No such thing as a protest vote

On certain schemes to outsmart our electoral system.

"The County Election" (1852) by George Caleb Bingham

I was old enough to vote in my first presidential election by 12 days. I spent the weeks before registering every eligible student in my high school to vote. I wasn’t affiliated with anyone and no one told me to do it. I just got some blank registration forms, sat outside the cafeteria at lunch, and returned the completed forms to the county clerk.

Why? Because I thought everyone should be engaged in the project of building a better society. I’m not sure I could have told you that at the time, and I had no clue that this is what’s meant by “the spirit of democracy”. I just knew that it was important.

But not all of my classmates agreed with me: “It’s pointless. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. The two-party system is broken. All politicians are the same. Our votes don’t matter.”

I argued with my classmates about it then. I argued about it with people at parties while I was studying political science. I argued about it while I worked on campaigns. And I have continued to argue about it while holding various roles in municipal, state, and federal government.

So you can imagine my frustration when I now hear some people say “I should use my vote… as a form of protest!”

I’m here (indefatigably) to tell you: There’s no such thing as a protest vote.

When protest works (and when it doesn’t)

I don’t mean that protest votes are a bad idea. I mean that protest voting doesn’t exist. It isn’t possible.

“Protest voting” cannot work because there are only two outcomes:

1. The candidate you’re trying to influence loses, leaving you without representation.

2. The candidate you’re trying to influence wins without you, proving that your issue wasn’t a necessary part of a winning platform.

Protest and direct action are powerful and necessary tools in any democracy. I have personally bird-dogged senators and rallied groups for spur-of-the-moment protests. I’ve worked with brilliant organizers who have gotten their constituencies huge wins through tactical action.

Any good organizer would tell you that all effective protests have certain elements: clear demands, identifiable targets, direct pressure mechanisms, and ways to demonstrate power.

Voting, by its very nature as a binary choice, can’t do this. The act of voting can only ever be affirmative – it can only express support for something, never against it.

Some might argue that if protest voting / abstaining happened in large enough numbers, it could work. But we already know what that looks like: it’s called low voter turnout. Every election cycle, about somewhere from 35% to 65% of eligible voters stay home, and no one points to that as evidence that the election is less legitimate.

The eligible voters who already stay home aren't creating pressure for change; they're simply ceding their power to those who do vote. A protest vote is no different – it's just a more complicated way of not voting.

The political science research bears all this out. Politicians interpret any win as validation, regardless of margin or turnout.¹² Third-party votes and write-ins rarely influence policy³⁴, and strategic non-voting has no measurable impact.⁵⁶

Instead, elected officials consistently respond to one group above all others: the people who actually voted for them.

Too-clever-by-half

So why, then, is there so much talk of protest voting?

I think it’s propaganda. If I wanted to trick good people with strong convictions into harming their own interests, it’s exactly the kind of thing I would concoct.

I would target the too-clever, too-cynical types. I would tell them that there was a bigger, better thing they could do with their vote; nothing so banal as voting for the candidate with the greatest opportunity to support the things they care about. I’d slip it into their social media feed, and soon enough people they trust would repeat it in Instagram stories and niche podcasts. They would all think it was their idea, that all of their people were doing it. They would even feel anxious to admit they weren’t doing it.

Fortunately, I think the amount of actual protest voting is marginal. I hear from people who like the idea in abstract, or support other hypothetical people doing it, or have some Rube-Goldbergian scheme to engineer a form of harm-free protest voting (one simple trick the Founders DON’T want you to know). But most of these people seem to understand that the message it sends is minuscule while the negative consequences are immense.

Unfortunately, elections are won and lost on the margins.

Do both, just separately

Please, protest. I want you to protest. Protesting is good and it works.

But I also want you to vote. Voting is also good and it also works.

In fact, the two are complementary. But they are never the same thing.

For the five minutes you’re in that booth, there is no protest to be had. Staying home isn’t protest, voting third-party to “send a message” isn’t protest, writing something in isn’t protest.

If there’s something you care about, use the entire power of your ballot. Vote for the result that’s closest to what you believe in, even if it seems disappointingly short of your ideal. Then walk out the door and join a protest.

The only thing you can actually do in the voting booth is vote for something.

1. Ansolabehere & Jones (2010) "Constituents' Responses to Congressional Roll-Call Voting" in the American Journal of Political Science

2. Bartels (2016) "Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age"

3. Rapoport & Stone's (2005) "Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence"

4. Kang's (2021) "Sore Loser Laws and Democratic Contestation"

5. Griffin & Newman's (2005) "Are Voters Better Represented?" in The Journal of Politics

6. Leighley & Nagler's (2013) "Who Votes Now? Demographics, Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States"