We all know people who do not want to vote for former President Donald Trump this November because they fear what his second term might bring, but they also refuse to vote for a Democrat, including Vice President Kamala Harris. You might have tried to convince these independents or disaffected Republicans to vote for Harris. And you’ve probably found it difficult. I have, too. Here’s an analogy that has convinced some of my family and friends who find both candidates unappealing.
There is an infamous moral dilemma that philosophers call “The Trolley Problem.” You are on a runaway trolley and have to choose to steer it toward a track with one worker on it or let it stay on its current track and kill five workers. Perhaps you’ve heard of it or seen it on the TV show “The Good Place.” I’ll modify it here.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Imagine you are on a crowded train speeding toward a fork in the tracks, each crossing a narrow bridge over a deep ravine. On the left bridge, there is one worker who cannot escape and will be killed if the train goes that way. On the right bridge are five workers who will be killed if the train goes that way. The train can’t brake in time, so it will definitely go down one of the tracks, killing either one or five. No one can directly steer this train. Instead, the direction it goes depends on whether more people move to the left row or more move to the right row of the train, leaning it toward that fork.
The vast majority of passengers are already sitting on the left or right, and you can see they aren’t going to move; they see only the negative consequences of the other side. A minority of people are in the middle row. They now have the power to decide which way the train goes, either choosing the left row to lend weight toward the track where one will be killed, or choosing the right row to lend weight toward five deaths. They can also stay seated in the middle (or third) row, in which case they can’t know which way the train will go, but the collective weight of the rest of the passengers will definitely lead the train down one of the tracks, killing either one person or five.
They would prefer not to have to choose between two outcomes they see as awful. But choosing to stay in the middle contributes to the chance that the much worse outcome will occur. Thus, their trying to avoid responsibility in this way is irresponsible.
On Nov. 5, the U.S. train can go down only one of two tracks: a Harris administration or another Trump administration. Most voters are happy to vote for one of these candidates — they are sitting firmly on the left or right row of the train. In a few states, it will be a minority of voters who will steer which way we go. These independents, Libertarians, disaffected Republicans, progressive, young or minority voters see both candidates as terrible. They would have preferred that the two major parties put another candidate on the ballot or that there was some other track to go down.
But it’s too late now, and there are no other forks in our future. One of these two candidates will win the election and be our president.
For those who see both tracks as terrible, this is not the year to express your disdain by sitting on your hands or voting for some third-party candidate who simply cannot win. Spend every other day of the year trying to fix the system so we are not limited to just two tracks. But on Nov. 5, you should vote in the way that avoids the worse outcome, especially if you think that the Trump track has some chance of causing devastating outcomes.
To choose not to choose might make you feel better, like staying in the middle of the train, because you are not lending your weight toward killing someone, but your inaction contributes to the possibility of killing more. Voters who chose the “third-row” candidate in some swing states in 2000 (Ralph Nader) and 2016 (Jill Stein) plausibly made crucial differences to who served as our president for half of the 21st century!
Of course no individual vote can ensure which way things go, just like the weight of any one passenger probably won’t direct the train down one of the forks. But in swing states such as Georgia, a tiny proportion of voters will make a crucial difference, as we have seen in many recent elections, and as evidenced by increasing efforts to disenfranchise voters in these states. If you stay put in the middle or third row, then you only give more weight to those people I’m trying to convince here, the ones who recognize that their votes are weightier precisely because so many other people are not moving. Choosing not to vote or to vote for a third-party candidate might make you feel like you aren’t complicit. But you would be complicit in failing to prevent a much worse outcome, including for the many people in America and around the world who lack our power to vote but are most definitely impacted by which track the U.S. train goes down.
Many lifelong Republicans, including many who worked for Trump, are supporting a party they do not like only to avoid a Trump administration that would have fewer guardrails to keep it in check. They see the that choosing not to choose is irresponsible.
Finally, consider that the margins of victory will matter more than ever this November. The tinier the margin of victory, the more likely the losing side will reject the outcome, perhaps with violence beyond what we saw on Jan. 6, 2021. If you do not lend your weight to move the train more assuredly toward the less threatening outcome, the margins might be so tiny that the system breaks and the whole train derails. We should all agree that such an outcome would be the worst of all.
Eddy Nahmias is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Georgia State University. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent the views of his employer or its affiliates.
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