drakeevanhall

already suggested a

sapphibbatical

I've worked as a field organizer in two campaigns, 2010 and 2012, and my job was to help turnout the vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. Technology may have changed, but people are still knocking on doors for specific voters the way they were 12 years ago.

If you say you're not voting/voting 3rd party, the campaign volunteer is supposed to mark that and move on. Their job, in the final month of the election, is to make sure the campaign's supporters have all the information and resources they need to cast a vote.

They aren't collecting data on why you're withholding your vote. They aren't submitting opinion polling results to the campaign. Something like 155 million people voted in the 2020 election, and if you say you're not voting, the campaign is not going to waste a volunteer's time and morale begging you to vote when there are literally millions of other voters to turn out.

Let me repeat that: The campaign does not track why you're not voting. They simply note your vote is not a priority for turnout and move on.

I say this because I see a lot of promotion of non-voting like that's a boycott, when the function is not the same. A boycott is a coordinated mass refusal to engage with an institution—which sounds similar if you see a vote as a good or service to withhold. Unfortunately, it's not.

A vote is a choice you're making as part of a community hiring committee. Your abstention doesn't prevent someone from being hired. It just lowers the threshold for the worst candidate to succeed.

81 million eligible voters sat out in 2020, the highest-turnout presidential election in US history. That is more than double the entire population of California.

I really, genuinely don’t want to make anyone feel stupid here. I’m writing all this because it deeply upsets me that some grifters are exploiting people who are already passionate and engaged and want to feel like they’re taking meaningful action. This just… isn’t it. (And if someone’s telling their followers not to vote, but won’t leave Twitter/Threads because it’s “giving up their voice,” maybe mull on that a bit.)

There’s a reason I keep bringing up Ranked Choice Voting, and it’s because it’s the kind of tangible change that addresses the frustrations of democratic candidates skating on the minimum without giving up your vote. But it takes time and effort to get it onto the ballot, so that’s exactly where you can funnel your frustration into real impact.

And if that’s not your speed, you can look into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would make the electoral college obsolete by pledging its electoral college share to the winner of the popular national vote. They are at 259 secured votes out of 270, which is the threshold for winning the presidential election. Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, even Texas all have 11 or more electoral votes, and getting just one to join the pact would end the electoral college.