How not to "How to Vote"

Catholic Answers offers "A Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics." (Link via And Then?.)

The guide identifies five "non-negotiable issues" -- abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, human cloning, and "homosexual 'marriage'" -- which together correspond to the "focus issue" in my full-color model.

The guide defines a helpful "How to Vote" process:

1. For each office, first determine how each candidate stands on each of the five non-negotiable issues.
2. Eliminate from consideration candidates who are wrong on any of the non-negotiable issues. No matter how right they may be on other issues, they should be considered disqualified if they are wrong on even one of the non-negotiables.
3. Choose from among the remaining candidates, based on your assessment of each candidate's views on other, lesser issues.

As it happens, this is pretty much how I vote. It's pretty much how everyone votes, except everyone's "non-negotiable issues" tend to vary. ("Not the incumbent" seems to be a perennially popular non-negotiable issue.)

Regarding the guide, I have a few questions:

Who died and made Catholic Answers the Magisterium? This is a question based on style more than substance, I suppose, but beginning with the title -- "I can't say how non-thinking Catholics go about things, but this is what thinking Catholics do" -- the tone of the guide is one of command.

Why five non-negotiable issues, and why these five? I don't object to making these five issues as non-negotiable, but there is no attempt in the guide to justify these five an no other. One might reasonably ask whether, say, "pre-emptive war" should be a non-negotiable issue and whether fetal stem cell research and human cloning really need to be separate issues.

When you say non-negotiable, do you mean negotiable? Let me quote three sections of the guide, in the order they appear:

Candidates who endorse or promote any of the five non-negotiables should be considered to have disqualified themselves from holding public office, and you should not vote for them. You should make your choice from among the remaining candidates.

Eliminate from consideration candidates who are wrong on any of the non-negotiable issues. No matter how right they may be on other issues, they should be considered disqualified if they are wrong on even one of the non-negotiables.

In some political races, each candidate takes a wrong position on one or more of the five non-negotiables. In such a case you may vote for the candidate who takes the fewest such positions or who seems least likely to be able to advance immoral legislation, or you may choose to vote for no one.

Emphasis added.

So after repeatedly saying you should not vote for candidates who are wrong on any of the non-negotiable issues, the guide says you may vote for a candidate who is wrong on the non-negotiable issues. This seems to lack a certain intellectual rigor.

Looking through the guide, I think a better title would be "A Voter's Guide for Newly Serious Catholics," as in Catholics who are, for the first time, trying to vote with the mind of the Church. That would explain (if not wholly excuse) the didactic tone and some of the staggeringly obvious observations. (E.g., "Do not cast your vote based on candidates' appearance, personality, or 'media savvy.'")(Not that I'm in a position to criticize the making of staggeringly obvious observations.)

Still, the core of the guide is its list of focus issues ("non-negotiable," unless you've already lost the negotiations), and the list is presented without comment on how it was created. A supplement to the guide on how to construct a set of necessary and sufficient non-negotiable issues (and how to negotiate among them) might be helpful for those serious Catholics who have moved beyond "vot[ing] for candidates simply because they declare themselves to be Catholic."

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