Chuck Grimes:
> Once upon a time I voted for the moral choice of a marginal
> candidate. I voted for Eldridge Cleaver on the Black Panther Party
> ticket, and not McCarthy, McGovern, Kennedy, Humphery or Nixon--most
> of whom were available in the California primaries. Despite
> assassination, and drop-outs, Cleaver was still on the November
> ballot, so I voted for him again. I did feel a certain righteousness
> and limited solidarity, at least for a couple of weeks. Then I had to
> go back to fight against Nixon, instead of Humphery.
>
> But let's go back to this idea that voting effects me and not the
> outcome of an election.
>
> What effects me are the policies of the state I live under no matter
> who I vote for and no matter how little that vote counts. What this
> really amounts to, is understanding my relationship to the state and
> its policies. This is why I mentioned Camus.
>
> Camus began his thesis on moral judgment from the position that the
> State is the embodiment of murder and not the embodiment of liberty,
> equality, and fraternity.
>
> It took me a long time to understand this idea, even though it seems
> simple enough to grasp as an absurdity. The barrier to understanding
> this idea is understanding that it is not an absurd or trivial
> premise. In fact, it is the moral truth of the matter. Camus's premise
> derives from his own position and history, and these were poverty,
> economic depression, and industrial mass slaughter. Machiavelli
> arrived at closely related conclusions from experience in government,
> the fall of its republic, and his consequent imprisonment and exile.
>
> Now to take on the idea that I am effected by my vote and it makes me
> morally culpable for the policies and actions of the government.
>
> I am morally culpable in advance, for the actions of the state, as a
> consequence of birth. This culpability is like original sin. It is
> inescapable. So, by birth, race, gender, and history of State, I am
> afflicted with and effected by these conditions. Since I was born in
> the US, and am a white man over fifty, there is a very long list of
> high crimes and misdemeanors against humanity for which I am morally
> responsible. In fact, thanks to US history the list is so long, that
> like Sisyphus, I can never be redeemed no matter how long and hard I
> atone. Deducting say fifteen or twenty years off the top for youth and
> ignorance hardly seems to matter when I am still facing judgment on
> the remaining two hundred years.
>
> The point is, that my relation to the state which is a priori founded
> on slaughter and slavery has to be defined between moral antagonists.
>
> The people I vote for as well as those I do not vote for, but are
> elected none the less, do not represent my material interests, do not
> reflect the character of my judgments, and are not my public servants
> and allies. They never have been and never will be. I am forced to
> submit to their will, and in turn they are under no obligation to
> submit to mine. Instead, they are my enemies and adversaries whose
> primary occupation seems to be to oppress, denigrate, and exploit me
> and everyone I know. It never seems unreasonable when others claim
> worse. On the other hand, I am often suspicious of those who claim
> better treatment.
>
> The argument that the US is either more or less morally reprehensible
> than other states, does not change my relationship to it, although it
> does measure my culpability for its history and present conduct. I am
> happy enough that I don't suffer as does most of the rest of
> humanity. However, I also know that pleasantness I enjoy is not due to
> the beneficence of the state, but to the people who fought the state
> in the past to make it a more tolerable one to live under.
>
> So, given that I am morally condemned in advance, and have only to
> make a symbolic gesture between reprehensible adversaries who both
> propose to rule over me and commit as many crimes as is possible for
> their limited intelligence to imagine, I make my unnoticed gesture
> toward the one that presents the better chance of a good fight.
>
> An account of roughly the same argument comes from `The Rebel', Albert
> Camus, (A. Bower trans), Penguin, 1962.
If all you can do, in voting, is make an "unnoticed gesture", then the purpose of making it "toward the one that presents the better chance of a good fight" is obscure. It will not measurably affect your chance of getting that good fight, and at the same time it will not express your positive desires. In the particular case you cite, for example, your vote for Cleaver afforded you some gratification, but if you had instead voted for Humphrey, the outcome of the election would not have changed, but in addition you would have to feel that you had polluted yourself by voting for a reprehensible person and set of policies. And as symbol, a vote for Cleaver at least rejected the war; no one could read the meaning of a vote for Humphrey. However, there would still be the problem that a vote for Cleaver was also a vote for the election itself, legitimating Nixon's victory and, in a sense, signing on to his future misdeeds.
Camus's argument mostly confuses the issue by introducing the notion of voting for the one you love to hate, instead of voting for the one you love, because he mentions but does not solve the problem the pragmatic emptiness of voting, the fact that it doesn't do anything in the world for the voter. He does confuse the issue, though, because following his advice, one is encouraged to engage in a chain of inexact negations that can come out anywhere. An act whose value is symbolic had better be less ambiguous -- unless, of course, one is composing novels for intellectual tastes and savoring the ambiguity.