You live in the United States. The Presidential election is coming up.
Tom is one of the candidates. His political views are close to your own and there is a very strong, realistic chance that he could get elected. Before running for president, he has a very strong track record for getting things done in the the White House as a member of the legislature (and he's still very young). In public, Tom is very charismatic and appears to be very kind.
His opponent is a bland, standard run of the mill politician. However, he also has a realistic chance of being elected because no matter what he does, close to half of voters will vote for him because of the nature of US politics.
So far, neither Tom nor his Opponent have been involved in any scandals.
In the days leading up to the vote however, you (and only you) become aware of an unpleasant aspect of Tom's past.
After graduating from Harvard, Tom went on to attend Harvard Law School. During his days at Harvard, he was a bit of a prick. In the sense that he was an over-achiever and had a policy of forming an exclusive Study Group. In this Study Group, people could only join if they did their undergrad from Harvard (or Yale and several Number One Tier schools)... people from "lesser Ivies" and "lesser schools" were not allowed. Tom personally booted a few of his classmates out of this Study Group when he found out that they had lied about which school they went to during undergrad. Tom was Number One in his class but he apparently practiced discrimination with respect to the highly prestigious Study Group he ran based on your undergrad school.
You find out about this from one of Tom's old friends, however, the friend tells you that it's against Harvard's Code of Honour to spread bad rumours about their ex graduates. So you are 100% sure that no one is going to the press about this.
...
The discussion question is this. Are you still going to vote for Tom?
Other than this strange behaviour from Harvard Law, he's an ideal candidate in the sense that his political views are yours and there's a strong chance he could get elected. He's young and has an impressive record of legislative achievements and experience in government and business.
As far you've seen, he seems to be very polite and nice on television.
However, you become aware of his Harvard antics. Please assume that this is 100% True (and you know it to be True).
Your options:
1. Vote for Tom
2. Vote for the Opposition
3. Don't Vote in the election
There are no third party runners with a realistic chance of winning the election.
Please discuss.
