Is not voting at all a good option?

You’re pissed off. You don’t like either candidate. Fine. I understand that.

But what exactly are you accomplishing by staying home?

If your goal is to tell the political parties, “These choices suck, and neither one of you has earned my vote,” not voting may feel like the strongest rejection possible. The problem is that the parties don’t have to earn a vote you aren’t going to cast. They just have to win without you.

Who Are You Punishing by Not Voting?

It’s easy to think that refusing to vote is a way of punishing the political system. Give me two candidates I don’t want? Fine. I’m not playing.

But think about that from the parties’ perspective. If you regularly don’t vote, winning your support is a two-step job. They have to convince you to participate in the election, and then they have to convince you to vote for them.

Compare that with somebody who already votes for the other side. If a party persuades that voter to switch, it gains a vote while its opponent loses one. Or compare it with a voter who reliably shows up but is willing to vote for an independent or third-party candidate. That voter has already demonstrated something important: I vote, and my vote is available.

That doesn’t mean campaigns completely ignore people who don’t usually vote. Obviously they don’t. Voter-registration and turnout drives exist precisely because parties and political groups sometimes believe there are potential supporters who can be brought into an election. But notice where those efforts tend to happen: campaigns don’t just want more random people to vote. They want to turn out people they believe are likely to support their side.

If you’re sitting home because neither party represents you, you’re making their job easier. They don’t necessarily have to change anything to win your vote. They can simply fight over the people who are already participating.

Sitting home doesn’t punish the parties. It makes it easier for them to ignore you.

Put 100 Voters in a Room

Let’s make this ridiculously simple.

Imagine 100 voters. Twenty of them hate both major-party candidates and decide not to vote. That leaves 80 people actually voting in the race.

Party 1 gets 41 votes. Party 2 gets 39.

Among the people who voted, that’s basically a 51%–49% race. What does each party see? A very close contest between Party 1 and Party 2.

And what happened to the 20 people who were so disgusted with both parties that they stayed home?

Politically, they mostly disappeared.

The election result doesn’t say they hated both candidates. It doesn’t say they wanted something more moderate, more conservative, more liberal, less partisan, more fiscally responsible, more focused on civil liberties, or completely different from what either party was offering. It just says they didn’t cast a vote in that race.

Now Let Those 20 People Vote

Run the same election again. Party 1 still gets 41 votes. Party 2 still gets 39.

But this time those 20 dissatisfied voters show up and vote for Party 3.

Now the result is:

• Party 1: 41%
• Party 2: 39%
• Party 3: 20%

That’s a very different election.

Depending on the rules of the particular election, 41% may still be enough for Party 1 to win. In an election requiring a majority, it wouldn’t be. But either way, nobody looking at those results can pretend that politics is simply divided 51%–49% between the two major parties.

There is a big group of voters sitting right there in the results. They vote. Neither major party has them. And if either party can figure out how to win enough of them, it can make the next election a lot easier.

Now you’ve told the parties something very different:

I’m here. I vote. And you don’t have my vote.

Which Group Would You Rather Be Trying to Win?

Imagine you’re running Party 1 or Party 2. Which group looks more valuable?

Twenty people who didn’t participate at all? Or 20% of the people who actually voted, all of whom have demonstrated that they’re willing to vote for somebody other than you?

That doesn’t mean either major party will suddenly become exactly what those voters want. Maybe Party 1 changes some policies. Maybe Party 2 recruits a different kind of candidate. Maybe one of them starts talking seriously about an issue it had ignored. Maybe they try to steal Party 3’s best ideas. Maybe they attack Party 3 instead. Maybe Party 3 itself starts attracting better candidates because people can see that there are actual voters waiting for them.

Or maybe neither major party responds particularly well.

But at least there is now something worth responding to. Those voters aren’t hypothetical anymore. They’re on the scoreboard.

That’s the difference between being dissatisfied and being a dissatisfied voter.

It Could Even Change How Candidates Campaign

There’s another possible effect that I think is worth considering.

When voters believe they have only two real choices, negative campaigning makes a lot of sense. Party 1 doesn’t always have to convince you that its candidate is great. Sometimes it just has to convince you that Party 2 is terrible.

If you hate Party 2 enough, where else are you going to go?

A real third choice changes that calculation. Party 1 can spend all day convincing you that Party 2 is awful, and you might respond, “You’re right. I’m voting for Party 3.”

That doesn’t mean third parties would magically end negative campaigning. They wouldn’t. Candidates will still attack each other, and a third party can run an ugly campaign just as easily as anyone else.

But another credible choice can weaken one of the easiest political strategies: making the other person unacceptable and assuming that automatically makes you the winner. If voters have somewhere else to go, candidates may have more reason to explain why people should actually vote for them.

But What If I Don’t Want to Vote Third Party?

You don’t have to.

This isn’t an argument that you should always vote third party. It’s an argument that sitting out an election because you’re unhappy with some of the candidates is usually the least useful response.

Your ballot probably contains more than one race. It may also contain constitutional amendments, referenda, judges, local offices, or other questions that have nothing to do with the two candidates who made you want to stay home in the first place.

And you don’t have to vote in every contest. If there are only two candidates for an office and you genuinely believe neither deserves your vote, you can leave that race blank and vote in the rest of the election. Election officials call that an undervote. You haven’t been forced to endorse somebody you don’t support, and you haven’t thrown away the rest of your ballot either.

That’s very different from deciding that because one race gives you two lousy choices, you might as well let everyone else make every other decision too.

What About Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils?

There’s an obvious objection to everything I’ve said so far: What if voting for somebody else helps the candidate I dislike most?

That’s a legitimate concern. If stopping one candidate is the most important thing you want your vote to accomplish, you may decide to vote for the other major-party candidate even if you don’t like that person very much.

But don’t confuse that with a rule that says you must vote for whichever major-party candidate scares you less. At some point, a candidate still has to meet whatever minimum standard you believe someone should meet before you give them your support.

That’s a different question, and we deal with it directly in Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils: Where Is Your Line?

And Does a Third-Party Vote Really Accomplish Anything?

That’s the other obvious question.

It’s easy for me to say, “Vote for somebody else.” But if that person has almost no chance of winning, isn’t that just another way of wasting your vote?

No—not necessarily. A third-party vote can help build a political alternative, move a party toward meaningful vote thresholds, support an issue the major parties are ignoring, or show both parties that there is a group of participating voters whose support is available.

We’ve gone much deeper into that argument in Why Vote Third Party? The important point here is simpler: those possibilities exist because you voted.

Staying home can’t help an alternative grow. It can’t add to another candidate’s vote total. It can’t show support for a different political direction. It can’t make you part of a visible group of voters the major parties may want to win back.

You have to participate before your vote can do any of those things.

Don’t Disappear

I understand why people stop voting. If election after election feels like choosing between two people you don’t want, eventually refusing to play can feel like the only honest response.

But ask yourself who benefits from that decision.

The parties don’t need every eligible voter. They need enough votes to beat each other. If you’re willing to remove yourself from that competition, they have less reason to earn you back.

So don’t give a candidate your vote just because you’re told you have to. Don’t vote for someone who hasn’t met your standard simply because there’s an R or a D next to the name. And if nobody in a particular race deserves your vote, leave that race blank.

But don’t confuse rejecting bad choices with making yourself irrelevant to the choice.

Show up. Vote where you have a choice worth supporting. Support an alternative when that’s the best use of your vote. And make the people who want your vote earn it.