Because it seems relevant, I will share my own experience of voting today. I havealways voted, in every election since I was eligible.
As the election season unrolled this year, some of you may know that although I am not a fan of Mrs. Clinton, and believe her presidency will be a horrible one, I had nonetheless resolved to support over her main opponent, whose presidency I believe would be a more horrible one.
So I got my ballot and sat down. In my jurisdiction, we are handed paper ballots, mark them, and then they are ingested by a scanner.
I started to mark the ballot. I couldn’t.
I passed over the presidential electors, marked my choice for US Representative, chose my options for various bond issues… and then stared at the president’s choice again.
Finally I marked it for Trump. I couldn’t vote for Clinton.
I stood up and walked towards the scanner… and then I couldn’t put it in the scanner; I couldn’t vote for Trump.
I marked my ballot VOID and requested a new one. Sat back down. Filled out all the other spots again.
Finally I marked Clinton, stood up again. Sent the ballot into the scanner before I could change my mind again.
Outside some guy named Buridan had a donkey for sale.
The point of this little oversharing is to suggest that it’s not always irrational to refuse to vote.