Despite everything, if you're in the US, you should still vote
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
When given a choice between a millitary industrial neoliberal with a rainbow voting base and a fascist who is one elon musk golf session away from banning HRT, the best option is certainly not to refuse to play out of protest
any vote not for Harris is a vote for trump.
That's not how tallying responses works at all. If you can put a tick in "Apples" or "Pears" on a list that collects the nominal data for fruit choice, you writing in "Sausages" is neither a vote for Apples nor for Pears.
Trump actually gets votes through 1) electoral fraud of various kinds, some of them still legal because the status quo is shit, and 2) appealing to bigots by being a huge bigot. Voting third party, or not voting at all, is not actually the problem. Focus on removing people from society who want bigots in power, and also focus on making electoral fraud impossible.
Not if they were gonna vote trump instead
Literally no. If they were gonna vote Trump instead but decided to go with Harris, their vote is worth the same as someone who would always vote Harris or the vote of a leftist who decided on damage reduction.
Any voting system flattens our personal motivations into a single action. Any statement you're looking to make is moot unless you have a massive campaign to make it clear outside of the ballot box. Even then, the establishment can downplay and misinterpret your motivation as not being representative or as less important than what they want to believe.
There's no better way to translate our will into results. Any system that doesn't use free and fair voting can be tainted and colored by bias, making it impossible to ever undermine the will of the establishment. They will always choose to believe whatever is most convenient, but votes can deliver a reality shock that forces them to adjust their behavior, even if they never change their minds. The only other thing capable of that is violence.