Where a vote is cast matters. You can cast a protest vote for president in states like California or Idaho. You probably shouldn't cast a protest vote in a state that doesn't have such a regular electoral margin. There is often room for influence down ballot as well.
Gotcha, but. The whole point of a protest vote is to influence other people. Doesn’t that influence cross precinct boundaries these days?
The only effect of any protest vote is to tell your friends. Hasan had a lot of friends. Arab communities in Michigan had a lot of friends. Never-never Trumpers had a lot of friends.
I personally believe that a personal political strategy should have a conscientious goal, cognizant of the effects of its action.
There’s no separate moral universe where you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side.
I was under the impression that the intent of a protest vote was to make a statement that the voter does not like the options presented.
A voter should weigh the value of their statement vs the value of voting for the lesser evil. In a state like mine, where the results of the next three presidential elections could be predicted with accuracy today, a statement seems to have more value to me; if I lived in a battleground state, it would be different. I have often voted in presidential primaries where the candidate was already selected; again, I value my vote for the lesser evil much less than a statement.
> you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side
Harris was an authoritarian, but not an autocrat. People got sick of ever-growing bureaucratic authoritarianism, but made the mistake of thinking the problem was the bureaucracy rather than the authoritarianism. So now the bureaucracy has been smashed and we are left with autocratic authoritarianism.
