A recent New York Times article presents evidence that Alaska Democrats sought to confuse voters in that state's 2026 Senate election by introducing a second candidate with a name very similar to that of the Republican incumbent, thereby potentially siphoning off some of the latter's voters. The incumbent senator is named Dan S. Sullivan, while the other candidate is Dan J. Sullivan. As the Times reports, some of the facts here are disputable, and it is not entirely clear whether Democratic candidate Mary Peltola knew about this effort or approved of it. But it seems likely that at least some of her staffers and other Democratic operatives were involved.

Before going further, I should emphasize that this effort is worthy of condemnation. Trying to confuse voters into voting for the "wrong" candidate in this way is not how democratic political participation should work. And the fact that other politicians (including Republicans) engage in various electoral "dirty tricks" doesn't justify this one.

Elsewhere, I have explained why these kinds of actions are not illegal, and why the Trump administration's lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Alaska Senate result deserves to fail. I stand by that conclusion. Legal scholar Rick Hasen (a leading election law expert) has a helpful recent post explaining why the New York Times revelations do not change anything from a legal point of view. But the fact that this scheme is legal doesn't make it right.

That said, it is important to keep this issue in proper perspective, and especially to recognize that many other types of lies and efforts to exploit voter ignorance are much worse. Confusion caused by candidates with similar names is relatively rare, and it is difficult to find examples where it affected more than a small fraction of voters. I am not aware of even one case where it was decisive to the outcome of an election. But I welcome correction on that latter point.

The Alaska case is unlikely to be an exception to the above generalization. In the first round of the ranked-choice voting election (which narrows down the candidates to the top 4), only 2.5% of voters picked Dan J. Sullivan. Peltola led the incumbent senator by a much larger margin than that (8.1 points). Even if every single person who voted for Dan J. did so because of confusion (which is improbable), that's unlikely to change the result.

Moreover, the Alaska ranked-choice voting system reduces the risk of error. Some of those who vote for the "wrong" Dan Sullivan might rank the "right" one second. After the former gets eliminated, those votes get transferred to the latter. On top of that, as Michael Dorf points out, the Alaska ballot explicit indicates that Dan S. Sullivan is the "incumbent." That further reduces any potential confusion. The widespread publicity this issue has gotten over the last few weeks further reduces the risk of error. Many voters have probably now heard about the two Dan Sullivans and will be on guard against the problem.

It is still theoretically possible that confusion between the two Sullivans will end up having a decisive impact on the election. Some people who voted for Dan J. might not rank the other Sullivan second, or might misunderstand how the RCV system works. And some voters might (understandably) not be very careful about how they mark their ballots, thereby making a mistake despite the various safeguards against it. Still, it seems highly unlikely that such errors will have a decisive impact on the outcome.

Overall, this kind of a thing is relative molehill of a problem. Elections where it makes a decisive difference are likely to be extremely rare, at worst. By contrast, candidate lying about policy issues and exploitation of voter ignorance about them is a veritable mountain. I summarized some of the relevant evidence in an earlier post about the Alaska controversy:

Donald Trump is a particularly egregious example, going all the way back to his first campaign in 2016, and more recently with his lies about the 2020 election and other issues. But more conventional politicians also often resort to lies and deception, even if not to the same degree.  President Obama, for example, famously  lied when he claimed that, under the Affordable Care Act, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it." That deception won the 2013 Politifact Lie of the Year award. But it still helped Obama get reelected in 2012. I am not sure exploiting voter confusion about names is any worse than exploiting their ignorance about policy issues like crime, immigration, and health care….

Ultimately, both exploitation of voter confusion about names and other deceptions used in campaigns seek to exploit widespread voter ignorance. Because of the combination of "rational ignorance" (lack of incentive to seek out political information) and "rational irrationality" (lack of incentive to engage in unbiased evaluation),  most voters know little about government and public policy, and often do a poor job of evaluating the information they do know. This makes them vulnerable to deception and manipulation, and incentivizes politicians to lie and otherwise distort the truth.

I would add that lies and deceptions about policy issues affect vastly more voters and have vastly bigger impacts on electoral outcomes than confusion about candidates' names. To take just a few recent examples, Trump in 2016 and 2024 and Obama in 2012 probably could not have won without the former. If, in 2024, key swing voters had realized that Trump's policy agenda of tariffs and mass deportations was likely to raise prices (as it predictably went on to do) rather than lower them (as he promised to do), he likely would have lost. Polls showed that prices were the biggest issue in the election for key swing voters. Trump also might well have lost if GOP base voters realized he was lying about the 2020 election, among other issues. In 2012, Obama might have lost if swing voters realized that he was lying when said that, under his signature policy initiative (the Affordable Care Act), "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it."

Effective lies and deceptions about policy issues (often exploiting preexisting voter ignorance and bias, but also deliberately seeking to create more of it) are ubiquitous. And they very often affect electoral outcomes. Even when they don't change the outcome between the candidates who run, they often have an impact on the policies those candidates adopt in the first place. As described more fully in my book Democracy and Political Ignorance, political parties and their strategists know most voters are ignorant, and often deliberately select policy agendas based on the likelihood of successfully exploiting that ignorance. The result is that even the lesser of the evils on offer in a given election (or the less egregious liars) are often still very bad.

From a moral point of view, I don't see any reason to believe lying about policy issues and exploiting voter ignorance about them is any worse than trying to trick voters into selecting the "wrong" candidate out of confusion. In practical terms, the former happens much more often than the latter, and has a far bigger effect).

Cornell law Prof. Michael Dorf recognizes that lies about policy issues are bad, but suggests that efforts to create confusion about candidate names are worse, because the latter are harder to combat with "counter-speech." I think the truth is the exact opposite. People can and do use counter-speech to oppose lies and deceptions about policy issues. But "rationally ignorant" voters will often ignore the counter-speech (not wanting to take the time and effort to study it) or reject evidence that goes against their preexisting biases. Many policy issues require considerable time and effort to understand well.

By contrast, it's much easier to find out there are two candidates with similar names in the election, and to take precautions against accidentally voting for the "wrong" one. Counter-speech to that effect need not be very complicated at all, or take a long time to understand.  In the Alaska case, for example, you just need to remember to vote for Dan S. rather than Dan J. or just know to vote for the one marked "incumbent." And figuring this out does not require going against any partisan or ideological biases.

As I have emphasized in previous writings about voter ignorance, I do not believe we can or should fight it by trying to punish politicians for their lies, or by censoring "misinformation." There is, in fact, no easy solution to the problem. But I assess a range of  options in my 2023 article on "Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance, and in Democracy and Political Ignorance. I believe the best approach is to make fewer decisions at the ballot box and more by "voting with your feet," where incentives to seek out information and evaluate it wisely are much better.  In the works linked above, I also argue that we should give consideration to simply paying voters to increase their knowledge levels (e.g. by establishing a "Voter Achievement Test" and offering rewards to high scorers). But I  recognize that any effective approach will take time, and there may be no one fix that is sufficient by itself.

The beginning of wisdom here is to recognize we have a wide-ranging problem of voter ignorance, and to prioritize the most significant types of ignorance and exploitation thereof. On that scale, ignorance about policy issues should rank high, while voter confusion about candidates' names is a very minor problem, by comparison.

UPDATE: I have made minor additions to this post.

The post Creating Voter Confusion About Candidates' Names is Bad - But Exploiting Voter Ignorance About Policy Issues is a Much Bigger Problem appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Today, the Trump Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block Alaska Senate election results on the grounds they might be influenced by voter "confusion" between incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan and a separate Republican candidate with a very similar name (Dan L. Sullivan). I previously wrote about the issues raised by the two Dan Sullivans here. As I pointed out in the earlier post, there is no legal basis for overturning congressional election results based on voter confusion, and any such action would likely violate the First Amendment. See also this analysis by election law specialist Rick Hasen.

I would add that any such federal action also runs afoul of states' primary authority over election procedures. The Elections Clause of the Constitution gives states primary authority over "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives," subject to Congress' power to modify these rules by legislation. Congress has not enacted any statute allowing overturning of election results based on possible "voter confusion."

If "voter confusion" were a legitimate reason to overturn election results, that would imperil a great many election winners, as voter ignorance - and exploitation thereof by candidates - is a widespread and longstanding problem. I covered some of these points in my previous post about the two Dan Sullivans:

Donald Trump is a particularly egregious example, going all the way back to his first campaign in 2016, and more recently with his lies about the 2020 election and other issues. But more conventional politicians also often resort to lies and deception, even if not to the same degree.  President Obama, for example, famously  lied when he claimed that, under the Affordable Care Act, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it." That deception won the 2013 Politifact Lie of the Year award. But it still helped Obama get reelected in 2012. I am not sure exploiting voter confusion about names is any worse than exploiting their ignorance about policy issues like crime, immigration, and health care….

Ultimately, both exploitation of voter confusion about names and other deceptions used in campaigns seek to exploit widespread voter ignorance. Because of the combination of "rational ignorance" (lack of incentive to seek out political information) and "rational irrationality" (lack of incentive to engage in unbiased evaluation),  most voters know little about government and public policy, and often do a poor job of evaluating the information they do know. This makes them vulnerable to deception and manipulation, and incentivizes politicians to lie and otherwise distort the truth.

Voter confusion about candidates with similar names is just another example of this broader problem….

There is no easy solution to the problem of voter ignorance. But I assess a range of possible options in my 2023 article on "Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance, and in my earlier book Democracy and Political Ignorance. I believe the best approach is to make fewer decisions at the ballot box and more by "voting with your feet," where incentives to seek out information and evaluate it wisely are much better. But I  recognize that any effective approach will take time, and there may be no one fix that is sufficient by itself.  We may need to pursue multiple strategies. In the meantime, voters are likely to continue to be ignorant and confused about a variety of issues, and politicians and interest groups are likely to keep on exploiting that.

Many of these other voter ignorance problems are far worse than any potential confusion between candidates with similar names, a problem that only comes up relatively rarely.

UPDATE: Rick Hasen has a helpful analysis of the Alaska lawsuit here:

DOJ has no power to decide which candidates can appear on the ballot. The sole basis that DOJ asserted for trying to block the state's certification process is the National Voter Registration Act's preamble that reads that the act is designed to "protect the integrity of the electoral process." That preamble of course gives no power whatsoever to the federal government to do anything. It does not give DOJ the power to determine ballot access or block certification of a federal election. The Alaska Supreme Court decided the state law ballot access question back in June, allowing the second Sullivan to appear on the ballot.

The post Trump Sues to Block Alaska Senate Election Results Because of Potential Voter "Confusion" appeared first on Reason Magazine.

On October 4, I published a post on "Libertarianism and Democracy," critiquing political philosopher Matt Zwolinski's earlier Liberalism.Org article on the same topic. Earlier today, I posted Matt's response to me. The present post is my rejoinder:

I would like to thank Matt for his interesting and insightful response. We agree on several key points, including that democracy is generally superior to authoritarianism, that libertarian critiques of democracy have great merit, and that - in much of the world - the most serious threats to liberty now come from the nationalist right, rather than the the political left. But we still differ on a few key points related to libertarianism and democracy.

The Nature of Libertarian Critiques of Democracy

Perhaps the most crucial disagreement is about the nature of libertarian critiques of democracy. Matt suggests that "[m]ost of what Ilya calls the libertarian critique of democracy is really a critique of big government." If so, libertarians can just focus on criticizing big government generally, while simultaneously extolling democracy.

There are indeed flaws of big government that arise regardless of whether it is democratic or authoritarian. But those outlined in my earlier Liberalism.Org article are in fact specific to democracy. They include tyranny of the majority, voter ignorance, and the tendency of democracy to create opportunities for illiberal forces to seize power and - in the worst case scenario - even destroy democracy itself.  Tyranny of the majority is obviously a problem distinctive to democracy. The same goes for rational voter ignorance, which arises from the perverse incentive structure  of individual voters, who have only an infinitesimally small chance of influencing electoral outcomes. And, while illiberal forces can and do seize power under authoritarian systems, the pathways democracies (usually involving the electoral process) create for them are distinctive.

Authoritarian systems have their own distinctive flaws, which are generally even worse. But the distinctive nature of democracy's flaws means they cannot simply be folded into a generic critique of big government. In addition, as noted in my response to Matt, these distinctive flaws of democracy are at the heart of many of today's most serious threats to liberty and justice in many democratic systems, including the threats posed by the nationalist right. Thus, it is important for libertarians to emphasize the nature and gravity of these weaknesses, and the value of our proposals for dealing them (which in many cases are different from and better than those advanced by other types of liberals). As emphasized in my earlier response, this is an area where libertarians often have a comparative advantage over other liberals. On the other hand, we generally do not have a comparative advantage when it comes to explaining why democracy is better than authoritarianism.

Along related lines, Matt suggests that libertarian critiques of the state aren't "an argument against democratic control of whatever the state does do." But once we recognize that democracy has significant distinctive flaws, there is actually a case for insulating some functions of government from democratic control. Obvious examples include the judiciary and monetary policy (unless we want to cut government out of the latter entirely, and adopt free banking). Indeed, even most non-libertarian liberals recognize that such insulation is desirable in some cases, most notably the courts.

The Problem of Libertarians Tempted by Authoritarianism

Matt argues that we should, nonetheless devote extensive energy to extolling democracy, because doing so is likely to have an impact on fellow libertarians who may otherwise be tempted to embrace authoritarianism. It is likely true that libertarians tempted in this way are more easily dissuaded by other libertarians than by non-libertarians. But such people are a tiny minority within an minority. Libertarians are a small group (probably around 5-10% of the US population or even less, depending on how you draw the line). Those sympathetic to authoritarianism are much fewer still. Thus, it makes little sense to devote more than a modest amount of time and effort to dealing with them, as opposed to addressing the much larger group of non-libertarian liberals who need to be more cognizant of the dangerous shortcomings of democracy.

Moreover, when we look at libertarians who have shifted to the "alt right" or otherwise become advocates of illiberal ideas, the problem in most cases is not excessive skepticism of democracy, but insufficient commitment to liberty - particularly, the liberty of people from different ethnic, racial, or religious backgrounds, that of migrants, and those with unconventional lifestyles. That is pretty obviously the case with Curtis Yarvin and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, both mentioned by Matt. The former's advocacy of a "post-liberal" ideology of repression (which is really based on pre-liberal models) is pretty obviously not the product of a man who thinks authoritarianism is a better way to protect liberty than democracy. Indeed, his concern is exactly the opposite (that democracy allows for way too much liberty). The same goes for Hoppe's advocacy of repression of immigrants, gays and lesbians, and people with various non-traditional lifestyles. Peter Thiel, the third case mentioned by Matt, is that of a person who has abandoned libertarianism for "national conservatism," an ideology focused on exalting the interests of ethnic and culture majorities and using the state to punish perceived "enemies." To the extent we want to focus on dissuading such people, it should be to reemphasize the value of liberty for all, not extolling the virtues of democracy. People who value democracy more than liberty are generally unlikely to become libertarians in the first place.

Two  Smaller Issues

Matt and I also have a modest disagreement over whether there can be situations where some form of authoritarianism can be a lesser evil compared to democracy. I think such cases are extremely rare, but not nonexistent. Matt's position is less clear, and perhaps I misunderstand him. But he does seem to want to deny this possibility. In response to my examples of the allied occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II, he seems to think these don't really count because "those occupations were run by democracies answerable to their own voters, and they ended." But they were still cases where non-democratic government was imposed on a population, and that population itself did not have control over when and if it would end.

In these cases, a non-democratic occupation government was a lesser evil than immediate establishment of democracy, because of the highly illiberal nature of German and Japanese majority public opinion at the time.  Similar circumstances can potentially arise in other countries. And, in some cases, a domestically generated authoritarian regime might still be a lesser evil than any democracy that is feasible at the time.

In some situations, the problem can be dealt with by limiting democracy, rather than abjuring it completely. For example, as noted in my earlier response, post-occupation West Germany long banned Nazis and communists from competing in elections, but otherwise committed to free electoral competition. But there could be situations where such constraints are not enough. Because such cases are highly unusual, this is not a particularly important disagreement. But it does have relevance in situations where we consider how to deal with a society where majority public opinion is deeply illiberal.

Finally - and least important - Matt differs with me about the use of the terms "libertarian" and "classical liberal," arguing that the former are more likely to be democracy-skeptics than the latter. We can, if we want, define the two terms in such a way that people we label with one are generally more suspicious of democracy than those we label with the other one. But that is not the way the terms are typically used. That said, different people use these terms in different ways. To my mind, they are mostly just alternative labels for the same general ideology. But I don't have much of a beef with people who prefer to use them differently than I do, so long as they make clear what they mean.

Ultimately, Matt and I agree on much more than we differ. But a few of the issues we differ have real significance. I am grateful for the opportunity to consider them.

The post Libertarianism and Democracy Revisited - A Rejoinder to Matt Zwolinski appeared first on Reason Magazine.

On October 4, I published a post on "Libertarianism and Democracy," critiquing political philosopher Matt Zwolinski's earlier Liberalism.Org article on the same topic. Matt has written a response to me, which I have agreed to post at this site. The remaining paragraphs of this post were written by Matt Zwolinski, not me (Ilya Somin). I have posted a rejoinder to Matt's thoughtful response here.

Who Should Defend Democracy?

A reply to Ilya Somin

My recent Liberalism.org essay, "Democracy Belongs on the List," made the case that classical liberals should count democracy among their core commitments, alongside private property, free markets, and the rule of law. And it belongs there for the same reason. Like property rights and markets, democracy is a crucial way of keeping power in check.

Ilya Somin has written a generous and thoughtful reply to that piece. And I think he actually agrees with me more than the framing of his post might suggest. Ilya grants that democracies are generally freer and more prosperous than the alternatives, that democracy is "a valuable check on power," that libertarians should arguably stress these points "more often," and that "in much of the world today, right-wing nationalists pose a greater threat to libertarian values and priorities than the political left does." What's left mainly comes down to two questions: what counts as a libertarian critique of democracy, and whose job it is to defend democracy.

Before turning to those substantive issues, though, there's one terminological matter that's worth clearing up. Ilya says that nothing of significance hinges on whether we call our view "libertarian" or "classical liberal." And on most questions I'd agree. On this one, though, I think the difference matters. In The Individualists, John Tomasi and I draw a distinction between strict libertarians and classical liberals. The former group tends to treat liberty as a moral absolute and to derive their politics from a single overarching principle like the non-aggression axiom. Think Murray Rothbard or Ayn Rand. The latter treat liberty as a strong but defeasible presumption and are more empiricist and pluralistic in their approach to politics. Think Friedrich Hayek or Richard Epstein.

My sense is that these two camps within the broader "liberty movement" have taken pretty different stances toward democracy, with strict libertarians being much more critical than their classical liberal brethren. Even back in the 19th century, you could find Benjamin Tucker insisting that voting is always a form of aggression, and Lysander Spooner arguing that women "have just as good a right to make laws as men have, and no better: AND THAT IS JUST NO RIGHT AT ALL." Herbert Spencer was even willing to walk back his support of women's suffrage once he decided that women would probably use their vote to support bigger government. That's a pretty different take than anything you're likely to find in Ludwig von Mises or Friedrich Hayek (more on whom later), let alone in John Stuart Mill.

That brings us to the first of the two substantive issues under dispute. Ilya argues that recent events have made libertarian critiques of democracy more important than ever, and that the libertarian solutions to democracy's flaws are "primarily to limit and decentralize government power." I'm with him on that, but I don't think this settles, or even really addresses, the debate about democracy. Limiting and decentralizing government power is a claim about the scope of the state, about how much government should do. It's a principle that would apply to any government, whether democratic or not. And, crucially, it isn't an argument against democratic control of whatever the state does do.

That distinction was at the heart of my essay. Following Jacob Levy, I argued that classical liberals have let a perfectly sound critique of too much government slide into a skepticism about democracy itself, treating democracy, in Levy's words, "as if the contrast to 'democratic' were 'economic' rather than 'autocratic.'" One can be a radical about reducing the scope of the state and still insist that its agents must be answerable to the people they govern. Most of what Ilya calls the libertarian critique of democracy is really a critique of big government. That's an argument I largely agree with, as far as it goes. The trouble comes when we file it under the wrong heading. When we ourselves blur the line between critiques of state power and critiques of democracy, we shouldn't be surprised when people come away thinking libertarians are against democracy.

That brings me to comparative advantage, which is where I think Ilya's argument is most interesting but also most mistaken. Libertarians are a small minority, he says, and "we have no comparative advantage when it comes to extolling the virtues of democracy relative to authoritarianism. Other types of liberals can do this work just as well as we can, perhaps better." So we should stick to what we do best, which is analyzing democracy's flaws.

This argument might make sense in some contexts. But as a general principle, I think it misfires, and it misfires most badly when the audience is classical liberals and libertarians themselves. That, after all, is where the turn against democracy has actually happened. Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed argued that monarchy was preferable to democracy, and complained that "habitual democrats" had been tolerated rather than "isolated, excluded and expelled from civilization." Curtis Yarvin, who came to neoreaction by way of libertarianism, credits Hoppe with opening "a kind of door to the pre-revolutionary world" for him. And in 2009, Peter Thiel wrote in a Cato Institute publication that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." None of this follows from the libertarian critique of voter ignorance, and nothing Ilya has written points in this direction. But it grew in a movement where, as Janet Bufton recently put it in Liberal Currents, "even liberal libertarians were taught arguments about why democracy fails," and hardly anyone was making the case for democracy on libertarian terms. Any old liberal can explain to the public why democracy beats dictatorship. But a libertarian drifting toward Hoppe or Yarvin isn't going to listen to them. Only libertarians can tell libertarians that democracy is theirs.

So if democracy is a libertarian value, what kind of libertarian value is it? Ilya argues that democracy shouldn't be "a first-order libertarian priority, on par with liberty, constraining coercion, property rights, and increasing human happiness," because its value is instrumental rather than intrinsic. I agree that the value of democracy is instrumental. In that way, it's in precisely the same position as a number of items on the classical liberal list. Free trade, federalism, judicial review, and the rule of law are instrumental too. What I want to resist is the claim that because democracy is only instrumentally valuable it's therefore dispensable – something that can be traded away whenever we can imagine something better. What we can imagine, though, is a poor guide to what works. The better question, as David Schmidtz argues, is what has "an observable history of leading self-interested agents to act in ways that are useful and agreeable to the people around them," and by that test democracy has very few rivals.

Which leaves us with Hayek. Ilya defends Hayek's preference for "a liberal dictator to a democratic government lacking liberalism" as a claim about rare hypothetical cases, and suggests that transitional non-democratic rule "may be necessary" in places like Russia and China, citing the Allied occupations of Germany and Japan. But those occupations were run by democracies answerable to their own voters, and they ended. Russia and China, in contrast, have no outside power that could impose a transition and then hand power back. The only realistic candidate for transitional power in those countries is a domestic strongman, which is exactly the case Hayek had in front of him. Hayek wasn't musing about hypotheticals; he was talking about Chile.

Ultimately, Ilya and I want the same thing. We both advocate a form of libertarianism that resists concentrated power wherever it appears, including when it arrives through the ballot box. Where we differ is on the need to say out loud that democracy is one of the ways we resist it. I think we should, and I think libertarians are better placed to say it than anyone, since the people who most need to hear it are our own.

The post Who Should Defend Democracy? appeared first on Reason Magazine.