The 2000 Bush/Gore election was, of course, even closer: only a small number of third-party voters in Florida could have flipped the election.

The rhetoric around voting for hopeless third-party candidates is often rather heated. In the 2016 election, Clinton supporters often argued that while Stein or Johnson might make a better president than Clinton, it was self-indulgent and morally irresponsible to vote for a candidate with no realistic chances. Stein and Johnson voters countered that they had a right to ‘vote their conscience’. A more reflective Stein or Johnson voter might add that her vote almost certainly would not determine the outcome. If the idea of ‘throwing your vote away’ is cashed out in terms of failing to make a difference to the outcome, the objection rests on the false presupposition that one could have done that in any event. Moreover, the most convincing rationales for voting in massive elections at all seem to entail that one ought to vote for whomever one considers best.

For example, if the justification of voting derives from the vague idea that one ought to act as one would rationally be willing to see everyone act, then it is not hard to see why one ought to vote for hopeless candidates one deems best. After all, if everyone voted for that candidate, then that candidate would win, securing the best outcome (by one’s own lights). Furthermore, it is plausible that everyone following the principle ‘vote for whomever, after due research and deliberation, you deem best’ would promote better consequences than everyone following principles allowing strategic voting (see below). If, on the other hand, the justification for voting in massive elections is, as many theorists have argued, to express your political values, then one also ought to vote for the candidate one deems best. Voting for a candidate you think is worse and disapprove of would be like cheering for a team you want to lose—insincere and pointless.33 Only typically pointless. You might cheer for a team you do not prefer to thereby express your disapproval of the way that others are booing them—out of racism, say. Whether this has a convincing analogue in the domain of voting for political candidates in huge elections is, however, at best unclear.

Since appeals to universalizability and the rationality of voting as an expressive act are two of the leading justifications for voting in such elections, it seems that if you should vote at all in such massive elections, then you should vote for whomever you consider best, no matter how unlikely they are to win. Each step of this argument seems compelling, yet many find its conclusion highly implausible. There seems to be something to the worry about throwing your vote away.

Here we have the ingredients for a philosophical puzzle. Seemingly plausible premises lead to an intuitively problematic conclusion. Nor is this an arcane matter. Ordinary citizens agonize about whether they should vote for a candidate with no realistic chances. Passions run high, and people are often unclear about how even to frame the issue. Of course, it may turn out that we should just follow the preceding argument where it leads. Indeed, in one of the few sustained discussions of this issue, Paul Meehl argues that one ought to vote one’s conscience in this sense, and that worries about ‘throwing your vote away’ are simply confused.44 Paul Meehl, ‘The selfish voter paradox and the thrown-away vote argument’, American Political Science Review, 71 (1977), 11–30. However, Meehl’s discussion is by now dated. Since its publication in 1977, another powerful and rightly influential account of why one ought to vote has been developed: Alvin Goldman’s ‘Causal Responsibility’ approach.55 Alvin Goldman, ‘Why citizens should vote: a causal responsibility approach’, Social Philosophy and Policy, 16 (1999), 201–17. Goldman’s is one of the dominant accounts, yet nobody has really asked, much less answered, the question of how this theory bears on the ‘throwing your vote away’ debate.

In this article, I argue that an account in the vicinity of Goldman’s provides the best hope of vindicating something like the ‘don’t throw your vote away’ intuition. As it happens, I agree with Carolina Sartorio that Goldman’s own account relies on a problematic view of causation, but that Sartorio’s friendly amendment to his approach nicely accommodates its insights without the problematic metaphysics.66 Carolina Sartorio, ‘How to be responsible for something without causing it’, Philosophical Perspectives, 18 (2004), 315–36.

Finally, a caveat. In this article, I focus on voting systems in which the candidate with the largest number of votes wins—sometimes called ‘plurality voting’ systems. The puzzle may not arise in other kinds of elections, and some have argued that this is, in fact, a reason to prefer such alternative elections—for example, a so-called ‘instant runoff’ election.77 See especially Daniel Wodak, ‘The expressive case against plurality rule’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 27 (2019), 363–87. Although I am sympathetic to this view, I shall not discuss it here, but instead focus on the still practical issue of how to think about voting if one finds oneself in a plurality-rule system, as many will for the foreseeable future.

当然，2000 年布什/戈尔的选举更接近：佛罗里达州只有少数第三方选民可以推翻选举。

关于投票给绝望的第三方候选人的言论往往相当激烈。在 2016 年的大选中，克林顿的支持者经常争辩说，虽然斯坦因或约翰逊可能会成为比克林顿更好的总统，但投票给一个没有现实机会的候选人是自我放纵和道德上不负责任的行为。斯坦因和约翰逊的选民反驳说，他们有权“为自己的良心投票”。更具反思性的斯坦因或约翰逊选民可能会补充说，她的投票几乎肯定不会决定结果。如果“扔掉你的选票”的想法因未能对结果产生影响而被兑现，则反对意见基于错误的假设，即无论如何都可以做到这一点。此外，在大规模选举中投票的最有说服力的理由 似乎意味着一个人应该投票给他认为最好的人。

例如，如果投票的正当性源于一个模糊的想法，即一个人应该采取行动，他会理性地愿意看到每个人都采取行动，那么不难理解为什么一个人应该投票给他认为最好的无望候选人。毕竟，如果每个人都投票给那个候选人，那么那个候选人就会获胜，确保最好的结果（根据自己的观点）。此外，与遵循允许战略投票原则的每个人（见下文）相比，遵循“经过适当研究和审议后，投票给你认为最好的任何人”这一原则的每个人都有可能产生更好的结果。另一方面，如果像许多理论家争论的那样，在大规模选举中投票的理由是表达你的政治价值观，那么你也应该投票给他认为最好的候选人。投票给你认为更糟糕和不赞成的候选人，就像为你想输的球队加油一样——不真诚而且毫无意义。 33只是通常毫无意义。你可能会为你不喜欢的球队加油，从而表达你对其他人嘘他们的方式的不满——比如说，出于种族主义。然而，这在大型选举中为政治候选人投票的领域是否具有令人信服的相似性尚不清楚。

由于诉诸普遍性和将投票作为表达行为的合理性是在此类选举中投票的两个主要理由，似乎如果你应该在如此大规模的选举中投票，那么你应该投票给你认为最好的人，不不管他们获胜的可能性有多大。这个论点的每一步似乎都令人信服，但许多人认为其结论非常不可信。似乎有些担心丢掉你的选票。

在这里，我们有了一个哲学难题的成分。看似合理的前提导致直觉上有问题的结论。这也不是什么神秘的事情。普通市民烦恼自己是否应该投票支持候选人，没有现实的机会。热情高涨，人们往往不清楚如何甚至框架问题。当然，结果可能是我们应该遵循前面的论点。事实上，在为数不多的关于这个问题的持续讨论之一中，Paul Meehl 认为，从这个意义上说，人们应该为自己的良心投票，而担心“丢掉你的选票”简直令人困惑。 44 Paul Meehl，“自私的选民悖论和被抛弃的投票论点”，美国政治科学评论，71（1977），11-30。然而，Meehl 的讨论现在已经过时了。自 1977 年出版以来，另一个强有力且有影响力的关于为什么应该投票的解释已经发展：阿尔文·戈德曼的“因果责任”方法。 55 Alvin Goldman，“为什么公民应该投票：因果责任方法”，社会哲学和政策，16 (1999)，201-17。 高盛是占主导地位的账户之一，但没有人真正问过，更不用说回答了这个理论如何影响“扔掉你的选票”辩论的问题。

在这篇文章中，我认为高盛附近的一个账户提供了证明诸如“不要丢掉你的选票”之类的直觉的最佳希望。碰巧，我同意卡罗莱纳·萨托里奥的观点，即高盛自己的解释依赖于有问题的因果关系观点，但萨托里奥对其方法的友好修正很好地适应了其见解，而没有问题的形而上学。 66卡罗莱纳·萨托里奥，“如何在不引起事情的情况下对某事负责”，哲学观点，18 (2004)，315–36。

最后，一个警告。在本文中，我将重点介绍获得最多选票的候选人获胜的投票系统——有时也称为“多人投票”系统。在其他类型的选举中可能不会出现这个难题，有些人认为这实际上是更喜欢此类替代选举的一个原因——例如，所谓的“即时决选”选举。 77特别参见 Daniel Wodak，“反对多元统治的表达案例”，《政治哲学杂志》，27 (2019)，363–87。 虽然我赞同这种观点，但我不会在这里讨论它，而是关注一个仍然实际的问题，如果一个人发现自己处于多元统治制度中，如何考虑投票，因为在可预见的未来，许多人都会这样做。