Dr. Raj A. Ghoshal: NC must remember Florida in 2000

Regarding the Sept. 8 Point of View, “Go ahead – vote third party. It won’t help Trump, and here’s why”: Lee Mortimer writes that North Carolinians terrified by the idea of a Donald Trump presidency need not support the only remaining candidate who might beat him. Instead, he says, we should freely vote for third party candidates. Even if third party voting tips North Carolina to Trump, Mortimer argues, the national outcome will be decided in some other state.

As someone who believes we deserve more choices in politics, I certainly wouldn’t contest anyone’s right to vote for whomever they choose. But our choices have consequences, and we should think about them carefully.

Mortimer’s op-ed brought back memories of an election nearly half my life ago. As a college student in Florida in 2000, I heard friends who opposed George W. Bush but found Democratic nominee Al Gore uninspiring make the same arguments in support of voting for third party candidate Ralph Nader.

What were the chances, they asked, that the state we lived in would decide the election? And besides, would a few thousand third-party votes really shift the outcome in a major state? Shouldn’t we vote for whichever candidate we wanted, regardless of any hypothetical consequences?

We all know what happened next: The election was swung by a few hundred voters in a single state. If Nader’s voters in Florida had instead supported Al Gore, a different man would have taken office in 2001.

And North Carolina’s position today is far more like Florida’s 16 years ago than Mortimer acknowledges. He writes that only a handful of states are the “deciders” of elections and that North Carolina is not one of them. This is incorrect.

Changing demographics have rapidly drawn North Carolina toward the nation’s political center. Current election simulations show that North Carolina is one of the five most likely states to end up tipping the election.

Of course, North Carolina might not be decisive, even in a very close election. But there are at least two ways that it could.

First, if current polling errs on North Carolina’s leanings compared to other states by as little as three points, then we are in fact the single most likely state to decide the election.

Second, whether our state will tip the outcome hinges in part on whether North Carolinians against Trump unify behind a single alternative. If we do so better than other states, we are disproportionately likely to tip a close election against Trump. If we do so worse than others, we are especially likely to tip it to Trump.

That is, following Mortimer’s advice makes the very outcome he says is impossible – North Carolinian voters handing nuclear weapons to Donald Trump – more likely.

The length limit was waived to permit a fuller response to the issue.

This story was originally published September 17, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Dr. Raj A. Ghoshal: NC must remember Florida in 2000."