Edit: The US presidential election is not based on popular vote so if you live outside of the ~5-6 swing states that decide the election you can go ahead and vote for a candidate that fits your beliefs even if it’s 3rd party (shoutout PSL), there’s no argument not to. Continuing to vote for the lesser evil when it’s not needed just means they can take your vote for granted.
Make sure to pay attention to local/state elections too, those who often affect your life even more. As always voting is only a small part in how we affect change, find local organizations and agitate for change that way.
Just be careful and look well at the data, states that non-election forcasting nerds would consider not be swing states still have a >10% chance of going the other way according to the best statistical models.
So if you live in:
Texas, Ohio, South and North Carolina ®, or New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire (D)
You still live in a state that has a statistically significant chance of going either way >10%.
However, if you live in Washington DC, or Wyoming, by all means…
For the record, if you want to change the fact that the US president is not elected by popular vote, depending on your state there’s an initiative called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact), where a bunch of states are setting up trigger laws so that when enough states with enough electoral college votes have signed it into law, each of those states will vote for the candidate who won the popular vote.
It is BS even if you are in the “safe” states you should not do that.
This is not really a protest and you don’t make any statement that anyone will care about.
What you should do that would actually have an impact is to push your local officials to switch to Ranked Choice Voting (like it was done in Alaska and Maine)
Edit: The US presidential election is not based on popular vote so if you live outside of the ~5-6 swing states that decide the election you can go ahead and vote for a candidate that fits your beliefs even if it’s 3rd party (shoutout PSL), there’s no argument not to. Continuing to vote for the lesser evil when it’s not needed just means they can take your vote for granted.
Make sure to pay attention to local/state elections too, those who often affect your life even more. As always voting is only a small part in how we affect change, find local organizations and agitate for change that way.
Just be careful and look well at the data, states that non-election forcasting nerds would consider not be swing states still have a >10% chance of going the other way according to the best statistical models.
So if you live in: Texas, Ohio, South and North Carolina ®, or New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire (D)
You still live in a state that has a statistically significant chance of going either way >10%.
However, if you live in Washington DC, or Wyoming, by all means…
Indiana went for Obama in '08. Weird things happen!
For the record, if you want to change the fact that the US president is not elected by popular vote, depending on your state there’s an initiative called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact), where a bunch of states are setting up trigger laws so that when enough states with enough electoral college votes have signed it into law, each of those states will vote for the candidate who won the popular vote.
It is BS even if you are in the “safe” states you should not do that.
This is not really a protest and you don’t make any statement that anyone will care about.
What you should do that would actually have an impact is to push your local officials to switch to Ranked Choice Voting (like it was done in Alaska and Maine)
Also make sure your state passes this compact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact