high political office. But they shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Voting for Schmitler

Three people are running for election in Germany: Hitler, Schmitler and Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer promises just policies but has no chance of being elected. Hitler promises to kill 50% of minorities. Schmitler promises to kill 80% of minorities. You might think that at this point I will raise the difficult question whether it is permissible, all other things being equal, to vote for Hitler. But I won’t raise exactly that question.

Instead, I want to expand on the above scenario in a different way. Schmitler is incompetent and won’t manage to do more than a quarter of the evils he promises, unlike Hitler who is going to exactly what he promises. So, whom should you vote for? Bonhoeffer who has just policies but won’t be elected? Hitler whose policies are less bad than Schmitler’s, but who will do exactly what he promises? Or Schmitler whose policies are much worse than Hitler’s, but who will do much less bad than Hitler?

There is a good utilitarian case for voting for Schmitler. Here’s an argument for this case. Suppose the elections are occurring in the middle of World War II. It seems that a very reasonable thing for Allied spies to do is to ensure that incompetent people run Nazi Germany. One means to that goal is stuffing ballot boxes with votes for Schmitler. And while typically one shouldn’t stuff ballot boxes, this seems to be a case where the stuffing of ballot boxes would be permissible. So, Allied spies, we suppose, are stuffing ballot boxes in favor of Schmitler. Helga is a German resister to Nazism, working for the Allies. She is an excellent prestidigitator and is going to the voting booth with a sleeve full of Schmitler ballots, in order to stuff the box surreptitiously. If the Allied spies are doing the right thing, Helga is doing the right thing.

Now, if Helga can permissibly stuff the ballot box in favor of Schmitler, then she could permissibly do this: put in a vote for Bonhoeffer (or Hitler), then surreptitiously remove that ballot and replace it with a fake ballot in favor of Schmitler. But if that’s permissible for her, then it would be very strange if she wasn’t permitted simply to vote for Schmitler.

So, it seems, it is permissible to vote for Schmitler on the grounds that he is incompetent, despite the fact that his policies are significantly worse than Hitler’s. But if this is permissible, then it would be a fortiori permissible to vote for Schmitler if he promised to kill 5% of minorities, and this would seem to be permissible even if Schmitler were as competent as Hitler. So, we have an argument that it is permissible to vote for a candidate whose policies represent a lesser evil. Of course, one should never endorse an evil, even a lesser one. So, it follows that voting for a candidate is not endorsement of the candidate’s policies.

I am not wholly convinced by the above argument. I feel a certain pull to the strange view that while it would be permissible for Helga to replace her real Bonhoeffer vote with a Schmitler fake ballot, it would not be permissible for her to vote for Schmitler. After all, strange circumstances make for strange conclusions.

Elections question

Stalin and Mother Teresa are running for Prime Minister of Canada. Stalin has a well-publicized plan to murder all the Ukrainians, of whom there are a million. Moreover, his economic policies are stupid, resulting in the impoverishment of the middle class, and no improvement for the needy. Mother Teresa is not only virtuous, but also extremely well-informed about economics, and has policies that promise great economic improvement for the needy, and no loss for the rich. So far, the choice seems easy. The night before the elections, an omniscient and perfectly truthful being tells you—and you know that this is true—that if Stalin is elected, he will succeed in all his plans—a million Ukrainians will be murdered, and the economy will be destroyed. But the being also tells you that if Mother Teresa is elected, earthquakes will destroy Toronto and Montreal, directly killing two million people, and despite Mother Teresa doing the best that can be done, the country will be plunged into an economic depression, whose net effect is the same as that of Stalin's economic policies. If Stalin is elected, the earthquake will happen in an uninhabited area (maybe the military parades will redistribute the geological stress). Oh, and neither Mother Teresa, nor Stalin, nor anybody other than you knows about the earthquake issue--and nobody will believe you if tell them.

The results of electing Stalin are, thus, better than of electing Mother Teresa: a million die, while on Mother Teresa's watch, two million die. Whom should you vote for?

I am not claiming that this has any significant resemblance to the upcoming Canadian or U.S. or other elections.

[Edited: Added lack of others' knowledge of earthquake condition. Also, fixed a typo.]