I also voted for Nader in 2000, the first presidential election in which I could vote. I voted in Rhode Island, which is even bluer than Texas is red (RI went 61% for Gore, while TX went 59% for Bush). I knew my RI vote wouldn’t make a difference in the Electoral College, so instead I focused on voting as an act of personal empowerment, and I chose to vote for someone rather than against someone because it felt more exciting and stimulated me to learn and do more during the campaign season.

However, I feel differently now. Maybe it’s because this administration is different and this election is different, or maybe it’s because I’ve changed my mind. In any case, I will be delighted for the opportunity to vote against this administration. I will vote for the Democrat, no matter who it is. That’s a principled position; it’s just principled in a different way.

Given the current president’s fixation on his own popularity, I think it’s worth the effort to vote for any rival (whether Democratic, third-party, or write-in), even if just to get a more accurate count of how much of the nation really prefers anyone over him. If voters stay home entirely, we can’t count their political leanings.

Voting for a rival to register the president’s unpopularity is important not just to annoy the president and his followers but to raise awareness and heighten frustration that someone can lose the popular vote yet still win the presidency. That Americans often feel our votes “don’t count,” especially depending on whether we live in a “swing state” or in a state whose votes are depreciated by the Electoral College simply due to having a large population, has a lot to do with the shortcomings of the Electoral College. We can build a better case for getting rid of the Electoral College if the Electoral College keeps electing presidents who lose the popular vote, but even to create that data, we need to have a popular vote, so we need everyone to vote. If it would be worth your effort to vote in a dozen telephone surveys, it should be worth your effort to go to the polls, because this is the survey that goes on the record.