Would the gentleman in question still be encouraging the students to vote if he knew the majority of them would favor McCain rather than Obama? If he’d still do it, then his concern is with increasing voting activity. If he wouldn’t, then he’s just trying to increase the power of his favored candidate.

Of course, if he’s not an American citizen, then he’s minding what most certainly is not his business, and he should have his eyes removed as penance.

That is all.

Should Brian still act non-partisan if the election was between, say, Hitler and Gandhi?

By framing the question this way you’ve mutated it into another question entirely. The original question was, is encouraging people to vote (without pushing a particular candidate) really non-partisan if you know that in practice most of your audience will vote for the candidate you favor? In this scenario the desirability of non-partisanship is stipulated from the beginning.

In the hypothetical election between Hitler and Gandhi, most people would be unabashedly partisan. The operative word here is “unabashedly”. A pro-Gandhi partisan in such an election wouldn’t try to pretend to himself that he was non-partisan and thus wouldn’t care whether he was acting in a non-partisan way.

Back to the actual scenario, what we have here is a person who is pushing his favorite candidate (i.e., being a partisan) while trying to claim the mantle of non-partisanship. That is where the “bad faith” comes in.

I stand by the principle of taking a non-partisan approach in most situations. However, it seems to me that rules about non-partisanship break down if you’ve done a thorough, humble analysis. Should Brian still act non-partisan if the election was between, say, Hitler and Gandhi?

Ultimately, the ends do justify the means. You just have to make sure you’re keeping track of all the ends.

“If a Stalinist were running in this election, then yes to be neutral Brian would need agreement from his Stalinist counterfactual.”

Do you mean if a Stalinist were running at all, or if a Stalininst were a major-party candidate/non-negligible contender?

The former principle I think would make a no-taking-sides rule equivalent to a no-action-at-all rule; I think there are few if any aspects of the “public good” that don’t at least implicitly side against someone. (Cf. teaching evolution in schools; a lot of people sure seem to feel that constituted taking sides against them. And I don’t think my Anarchist counterfactual would be easy to convince of the value of any legitimization of the current regime.)

But the latter standard would mean we need some way to determine how mainstream a party has to be before helping/hurting it counts as “taking sides.” (Too small and it’s not a meaningful “side,” too large and it’s identical with the public good.)

“might be costly to individuals has no bearing on the value of multiple informed votes to the system as a whole.”

You’re not seriously arguing this, are you? To claim that “the value to the system as a whole” outweighs a high cost to the individual is, with all due respect, terrifying. Not to overstate the case, but this is the worst form of positive liberty.

Voting is a small example – but as often happens on OB, upon reflection it illuminates the largest principles.

I agree adding a number of uninformed people to the voter pool does little to help the process as a whole, but I’m not sure we could ever properly screen out the ones who were so uneducated.

However, I thought your quote here was interesting.

“And even if someone’s vote would increase this chance, if the increase is infinitesimal the fact that voting is costly can make us prefer he or she just stay home.”

If a person’s vote has a non-zero increase in the betterment of a voting system, shouldn’t “us” (I’m guessing you mean society here) encourage people to vote anyway? That voting might be costly to individuals has no bearing on the value of multiple informed votes to the system as a whole.

That’s just my two cents.

People have trouble with this. They put the current date for their birth-date. They put the wrong address. They check off the wrong box saying “I’m changing my address, so it’s new voter, right?” No, there’s a box that says “change of address” for a reason. (Actually, it’s new voter if you’re coming in from a state other than the one you are registering in, but I digress). They forget to sign it. They write “United States” where it says “County.”

It is an exceedingly simple form, and someone standing in line to get concert tickets who asks me for such a form should be able to handle it. Yet, people cannot. Feeling charitable pre-no $ cost Bruce show, I decided to not be objective and chalk it up to the scene- pre-concert, waiting in line, lots of people, etc- but I was told later, that, no, people mess it up no matter where they fill it out. If you cannot fill out the form without help, you should not be able to vote. That should be the minimum threshold, and I think we’d actually cull out a lot more people than one would expect to.