. . . that doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t make you a Republican, and it doesn’t mean you’re abdicating your civic responsibility.
But you can, and should, vote for good candidates further down the ticket. Vote for a better representative in Congress. Vote for a better senator. Vote for municipal candidates, if they're on the ballot.
Vote for judges. You know what one of the biggest failures of our democracy is? The media’s failure to cover judicial candidates, and the voters’ failure to research them. Here in Illinois, many judges continue to serve until they retire or fail a retention vote. The retention threshold is 60 percent. Only once in a blue moon does a judge ever fail to meet this threshold. But if you check with the bar associations, they will tell you whether they consider a judge to be unqualified. Without good judges, we have no justice.
The smaller the race, the more your vote counts. Depending on the narrative of the moment (is it “Clinton the unstoppable juggernaut” or “Clinton the precarious, imperiled by your insufficient devotion”?), Hillary Clinton may be able to spare your vote. But that county commissioner candidate can’t spare it. That school board candidate can’t spare it. That candidate for coroner can’t spare it. (What, you think coroner races don’t matter? Tell me, the next time a young, unarmed black man is shot by a police officer in your community, whom do you want in charge of the autopsy report?)
Don’t stay home. Go to the polls, wait in line, and pull or punch or bubble for a good candidate in as many races as you can. But also, don’t vote for someone you’ve never heard of. No matter the party affiliation, no matter the race. Because that’s how crackpots and dangerous sleeper candidates get elected, like the LaRouchies in Illinois in 1986—the incident that cemented my commitment to political awareness. If you don’t recognize any of the names, leave that line blank. If a race is uncontested, and you don’t like the only candidate running, and your state (unlike Illinois) allows you to cast a write-in vote, write in the name of someone you trust. If you trust no one, write in your own name.
The point is, your vote is an expression of your personal political will. It’s yours to cast as you see fit, and yours to withhold as you see fit.
If you withhold it entirely, however, you’re no longer a participant in the democratic process.
Just because you feel like you can’t support any candidate in one particular race, that’s no reason to pass up all the other races. Your opinion still matters. Your opinion always matters. No matter what some people may say. Eighty percent of life is showing up.