Confession of An Irrational Voter

Why I voted for a candidate who had zero chance of winning

The election is over. Now I feel comfortable sharing who I voted for and why.

Few have heard of Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate for the 2024 presidential election. He wasn't even on the ballot in all states. Anyone with basic arithmetic skills could tell you he had zero chance of winning.

Yet, I voted for him.

I have to add that I do not know him personally. I had only heard him once on Antony Davies and James Harrigan’s podcast “Words and Numbers.”

The Rational Voter's Paradox

Let me explain this seemingly irrational choice.

In a world where strategic voting dominates electoral discourse, what does it mean to be truly rational at the ballot box?

Maybe some of you are familiar with the concept of "rational ignorance." In a national election, each vote is just one among tens of millions – mathematically insignificant in determining the outcome. A truly rational actor, considering the time cost of researching candidates and physically going to vote, might conclude that staying home to watch Netflix is the more efficient choice.

This brings us to an uncomfortable truth: those who criticize third-party voters as "wasting their vote" miss a fundamental point. In a pool of over 100 million voters, your single vote for either major party candidate is equally "wasted" in terms of decisive power.

The difference between voting for a major party candidate and not voting at all is statistically negligible.

On the contrary, voting for a third-party candidate sends a signal, albeit a weak one, that there exists a constituency who understands that economic prosperity doesn't come from government intervention, that full employment cannot be legislated into existence, and that spending other people's money is not a sustainable path to growth.

The Economic Reality Check

Promises by politician, regardless of party affiliation, often collide with economic reality in a predictable way.

Take Trump's proposed tariff, for instance. The plan to use tariff to bring job back to America and bring money into the treasury does not work. History repeatedly shows that tariffs end up as a tax on domestic consumers and businesses. Not only the economic distortion costs always outweigh the benefits, but it is also born by the very people who politicians claim to help.

I give Harris credit for calling Trump's tariff plan a "national sales tax." However, we shouldn’t forget that the Biden administration not only maintained Trump's China tariffs but expanded so-called industrial policies in an attempt to bring manufacturing jobs back to America.

Yet the Democrats still lost the Rust Belt. Doesn't that tell you something?

And it's time for the Trump administration to face the inevitable burden of governance.

Remember this: elections are popularity contests, but reality is unpopular.

This isn't a partisan failure; it's a failure to understand basic economics. No government can make everyone rich, but it can certainly make everyone poorer.

This brings me to Dante's Inferno and its surprisingly relevant commentary on modern politics. The passage about souls following a whirling banner that "ran so fast it seemed as though it would never take a stand." This line conventionally means indecisive people who are punished with constant, meaningless action.

However, I see a different meaning: it's really about the futility of following political banners that promise everything while delivering nothing.

Consider how both major parties operate on the same fundamental misconception: that government can simultaneously guarantee full employment, control inflation, and make everyone prosperous. They differ in slogan but share the same impossible promise.

As one of my favorite observations goes: the only place you find this kind of full employment is slavery, and the way politicians spend other people's money invariably fuels inflation.

This brings us back to why I voted Libertarian. My vote wasn't about who would win the election, nor my personal affection towards the candidate. It's a small but deliberate indication that some voters understand basic economics, even if such understanding never translates into winning electoral platforms.

So yes, I spent 30 minutes walking to a polling station to cast a vote that wouldn't change the outcome. By pure cost-benefit analysis, this was "irrational." But perhaps there's a higher rationality in standing up for economic principles, even when – and especially when – they're unpopular.