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Believe it or not, I don't disagree that strongly with @JayCaruso or @DavidAFrench about the right to vote for whomever you choose, or not vote at all. I just reject any notion that such an act can be divorced from its obvious consequences as some sort of higher principle. /1
If you are a person who says, and genuinely believes, that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are completely interchangeable or equivalently evil, well, okay. Don't pick either of them. I think these are morally obtuse positions, but okay, it's your right. /2
But to say "I do so because my vote must completely represent me and my values" is childish in a system *designed* to force you to aggregate your interests with others in a "close enough" solution. It's not just parties that do this; that's by constitutional design as well. /3
The Constitution is designed to defeat particularism, and to force you, at election time, to decide which candidates are *closest* to what you want. It also allows you to opt out and outsource your vote to others by default, as is your right. /4
This is to magnify the victories of the winners and to create some unity around the results afterward. "I dissent because the candidates are utterly equivalent" is a basic right, but imo - again *IMO* - the times when this is true are so rare as to be almost meaningless. /5
Also, "I dissent since neither candidate represents me perfectly" is a basic right, too. But again, by that metric, you should never vote unless you get *exactly what you want*, which is not what the system was built to create. But sure, hold your breath, if that's your thing. /6
And in *this* particular election year, "these candidates are both equivalently horrible" is such an morally fallow position that I - personally speaking, duh - can't take it seriously, but I admit that's a matter of personal taste. I think it is an utterly unserious position. /7
So, in the end, this isn't a matter of what you have a *right* to do, it's what you have a right to be *taken seriously about.* Moral equivocation about *this* election, in 2020, is not a position- IMO - that has to be taken seriously. /8x
