Introduction
The purpose of this article is to discuss an apparently unusual way of thinking about voting, and to ask the question: Is there a simple voting strategy that can reinforce the checks and balances that are designed into the American Constitutional system of government? I don’t claim to answer the question here, but here are some opening thoughts.
From half a lifetime’s worth of observation of the public at large, it seems to me that there are three widely espoused voting strategies: (i) Vote for all candidates from one political party; (ii) Research all candidates on the ballot and vote for the most qualified candidate; or (iii) Don’t vote. It also seems to me that these strategies are all ineffective.
It is important to recognize that the vote of an individual typically doesn’t matter, but the aggregate of voting strategies is what decides our country's balance of power. So if large groups of people are following ineffective voting strategies, elections are bound to be unsatisfying. Despite the negligibility of influence from an individual vote, I would argue that choice and promotion of a voting strategy is still an important civic role.
In this article, I intend to discuss three possible replacement strategies that can harness the incentives of two-party politics and make use of the checks and balances built into our system of government. One form of checks and balances include so-called “horizontal checks” which are the contests between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. A second form is the “vertical checks” which are delineated by the 10th amendment to the Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
These vertical checks arise from the tensions that exist between state and federal levels of government.
The next section will contain cursory coverage of the existing voting strategies. Suffice it to say that current events seem to prove that these strategies have been insufficient. The final section will contain brief thoughts about some other possibilities.
