Paul deLespinasse: Why not let voters opt to vote against a candidate?

Given our current way of nominating candidates, voters in the general election must sometimes choose between two main contenders both of whom they detest.

The far left and right wings of the Democratic and Republican parties turn out heavily for their primary elections. Moderate voters, not so much. The resulting nominees are too extreme to appeal to the moderates who finally vote in general elections.

Sophisticated voters understand that unless they consider both major party candidates equally bad, they should hold their nose and vote for the one they consider less bad. That's what I did in 2004 when, as a lifelong Republican, I voted for John Kerry.

Since then I became a Democrat, and Kerry's impressive work as green energy envoy has lifted his stock in my estimation. But that was how I saw things in 2004.

Even if one candidate seems slightly less bad, voters should remember that every little bit helps.

Many voters, however, cannot bring themselves to vote for the least onerous major party candidate. They support a third-party candidate or don't vote, even if this increases the danger that the major candidate they like least will win.

Case in point: Former Vice President Mike Pence announced he will not support Donald Trump in 2024. But he also said he will not vote for Joe Biden.

There are good reasons for voters to be flexible here. Today's political parties are much different from a decade or two ago. The major party you, Mike Pence, or anybody else grew up in may no longer stand for what attracted people to it in the first place.

Also, a lot of us "inherited" our party from our parents without much deep thought, and again, our current parties may be vastly different than when our parents attached themselves to them. Yet many still automatically vote for the same party.

Despite all this, sophisticated voting apparently has been too painful for many thoughtful voters, exemplified here by Mike Pence.

A simple reform, however, could allow such voters to vote as if they were sophisticated. All that's needed is legislation allowing voters to cast their votes either for a candidate or against a candidate, with the results for each candidate being the total votes for minus the total votes against.

This is not a partisan proposal. It would allow Mike Pence to cast a vote against Trump without having to vote for Biden. It would equally allow other people to cast a vote against Biden without having to vote for Trump.

Admittedly, it would have the same consequences, but that is exactly my point: Voters would be able to act as if they were sophisticated without actually having to be sophisticated.

Allowing voters to cast a vote against a candidate probably wouldn't require a constitutional amendment. There is nothing in the Constitution suggesting that votes always need to be in favor. A simple act of Congress should do it.

Rule changes should not be made lightly. They sometimes produce results that disadvantage those who supported them.

It might be prudent to include safeguards in case both major candidates got net negative votes. This might result in a little-known third-party candidate winning with just a handful of net positive votes.

But unless there are other downsides, I wish that Congress would enact this reform immediately.

Of course, Congress will do no such thing. It currently is barely able to keep the government open for business. But if more voters realize that Congress could have allowed us to vote against candidates, my analysis here will not have been wasted. We can already vote against, no change in law needed.

After all, when I cast my vote in 2004, although I marked John Kerry, I was not really voting for Kerry, but just voting against George W. Bush.

Let's hear it for a bit more political sophistication!

— Paul F. deLespinasse is professor emeritus of political science and computer science at Adrian College. He can be reached at pdeles@proaxis.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Paul deLespinasse: Why not let voters opt to vote against a candidate?