Why I'm Voting for Chase Oliver in 2024

Plus: How my colleagues at Reason magazine are voting and a 2016 debate about Trump!

Lex Villena/Reason

Since 2004, the place I work—Reason magazine—has asked its staffers to say who they’re voting for in presidential elections and why. As befits a libertarian outlet, participation is voluntary (though encouraged!). The practice started when I was editor in chief of the print mag and the website but, if memory serves, it was

Matt Welch

’s idea (a good one). He noted that virtually no publications, even (especially?) political ones that endorsed candidates, offered up such granular information on how its staff voted. The one exception was Slate, which has been doing it for a long time but doesn’t seem to have coughed up the info for this election yet. It’s more than a little weird that more publications don’t do a similar exercise. Places like The Washington Post tell you where their reporters went to college—seriously, who really cares?—but not who they voted for? That’s kind of strange, but it’s been totally normalized.

As a 501(c)3 nonprofit and—more important—a libertarian, individualist publication, Reason doesn’t endorse specific candidates or pieces of legislation; in fact, we don’t even publish unattributed “house” editorials written in the royal we. There is a surprising and healthy amount of disagreement among the staff on who or what counts as a good politician or a good policy, even if we seem reliably (or dogmatically, take your pick) libertarian on Every. Goddamn. Thing.

The rationale for explaining our individual votes is pretty straightforward: It’s good to be transparent to your readers. That might be a more compelling case now than when we started doing it 20 years ago. Do you remember 2004? I do, but with less and less detail and emotion. George W. BushHitler was running against the equally terrible John Kerry, whom I once described as “a bazillioniare blowhard who works crowds like the Frankenstein monster terrorizing villagers.” The Libertarian Party—bless its pointed little head—ran a guy who thought driver’s licenses were too much of an infringement on individual liberty to get one (I suspect that he, like the Amish, just preferred bumming rides). According to new Gallup data, a record-low 31 percent of us has a “great deal/fair amount of trust” in the “mass media.” A whopping 36 percent of us has “none at all.” In such a moment, being upfront and transparent about your biases is one way to win back trust.

It also makes interesting copy to hear straight from the horses’ mouths how they approach politics and voting (as opposed to philosophy and governance issues). This time around, there are a dozen Reasoners voting for the Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver, half as many principled nonvoters, three Harris voters, two undecideds who might break for Trump, and one Nikki Haley write-in. And one write-in for Kennedy (the former MTV VJ and current Fox News personality, not the bear-dumping son of the former New York senator. You can read the whole thing here.

Here is my contribution, including my answer to two related questions: What vote do you regret most? and, Apart from the presidency, what is the most important race or ballot initiative being decided this fall?

Who will get your vote in the 2024 presidential election? I will write in a vote for Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party nominee (he is not on the official ballot in New York, where I live). He is not simply the best candidate running in 2024—and the only one talking at all about reducing the size, spending, and scope of the federal government—but he is one of the most consistent and thoughtful people the L.P. has ever run. He always explains and defends his positions from the starting point that individuals should have more control over the most important decisions in their lives. Critics who accuse him of being pro–COVID lockdown, pro–vaccine mandate, or pro–gender reassignment surgery for minors are either wholly ignorant of or willfully misreading his clearly stated positions on these issues. He has laid out rationales for sunsetting old-age entitlements, reining in the military-industrial complex, and maximizing expression and lifestyle freedom that are philosophically sound, pragmatic, and persuasive. It's a damn shame that he is not receiving full support from not only his own party but from many people who insist that, no really, they are libertarian. Except when it comes to voting for someone in favor of free trade, increasing legal immigration, halving defense spending, defending the Second Amendment, and legalizing drugs.

What past vote do you most regret? Walter Mondale in 1984. It was the first presidential election in which I could vote and I was drawn to his explicit promise to reduce the deficit and, I guess, his legendary "Norwegian charisma" that led him to lose 49 states out of 50. I don't regret that he lost so badly (and deservedly, really). But there was a perfectly good L.P. candidate, David Bergland, I could have thrown away my vote on.

Apart from the presidency, what is the most important race or ballot initiative being decided this fall? In Arizona, voters will get to choose between Proposition 140 (the Single Primary for All Candidates and Possible RCV General Election Initiative) and Proposition 133 (the Require Partisan Primaries and Prohibit Primaries Where Candidates Compete Regardless of Party Affiliation Amendment). The former would prohibit partisan primaries and mandate that the top finishers move on to the general election. The latter would require partisan primaries and prohibit open ballots where the top few move on to the general election. I strongly support the latter; parties play a powerful function by vetting candidates, refining their platforms, and providing clear alternatives to voters. As can be seen from California's experience with a system in which the top two vote-getters in a so-called jungle primary move on to the general election, such a system effectively freezes out third parties and merely consolidates or deepens the status quo. The L.P., the party that comes closest to consistently reflecting my political positions, is in dreary shape at the national level and in most states, but it and other minor parties have no real role to play in a single-primary system in which only the top two or three candidates move on to a general election.

Again, the whole thing is here.

Single bonus: I interviewed Chase Oliver in August. Watch or listen here. He has no chance of winning of course, but I hope he does better than expected, which would mean pulling maybe 1 percent of the popular vote. I’m convinced that within the next decade many of the notes he’s hitting, especially about shrinking the spending and size of government, will become mainstream again. I hope that his views on immigration come back in vogue again too.

Double bonus, I’m happy to link to a November 1, 2016 Soho Forum I participated in. You may recall that election with more clarity than 2004 (I do!). The proposition under debate was: Libertarians should vote for Donald Trump. I took the negative and economist Walter Block took the affirmative. Like Hillary Clinton, I lost!

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