In elections where my conscience will not allow me to vote for any candidate running for office, no, I will not stay home. I will show up to the voting booth and cast a blank ballot. In states with electronic ballots, this would be done by pressing the "skip" button at the bottom of the screen. As my friend Pastor Jon Speed likes to say "I'm voting for Skip." There is a reason for this blank ballot, a reason that I think is important enough to write a blog about. Unlike trolling commenters have said, this position is not just an attempt to make oneself feel better or like you are doing something.
I am not going to give my reasons and arguments here for why I as a Christian do not and can no longer vote for the lesser of two evils, but many of my brothers have waxed long on that topic so I will leave you to those videos, comment debates (even abolitionist materials from back in 2013), and blogs like this, this, and this if you are so inclined.
On one of the political campaigns I have volunteered for, I learned that a common strategy is to begin your efforts by reaching the most active voters first. We wanted to spend our time knocking on doors and reaching out to people who were 100% for sure going to vote, so we sorted the list of registered Republican voters by the people who had voted in all four of the last four elections. The voters who vote in every primary election and special election are considered the most serious voters. These people are politically the most important to reach because they WILL vote, and categorically, they are considered a “high-information voter.”
Voter Abstention
When you abstain from voting in certain elections you begin to fall into a different category of voters. There could be many reasons for your lack of a vote. When I have been knocking on doors for campaigns I have been told by voters that they stopped voting for health reasons, that they may or may not make it to the polls depending on their mood that day, or if they could find a ride, and some people told me that they stopped voting because they lost all hope for the country. The residents of several homes I stopped at informed me that it was a previous resident who I was looking for who had since passed away. But ultimately, the reason you stopped voting is unknown and when you don't cast a ballot, you fall into the informal category of a “less interested voter.”
Casting A Blank Ballot
There is no box for “holding my nose and voting ______” when you vote for the lesser of two evils, it merely shows up as a vote in favor of that evil. But, when you cast a blank ballot, the records show that you still voted, but they do not have your vote for your party’s nominee. Stay with me here, because I am going to attempt to explain this from my understanding, with my experience.
But first: know that these numbers are studied like nobody’s business! These numbers are crucial to every future election, because these numbers are what are used to determine which candidates to put forward for the next election based on who has a better chance of winning based on the results of the polls, what platforms candidates should run on, where the culture is shifting, and so forth. Modern or secular politics is [basically] putting a finger to the wind, seeing where everyone is heading, and then running ahead in that direction and pretending to be leading. So saying that polling numbers are VITAL is a severe understatement.
Let me give you a hypothetical example: Suppose nine Republicans in my district in addition to myself are of the same thought process as I am, and cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate on the ballot. The public record shows that out of all of the registered Republicans within my district, there are 500 who voted in this election. They will see that out of those 500 Republicans who voted in my district, my district only had 490 votes for our party’s nominee. This particular margin and this particular margin growing sends a POWERFUL message directly to your party. It says that voters are dissatisfied with their party’s nomination. Not that they are leaving the party because they have not switched parties and they are still voting as a Republican, not that the voters have become disinterested in voting because they are still casting ballots, but it sends a powerful message to your political party that your party’s nomination has dissatisfied you - to the point that you cannot approve of the nominee, and that you want better.
So if you find yourself in an election where your conscience will not allow you to vote for one of the options in front of you, I hope you will still go to the ballot box and cast a blank ballot to let your voice be heard loud and clear.
As a side note: if you are submitting a completely blank paper ballot into the ballot counting machine, the machine may spit it back out and give an error code. When this happened to me one of the poll workers had to come over and push a button to override the error code so that the machine would accept my ballot.
