Depends on your meta-ethical framework. If you’re a consequentialist, then you should always choose the option that leads to less evil being done. Same if you’re a utilitarian.

If you hold to a Kantian value-based framework, like the action itself holds the primary moral goodness or evil in its own nature, then choose the action that itself is less evil.

There are many other frameworks. It also depends on what you think happens in the case of something like voting. Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.

Others see voting as a mere means to an end, and thus, is justified if the outcome is better than not voting would be. Some see it as purely neutral, like a tool that can be used for good or bad.

Still, others see it as an inherently good thing, and view abstaining from the act of voting as a moral wrong, because it is a willing act of self-sabotage of the moral interests of the greater good, or sometimes as a violation of the social contract.

There are many other positions and considerations. Basically…it’s complicated.

It’s highly context dependent.

In medicine, you face this question all the time. Will a surgery do more harm than good. Can I just leave that person suffering, or should I roll the dice with this surgery? It’s a proper dilemma to ponder. How about this medication that improves the patient’s quality of life in one area, but causes some side effects that are less horrifying than the underlying condition. Sounds like a win, but is it really?

In various technical contexts, you often find yourself comparing two bad options and pick the one that is “less bad”. Neither of them are evil, good, great or even acceptable. They’re both bad, and you have to pick one so that the machine can work for a while longer until you get the real spare parts and fix it properly. For example, you may end up running a water pump at lower speed for the time being. It wears down the bearing, moves less water, consumes too much energy etc, but it’s still better than shutting the pump down for two weeks.

If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you’re not ignoring an option which involves no harm.

It’s a farce.

There are never only two choices. It is impossible to actually construct a real world situation where in there are only two choices. Even in an elementary school, given a test with only on question on it and it only has two answers, you can eat the test, scribble on it, punch the computer screen, walk out, etc.

Even in prison with guards pointing guns at you and putting you in a position to do either A or B you have options.

However, the concept of lesser evil is a shallow abstraction of the real world experience of pragmatism. Amongst all of your options, what course of action leads to the most desirable outcomes?

This is a real thing. We do it all the time. People in positions of grave responsibility have to do it with consequences and constraints that are absolutely gutting. Let’s say the war has already started, well, now you have to make decisions about how to avoid losing the most strategically important objectives, even if that means people dying. In fact, the strategies employed in war force decision makers into these sorts of choices as a matter of course - an opponent knows you don’t want to make certain sacrifices and will therefore create pressures that trade off those sacrifices with strategic objectives. Sometimes it’s not even that they believe you’ll give up the strategic objectives but the delay you have when choosing will give them an advantage, or the emotional and psychological toll of being put in such situations repeatedly over a long campaign can create substantial advantages.

Lesser evil is rhetorical sophistry or mildly useful thought experiments when exploring the consequences of ethical frameworks in academia.

Back in the day, ex-slave Frederick Douglas had to choose between supporting a Presidential candidate who was for immediate abolition of slavery or helping a wishy-washy liberal who wouldn’t come out in favor of abolition. Douglas chose to support the liberal because Douglas thought the liberal had a better chance of winning the election. Douglas had to weight the odds and decided that it was better to have a President who might listen to the abolition cause than it was to be ‘moral’ and lose the election.

I think it’s usually used to create a false dichotomy so that stockholm syndrome victims can feel good about supporting their abusers.

I use it as an excuse to view the average idiot for what they are. A slow loss is still a loss, but stupid people have convinced themselves that it’s a win. I’m glad I’m not like them.

I think of it as the food I must eat.

I am to hunger and I am to eat, I am to end something’s being in order for me to be.

Best I can do is reduce the damage I induce. Eat just enough and waste little. Regardless I did an evil and now that something is no more.

I must have reverence for the harm I induce. To apply this into politics, harm will always happen - best you can do is fixate on the interests that are dire and do your part to reduce the harm in other avenues. The world is so interconnected, that almost every action has a negative - we are often just oblivious for we can only see our part.

There is always the option to not pick.

There is something to risk reduction, but it’s more about voting strategically, if you have a chance to sway the election it makes sense to vote in arisk reductive manner from a practical standpoint, however, There’s also something to be said about voting for a marxist canidate not because they have a good chance of getting elected but to show support for a marxist party. To make it more clear people support them. The lesser evil concept in us democracy is stupid to begin with because a. in the presidential election the majority of the population has bascially no effect on the system if you live in california they are going to vote blue if you live in texas tehy are giong to vote red. As such ti doesnt’ really matter. It also assumes the reason for voting is to get people elected. Which as a revolutionary marxist it should be more a means to an end regardless. You vote to raise awareness of your cause and to create solidarity. If you are voting in an electino you mathematically have virtually zero chance of swaying it makes more sense to vote for a marxist canidate in the hopes that if enough people vote for it it might show up in statistics and introduce people to the cause.

IMO, developing conciousness of the society is far more important than choosing the lesser evil.

Also the bigger evil, is only evil in your view. And letting the course run, is one of the best ways for that big evil to show people why it is bigger evil.

It’s a good concept but I’m more fond of the concept of sound. It comes down to personal preference.

gotta call their bluff eventually. otherwise you just end up with the “lesser evil” still being genocide.

The concept of the “lesser evil” operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan “there is no alternative” (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.

Its usually used by more evil evildoers trying to paint themselves as less evil than their (real or made up) opposition, while advocating for evil. I think its a desparation move by villains who got found out.

The choice is rarely actually binary.