Voting is not harm reduction

On the philosophical implausibility of “harm reduction” through voting for Democratic presidential candidates

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It is common for liberals to defend voting for Democratic candidates as “harm reduction.” The “harm reduction” defense is usually deployed in response to some kind of left-wing critique of Democratic candidates, i.e. those who criticized Kamala Harris’s support for Israel (which, as the 2024 autopsy showed, was a significant reason for her electoral loss in the presidential race).

The debate usually goes as follows. Someone will criticize a Democratic candidate for having an insufficient (or even altogether lacking) a leftist position on a given policy issue. Then, a defender of that Democratic candidate might say, “They aren’t perfect, but voting for them is harm reduction.” By this, what the Democratic defender usually means is something to the effect of, “They are not perfect, but overall there will be less harm in the world compared to if the Republican candidate wins.”

I see this view parroted constantly, like many platitudes on social media, without much substantiation. By those who make this claim, it is taken as self-evident — and in fact, sometimes even offensive not to accept its truth value. I think it is a view that seems plausible when not considered very deeply: Many who would consider themselves broadly left of the current Republican party have a general sense that a Kamala Harris presidency would not have led to some of the significant human rights violations we are seeing today.¹

Yet, as a political philosopher, I am troubled by the taken-for-grantedness of the application of the “harm reduction” model to the issue of voting. There are many ways to conceptualize the purpose of voting, and the “harm reduction” model is only one of many possible models for explaining its purpose.

The Public Health Context of the “Harm Reduction” Model

Indeed, it is not actually immediately evident that “harm reduction” can clearly be applied to the issue of voting. It is important to remember that the model of harm reduction is used in the context of evaluating the purpose of public health policies that respond to high-risk behaviors, i.e. drug use. Harm reduction policies aim to reduce the negative health, social, and legal consequences associated with drug use.

For example, rather than to promote abstinence-only measures against drug use (i.e. complete criminalization), those who support harm reduction might argue that it is important to allow drug users a certain level of access to drugs in order to avoid withdrawal symptoms while trying to recover from addiction. Harm reduction advocates often see such policies as ways to mitigate negative outcomes and respect the human rights of the individual in question. In so doing, harm reduction advocates aim to protect some of the most vulnerable in society — i.e. those who engage in high-risk drug use.

From its origination as a public health model, it is not immediately clear how harm reduction could apply to voting. Prima facie, here are some good reasons to be skeptical that it even makes logical sense to apply “harm reduction” to voting, as follows.

1.) Voting for a particular candidate does not actually guarantee any particular set of policies (though we may have reasonable expectations that certain policies are possible and likely).

2.) A given policymaker gives rise to a whole slate of diverse policies, which may have differential impacts — i.e. some policies may benefit the vulnerable, whereas others harm them.

For these reasons, there are a number of harm reduction advocates and scholars who are averse to speaking of voting in terms of harm reduction.

But perhaps you are still unconvinced, and you still find harm reduction to be a helpful model for defending voting for Democrats. And in fact, I think it may be fair to be unconvinced by these aforementioned reasons alone. Perhaps in regards to #1, one would respond that even if we aren’t clear what exact policies will be enacted, we can reasonably expect that the blue candidate is likely to enact policies that benefit certain marginalized groups (i.e. women, LGBTQ people), or at the very least, refrain from enacting policies that actively harm them. In regards to #2, perhaps one might think that, even if not all their policies are good, a Democratic candidate won’t allow things to get as bad for the most vulnerable, as a Republican candidate would.

In sum, a skeptical interlocutor might think the following: Sure, it may be true that those with a strict understanding of harm reduction may balk at the application of the model to voting. Nonetheless, you might say, isn’t it still a helpful metaphor to represent the idea of voting strategically for an imperfect Democratic candidate, who seems to support some policies and ideas that the Republican candidate surely rejects? If both candidates are problematic, isn’t it still better to vote for the “lesser of two evils”?

Let’s suppose that both points #1 and #2 can, in fact, be defeated in these ways. Is it now fair to use the “harm reduction” model to apply to the issue of voting?

I believe the answer is still no, harm reduction fails as a plausible model for defending voting for Democrats. I find political philosopher Giacomo Floris’s essay, “What Is the Point of Harm Reduction? A Relational Egalitarian Perspective” helpful for this issue. Floris’s essay is about public health and not voting, but it helpfully illuminates a key ethical principle involved in the use of the harm reduction model: equality. That is, when we engage in harm reduction practices, we are doing so because we believe it will allow us to treat all human beings in a more equal fashion.

The Modern Importance of Equality

Of course, equality is a central ethical principle in the modern world. Inequality is the situation in which some human beings are treated as superior to others. Despite their many differences, both leftists and liberals generally both agree that opposing inequality is a crucial tenet of their politics.

This aforementioned point cannot be understated. Leftists are often keen on distinguishing themselves from liberals, especially because liberals presume themselves to be the “furthest left” position in the US context. In contrast, leftists insist there are core differences — most of all summarized by the common refrain that leftism “begins at anti-capitalism.” In short: Leftists wish to end the current capitalist liberal world order; liberals wish to reform it. (For more on this distinction, see my ongoing essay series on the differences between liberals and leftists.)

Yet, despite these enormous differences, leftists and liberals actually do agree on the importance of a key normative principle — that of equality. The difference, however, is often that they have different means of achieving equality. Liberals tend to aim to achieve equality through reforming pre-existing institutions and systems. One paradigmatic example of such a liberal policy are anti-trust laws, which are thought to “level the playing field” of the market such that no one firm can dominate.

Leftists, in contrast, aim to achieve equality through undermining pre-existing institutions and creating new systems. Because capitalism is understood as the basis of significant inequality, leftists seek wholesale change in order to achieve true equality through creating a world without capitalism. Voting for the “lesser of two evils” is often considered a liberal method insofar as it preserves these pre-existing systems.

Given the agreement on the normative issue of equality, the salient question becomes the following: What method — leftist or liberal (e.g. voting for Democrats) — is better suited to upholding the principle of equality? In my view, it is not evident that the model of harm reduction justifies the liberal strategy of voting for Democratic candidates in order to uphold equality.

Equality as a Deontic Value

For Floris, equality is a deontic ethical principle. Deontic ethics argues that what is good is what upholds our moral duty or obligations. One such moral duty could be the duty to treat other human beings as equals. A deontologist may support a harm reduction policy on the grounds that it treats human beings as equally entitled to the right to be respected as a full human being with a complex life and the capacity to make good decisions for oneself.

Again, these frameworks are usually used in the context of public health policy. But let’s see if we can apply them in the context of voting, which is the focus of this essay.

If harm reduction is about upholding equality, then any kind of voting practice that enables the continuation of genocide cannot count as a form of harm reduction. The harm is not being reduced because the harm in question is inequality. If a candidate leads to the continuation of genocide, they lead to the continuation of inequality.

I often see people try to mathematically determine a preference for a Democratic candidate. They might say,

“Yes, both candidates support genocide in Gaza. But at least with the Democratic candidate, we will protect reproductive rights.”

But this is a logically inconsistent view. The person who says this agrees that there is a genocide in Gaza and that genocide is a moral harm. But this person determines that the genocide cannot be stopped by voting for either of those in the two mainstream parties, and so they defer to an alternative issue: that of reproductive rights (or any other policy issue one presumes the Democrats to be superior on compared to the Republicans).

To understand why this view is internally contradictory, it is important to understand why genocide is a moral harm in the first place. Genocide is not simply a “worse” version of murder, for instance. That is, genocide isn’t a moral harm because it involves killing “a lot of people.” In other words, genocide is not simply “mathematically greater” than murder. One does not multiply 1 murder times 75,000 (the current number of estimated human deaths in Gaza) in order to “calculate” the moral harm of genocide.

Rather, genocide is a moral harm insofar as it treats human beings as fungible objects. As philosopher Theodor Adorno says,

[g]enocide is the absolute integration, which is everywhere being prepared, where human beings are made the same…until they are literally cancelled out, as deviations from the concept of their complete nullity.²

Genocide treats individual humans as though they can be exchanged for any other human in their ethnic group — and then aims to eliminate them. In this sense, genocide is a moral harm insofar as it fails to treat human beings as ends in themselves — that is, as worthy and deserving of respect and life in and of themselves. Genocide determines a given ethnic group to be lesser than all other groups, and thereby undeserving of the rights to life, freedom, and respect that all humans are to be afforded in the modern world.

In other words, the person who opposes genocide is a person who commits to the idea that human beings are equal and ought to be treated as such. No one group should be treated as superior to others, nor should a group be afforded greater privileges (i.e. to life) than others. Genocide is the violent and systematized practice of determining one group — in this case, the ethnic Palestinians — to be inferior and thereby designated for elimination. Supporting a candidate who enables the continuation of genocide is to support the continuation of immense and violent inequality.

In this regard, harm reduction is not a helpful framework for defending voting for Democratic candidates, so long as Democratic candidates support the continuation of genocide. The treatment of some human beings as fungible and fundamentally eliminable is a violation of the principle of equality. On the deontic frame, equality is not a quantifiable issue; the issue of respect itself must reject the idea that the value of a life can be “counted” in mathematical terms.

Many of us who are left of the Republicans take ourselves to be committed to equality. If we are truly committed to equality, we cannot be in support of any candidate who supports genocidal policies. To defer to domestic issues, such as reproductive rights, when faced with two candidates who support genocide, is to defer the fundamental moral imperative of upholding equality. So long as our voting patterns treat some lives as expendable and others as not, we cannot say that we care about human rights.

How to Proceed, Given the Deontic Moral Harm of Genocide

In conclusion, the “harm reduction” model does not justify voting for Democratic candidates, so long as those Democratic candidates support the continuation of genocide. If I am right about this, then liberals can proceed in one of two ways, which are as follows.

1. Liberals can give up on the moral principle of equality. There are many values that a political position can entail, and liberals will need to defer to other values in order to justify their political positions.

2. Liberals can retain the moral principle of equality but will need to find an alternative framework besides “harm reduction” in order to justify how they achieve equality through their voting patterns.

I imagine that #1 is anathema to many liberals. As a result, liberals will likely want to engage in #2: to find a way to uphold equality without relying on the “harm reduction” model. There are many ways to explain the value and purpose of voting; liberals who opt for #2 would need to develop an alternative model for why they vote the way they do, given that harm reduction does not justify voting for Democratic candidates who support genocide.

This being said, to my mind, both options are untenable: Option #1 is undesirable, given that not many of us would like to affirm inequality. But option #2 is also untenable insofar as it is likely not possible: That is, I do not know what alternative model could justify voting for a Democratic candidate who supports genocide. And based on the popularity of the rhetoric of “harm reduction” among liberal voters, it is not clear to me that liberals know of an alternative model either.

Given the likely untenability of both options of retaining liberalism, we may feel now lost and confused. Are these the only options?

The good news is that there is a third, more elegant option that neither affirms inequality, nor initiates the uphill battle to determine a non-”harm reduction” model to justify voting for Democrats.

This third option is to opt for a non-liberal method. That is, the third option is to stop trying to rescue the liberal methods of voting for Democrats as a means of upholding the principle of equality. Genocide is a barbarous and anti-modern practice of immense violence against a group presumed to be not only inferior, expendable, and eliminable. Voting for Democrats who support genocide is not harm reduction and does not support upholding equality.

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1. Whether or not this is actually an accurate assumption, I do not have room to explore in this particular essay. But suffice it to say this is a common and taken-for-granted belief among many to the left of Republicans.

2. “Refusing ‘Positive Thinking’ After Auschwitz.” http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/adorno_nd_metaphysics_01.html.