I was aware of the ethics question and the context. None of the ethics in this candidate process smells nice.

We've got the armed robbery level of mal-ethics when a candidate says, "I'll do this when I'm elected," but never even trying to observe the promise later. Then we have the relative jaywalking level of mal-ethics in "I'll vote for him" and honoring at least the first portion of that commitment, possibly the entirety of the commitment if a first-round vote establishes a win for the promised candidate. I’ll tolerate that level.

Let's muddy the ethical waters further. Suppose I were a delegate who considers my "officially" supported candidate to be a nation-crushing mini-Mussolini. I reason (you might say rationalize) that misrepresenting my second round vote (but not the first round) serves the positive good of protecting the citizenry from impending evil. Here in post-constitutional America, I might consider that non-destructive measure as my only acceptable alternative to the carnage of an attempted assassination.

[Note for the record: I currently am not a candidate or delegate, nor am I involved in any assassination plans. My affirmatively physical acts to attempt to displace a politician from office have consisted only of my lawful candidacy for the US House of Representatives some eight years ago. Rather than write my congressman, I attempted to become my congressman.]

All that and cognitive dissonance.

Was that ethical under Objectivist standards?

I think to represent oneself as a supporter of X and hide the fact of supporting Y for the purpose of getting elected and then turning against X is unethical. Got it?

In a slightly different situation, in the 1972 presidential election I remember a young Roger McBride was a republican elector in the electoral college who voted his conscience and voted for the newly formed Libertarian Party candidates, John Hospers and Toni Nathan, who by the way was the first woman candidate to receive an electoral vote in U.S. history.

You were clear, Esceptico. It's how what you were saying impacted on every mind's different unique filter that colored their responses.

Most people opt for short-term gain, range-of-the-moment benefits, and don't think through to the very long-range goal of the larger self-interest. They don't see adhering to ethical choices as an investment towards that rational society in which they can actualize their own happiness, freedom and purpose of their life.

To consider only one's own short-range benefit, say within one's own lifetime, and ignore long-range consequences for humanity, such as the survival of billions of individuals in a closed eco-system, is like sacrificing all those others to oneself.

Genuine self-interest needs to take into account not only one's immediate and exclusively self-serving interests but an entire society in which all individuals can act to conduct their lives to attain their purposes and happiness.

A smidgen of rational ethics applied long-range would better serve everyone's self-interest. That would be a truly virtuous self-serving code of values.

It's ironic that even in this motherlode of Objectivist ethics people still can't agree on what they are. I see the cause as an evolutionary process, with humanity still having one foot in the predatory animal state and the other foot not yet firmly planted on the volitional-consciousness level. We have our work cut out for us.

Instead of just asserting that I don't understand your point, why don't you present what would be the "ethical" decision in this case from your point of view and how that ethical position should be the standard - either from a logical or historical use standpoint as I have done. Make your case.

Hello Esceptico,
They are unethical. I have little time, or regard for those that tolerate or commit fraud. At its base is deceit and duplicity. The system is corrupt and they not only give sanction, but use its corruption as intended and manipulate it at will. Most are not so bold as to admit it publicly... trusting Joe Public not to look beneath the hood. Even if enough people see the problem it will not matter, as long as it is legal, they will feel impotent. That is why it is set up as is. The establishment machine created it and counts on it.
Respectfully,
O.A.

You are saying exactly the point I was trying to get people to think about. When you look at the responses, I guess I was not as clear as I thought because the responses did not stay on the point I was aiming for.

My dear fellow, I think ou miss my point entirely.

""a cause contrary to the one that candidate supports?" - CBJ
"a candidate which doesn't completely agree with your views." --WilliamShpley
I don't think candidates have strong views. They're generally not philosophers or policy wonks. They're popular people who enjoy being popular. To get to that level of popularity requires careful strategizing and saying/doing things that make people feel like the candidate represents them.

Most politicians probably don't understand policy at the level of most people on this message board. The average politician would blow us away at walking into an event, meeting ten strangers, and committing to memory all their names and a funny anecdote from each of their work or family lives.

I could not even vote for myself if that 100% compliance was required --- I change my mind when presented with new credible evidence, so my views may be different several months apart.

Let us hope the deceit will come back to harm the Cruz moles. My seven decades of life have allowed me to witness liars winning all too often.

If you want to argue that the delegates themselves obtained their positions invalidly, please present your evidence. If you have evidence that according to that State's rules for delegates that a delegate may not switch votes after the first vote, then that candidate announcing such would not only be in violation of the rules, but the ethics of their position and I would agree with you.

Since neither appears to be the case, I would first point out that Rand would first object to running for office in the first place, so from that standpoint, I find it very difficult to humor the notion that somehow an Objectivist point-of-view can even be used to evaluate this situation.

Your entire argument is the claim that "it is a matter of deceit from the start." I understand what you are saying, it just appears to me that you aren't interested in anything but acclaim for your rather visceral evocation.

Rules are a means to an end. What one says when they imply ethical violations in any matter is that there is an end in mind but that the means used to achieve that end are inconsistent with the spirit or letter of that end. The entire Primary process is a matter of selecting a representative for a specific political party to act as a candidate in the General Election. The rules - and goal - are to select a Nominee which is supported by a majority of the delegates (not the People) - in this case at the Republican National Convention. The fallacy that you refuse to admit for yourself is that there is some requirement - either written or unwritten - of those Delegates to continue to vote for the same Candidate over and over and over again - regardless if that person has secured the necessary 51% to actually earn the Nomination. What you are saying is that those Delegates who already declared for Marco Rubio have the same responsibility to continue to vote for Marco Rubio that a Kasich delegate would have to vote for Kasich and so on. It is an absurd proposition that would result in perpetual stalemate (and which actually happened in the election for President of 1800).

Delegates are committed to vote for a particular candidate only on the first round. That's it. That is ethics, it is history, it is the rules. To argue otherwise is to argue for gridlock - not ethics. Now I know you are going to come back and say that people should only switch their votes if there is another candidate which is more "viable". But even that is entirely the point: how does one determine who is the "viable" candidate? If none of the current crop have mustered the necessary majority count, should we simply toss them all out and select someone one else entirely (Paul Ryan)? Should we re-do all the Primary contests and vote on only those who have secured some arbitrary vote threshold?

It's not just unethical, fraudulent and dishonest. It basically constitutes breach of contract.

If the system allows switching between ballots, then there is something afoul in the system itself. It's the wolf sneaking in in sheep's clothing. It's a chameleon masquerading as an elephant. It's raising deceit to a legitimate tool of statecraft (oh, wait, that's already enshrined).

What sickens me is that the deceivers congratulate themselves on their cleverness as though succeeding through deception were a virtue. Hah, another case of the ends justifying the means. For them, A equals any letter of the alphabet except A.

Such a philosophy will turn all of us into liars or paranoids. It is said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." The concept of honor is vanishing from our value system.

Even Rand said that we don't owe honesty to a hold-up man (or any enemy). How far do we want to extend this justification of deception? To any rival or competitor, to any but our closest and trusted allies, and for only as long as they remain trustworthy?

Let's check that premise. If honor and honesty are so negotiable, so provisional even within a rational philosophy, we will never build a rational free society. The biggest liars and the biggest guns will always win, and there will be honor only among thieves.

Objective ethics? What a quaint idea.

I was responding to the idea that it is unethical to vote for a candidate which doesn't completely agree with your views.

If that were the case, I could only legitimately vote for myself -- and I'm not running.

Correct.
There is an anthology written by Dr. Leonard Peikoff about an early encounter with Ayn where he presents a scenario where dishonesty is involved to deceive and Ayn carefully picks it apart so that Leonard saw that the lies would come back to haunt the deceiver.
Rational self-interest is for the long-term and must be part of global thinking.
A quick victory through cheating will come to harm later.

Yes, I think that is accurate, but not exactly on point. Objectivism says “ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.”

As I said here before: "The issue here was not the rules, but the ethics of misleading voters by W saying he is a supporter of X when in truth W is a supporter of Y and will turn on X at the first opportunity." This is not a matter changing one's mind later, it is a matter of deceit from the start.

Under the framework of Objectivist ethics, is this ethical?

The confusion is in the difference between rules and ethics, just like laws and ethics. Some people don't really care about ethics, so long as their actions follow the rules (or the law), and tend to rationalize that if they didn't break the party rules, they did nothing wrong. People are just discovering how self serving political parties are.

Objectivism says “ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.”

As I said here before: "The issue here was not the rules, but the ethics of misleading voters by W saying he is a supporter of X when in truth W is a supporter of Y and will turn on X at the first opportunity." This is not a matter changing one's mind later, it is a matter of deceit from the start.

Under the framework of Objectivist ethics, is this ethical?

You want to believe that delegates are locked in to voting for one particular candidate ad infinitum no matter what and that to do anything else is disreputable or dishonorably. I look at two things: the actual rules themselves and the history of use of those rules. Both give evidence in opposition to your viewpoint. There is no history of an "unwritten" rule which would contradict the "written rule" of delegate voting to support your position and the actual written rules are in stark contrast to your position (varying State-by-State of course).

(I will readily grant that the history of a contested convention is one of an abnormality, however, rather than the norm.)

I think Trump listens to the facts (his business experience would lead me to expect that) more than Sanders, who is mired is his socialist BS (he is honest about it at least, which I do give him credit for)

Objectivism says “ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.”

As I said here before: "The issue here was not the rules, but the ethics of misleading voters by W saying he is a supporter of X when in truth W is a supporter of Y and will turn on X at the first opportunity." This is not a matter changing one's mind later, it is a matter of deceit from the start.

Under the framework of Objectivist ethics, is this ethical?

From your comment, I judge you are saying the conduct by W is not ethical.

This does not go to my fundamental question, which is: "The issue here was not the rules, but the ethics of misleading voters by saying you are a supporter of X when in truth you are a supporter of Y and will turn on X at the first opportunity."

The question I posed has nothing to do with this. I has to do with a fundamental question of ethics. "The issue here was not the rules, but the ethics of misleading voters by saying you are a supporter of X when in truth you are a supporter of Y and will turn on X at the first opportunity."