[Question:]{.underline} In elections, would it not be preferable to vote for the best candidate, rather than for the least unworthy?
[Answer:]{.underline} Certainly it is a grave moral obligation for citizens to participate in elections and to vote for worthy and good candidates. An elector who would deliberately vote for a bad candidate without grave reason would commit a mortal sin. For every citizen has a grave moral obligation, in virtue of that kind of justice called legal by theologians, to contribute to the common good of his country by electing moral, upright, and capable men. The most normal thing would be to elect the best possible candidate. However, if there are several good candidates capable of performing the functions in question, there is no strict obligation to elect the person that one considers to be the best, since this is not strictly necessary for the common good.
However, it rarely, if ever, happens in modern politics that one has to choose between more than one moral, upstanding, and capable candidate. It is, in our pagan and godless society, our sad lot that the only choices are between candidates who all lack Catholic and moral principles to varying degrees. In such a case, it is not possible to even choose a good candidate, let alone the best one. A good candidate is one whose policies are good in every domain and department of public life, according to the philosophical principle that that which is good is wholly good, and that which has any defect at all is evil, evil being the lack of the good which is due. A politician who is opposed to government funding of Catholic educational institutions, without restricting their freedom in any way, cannot be called good. A politician who approves of abortion under any conditions, even limited to circumstances such as rape and incest, cannot be called good. A politician who approves or votes for civil laws in favor of civil divorce cannot be called good. Yet even the “best,” most conservative and religious, politicians follow these principles. Properly speaking, they cannot be called good.
Yet all acknowledge that such politicians have some integrity and uprightness about them, and that their taking of elected positions will do much good for society on account of other good policies that they have. While a Catholic could not hold to such defective policies himself, should he not be able to vote for those who do in order to avoid a greater evil? The same applies to pro-life politicians whose policies on other issues might be seriously defective. Can we not vote for them to do all in our power to stop the curse of abortion?
All agree that we can. We can indeed, in order to avoid a greater evil. This is possible because it is a case of material cooperation, rather than formal cooperation. We vote for them for the good that they do, not for the evil or defective policies that they might follow or feel that they are forced to embrace to get elected. The grave reason that justifies this material cooperation is the prevention of a worse, more decadent, more immoral, and even more dangerous candidate from being elected. In practice, in our modern democracies this is the reality. It is hardly ever a question of voting for the greater good, but rather for the lesser evil, for the less unworthy candidate. However, since it is usually a very difficult prudential decision to determine what is the lesser evil, and which candidate would do the least harm, and which candidate is for the common good for society, and since material cooperation is to be avoided if at all possible, it cannot generally be considered to be obligatory to vote for the lesser evil.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.