a vote for any candidate is a vote against all other candidates.

That is simply not the political reality we find ourselves in.

Last reply because I sense you either don’t see the threat, don’t want to see it, or trust in the system to self correct.

If it were a truly equal system, you would be right. I completely agree that tactical voting should not be needed and I wish your ideological standpoint was effective in sending messages to these guys.

Fact is they do not care how many people vote outside the top two if they still win. You might be trying to send a message but they won’t hear it. Unless you can convince 60 million people to follow you of course.

The Republicans particularly know that the protest votes are typically subtracted from the democrat tally.

PR is the only solution that provides the type of government you want but you don’t have it yet and if you want it, what you plan to do is probably reducing the likelihood you’ll ever get it .

It is a sad fact that a vote for anyone but the two biggest parties (in almost every country) is essentially wasted.

When you have PR vote your conscience all the way. With it you may even have more choice because there would be less pressure for candidates like to firm an alliance with a large party. Until then the very real threat to democracy is far more pressing. Donald Trump tried to take the white house by force 3 years ago. This proved he cares more about his own power than the will of the people. He expended a lot of energy trying to use the system against itself to overturn the results when the capitol riots failed. For decades, the Republicans have repeatedly gerrymandered and tried to prevent certain groups from voting, typically minorities. Lately some Republicans at CPAC called for the end of democracy.

I’m not saying the Democrats are saints that can do no wrong, but at least they are not openly trying to rig the system.

If Trump is legitimately elected this time, your protest vote may mean even less next time than it does this time, because democracy in the United States might look more like Russian “elections”. 87% going one way. No politician is that popular. Side note , I’m surprised those guys don’t choose more realistic numbers to make their “election” more credible, but their ego won’t let them.

But, you do you, just don’t complain about the outcome when one of those octogenarian politicians is in power. “I didn’t vote for him” won’t do you much good when it hurts your wallet, or worse your freedoms.

Biden’s an awesome leader. I’m going to show up and vote for him even though my state will almost certainly go red in November, because I’m a patriot and Joe Biden has actually tried to improve my life, which is more than I can say for Trump, Obama, Bush, or most other presidents in my lifetime, and it’s certainly more than I can say for every third party candidate with the sole exception of Ralph Nader (thanks for making my car safer, Ralph).

Joe Biden tried to forgive my student debt, he tried (and partially succeeded) to improve the company’s crumbling infrastructure, he revived antitrust and labor, and he’s been fighting to keep Russia from taking over Eastern Europe. Donald Trump told me to drink bleach. You don’t have to like either of them, but pretending they’re equally bad is either trolling, being willfully uninformed, or doing the propaganda work of a foreign adversary (knowingly or not).

You vote your conscience; it might not matter much, depending on where you live, or it might matter a whole lot. But reality should show you, like it does the rest of us, that the only possible outcomes of this presidential election are a second Biden presidency or a second Trump presidency. Anything you do will make one of those things more likely to happen, and you don’t get to opt out by staying home or setting your ballot on fire in protest.