Lesser of Two Evils Voting Is a Trap We Keep Falling Into

Every election in Canada, it seems like we must deal with the same awful voting outcome: a shitty Conservative leader, and a slightly less shitty Liberal leader.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is always framed as the most pragmatic outcome. The mature, responsible choice.

And to be fair, there is a certain level of logic to it. If one choice is clearly worse, then minimizing harm must be the only viable choice. Nobody wants to be the person responsible for voting in the more evil person, right?

But the problem is that this way of thinking doesn’t just respond to bad choices—it helps create them.

When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you’re not simply making an isolated decision in a single, one off, inconsequential election: you’re setting expectations. You’re telling the political parties that they don’t have to be good. They don’t have to inspire you, represent you, or even meaningfully improve your situation. They just must be slightly less objectionable than the alternative.

And if that’s all they need to secure your vote, that’s exactly where they’ll aim.

The Overton Window shifts with every strategic vote. Standards start to drop. Not all at once, but incrementally. What was unacceptable a decade ago became tolerable today. What is tolerable today will become normal tomorrow, and every election will result in the same justification: this is simply the best we can do.

It isn’t. It’s just the best they can get away with without losing you.

The deeper issue here is leverage—or more accurately, the loss of it. Your vote has value before you cast it, not after. It’s a form of pressure, a signal that support must be earned. But if that support is effectively guaranteed—because the alternative is always framed as worse, that pressure disappears. There’s no incentive to do better, because there’s no real risk in doing the bare minimum.

This is where “lesser evil” thinking starts to quietly reshape how people see politics altogether. The scope of what seems possible, of what we can expect from our politicians, starts to change. Instead of asking what policies and direction we want, the question we end up asking ourselves is what option we dislike less. This shift is important, it matters. This shift trains people to stop expecting more, to stop demanding better and we eventually stop believing that “better” is even an option.

That’s how you end up with a political culture defined more by resignation than by engagement.

This shift also leads to a level of complacency that we’ve seen before. Voting gets relegated to a checkbox, something you do every few years so you can say you did your job. “I voted, so I’ve done my part.” But voting isn’t the end of the line. Voting is actually the lowest form of political participation if you view it as something you just need to do occasionally.

But voting is not where change comes from. Change happens between elections. Organizing, applying pressure, challenging parties to do better, challenging leaders to do better, holding those leaders accountable to you once they’re in power. Because politicians represent us, they are accountable to us. We give them their mandates, and we put them in power.

Now, this isn’t to say that harm reduction in politics isn’t real. There are, of course, situations where one political option will do markedly more damage than the other political option, and there is no part of me that believes it’s unreasonable for a voter to take that into consideration. But when harm reduction is the sole extent of the plan, when the strategy simply becomes avoiding the worst-case scenario, we’re not actually moving anything forward. We end up simply managing decline, hoping that things get worse at a slower rate, instead of asking ourselves why they’re getting worse in the first place.

And that’s the real trap.

Because once parties understand that fear is what drives your vote, they don’t have to offer anything better than that. They don’t have to do anything to earn your support—they just have to maintain the idea that “at least I’m not the other person.” If they keep the other option scary enough they can rely on you to fall in line.

This is where accountability fails. Winning the election stops being about delivering results or representing your voter base effectively and becomes nothing more than being the alternative. And if that’s the standard, as it appears to be in Alberta in 2026, there’s very little incentive for anything to improve.

So, lets say you look at the ballot and decide one option is clearly worse and you have decided that the less evil candidate will get your vote.

Fine. That’s your call.

But if that’s where your political engagement ends, then you’ve basically handed over your power the moment you cast your ballot.

Because the real work starts after that.

If the candidate you voted for turns out to be exactly what you expected—underwhelming, compromised, not nearly as good as they should be—your response shouldn’t be resignation. It shouldn’t be “well, at least they’re not the other guy.” That’s how nothing changes.

Your response should be pressure.

This means spending the time needed to analyze what they’re doing, not just what they said to get elected. It means pressuring them to support and push for the issues that matter to you, publicly and consistently. It means engaging with advocacy groups and electoral riding associations. It means stating clearly and regularly that your vote was not, and will never be, unconditional.

It also means being willing to withdraw support next time if nothing improves. Not as a symbolic gesture, but as a real consequence. Because without consequences, there’s no reason for political behavior to change.

And beyond that, it means thinking longer-term. If the choices on the ballot keep being bad, then the problem isn’t just the candidates—it’s the pipeline that produces them. That’s where things like local involvement, party engagement, grassroots organizing, and even supporting alternative candidates start to matter. Not because they win overnight, but because they change what’s possible over time.

None of this is quick. None of it is easy. But it’s the difference between participating in politics and being managed by it.

Because if you always vote out of fear, fear is all you’re going to be offered.

If your support is unconditional, it won’t be respected.

And if the only thing you ever do is choose the lesser evil and move on, then you’re not just stuck with bad options—

you’re helping make sure they never get better.