The US does not have a reasonable voting system. It’s not compulsory, it’s not ranked choice, and you vote for persons not parties.
You have a duopoly that’s more or less set up so that a third choice will never be available.
You aren’t here to pick an ideal candidate. You are here to pick the one that aligns most with your view that can win. Otherwise you get someone you definitely don’t want.
The problem I have today is that I fundamentally disagree with both options and think we will be worse off with either one.
I am totally fine accepting and supporting a candidate that I generally agree with, or even just agree with on a few key policies. I'm not okay with having to pick between one candidate who I view to be a sociopathic narcisist or another who I view has being well on his way to serious cognitive issues. Assuming Harris is the new candidate, I'm now left with the narcisist and a candidate who I view as unfit for duty, and an ineffective candidate who fell into this position thanks to a combination of DEI and a white house that refused to accept the limitations of the president.
If, on the other hand, voter participation goes down noticeably it can drive change. Both parties will know they lost support and, more importantly for them, have voters to win over. It also opens the door for creating a real chance for a third party that doesn't exist when we all continue to accept the unofficial duopoly that started way back when Hamilton and Jefferson were tearing the union in two.
I'm not American so system and the dynamic might be different there, but this comes off as wishful thinking driving a car down a cliff.
Voter participation among young is painfully low in Japan (a country I follow election results and politics), and almost every young ones reasons for this, as far as I know essentially boggles down to "it's useless for me to vote, older generation out vote our concerns and politics always favours the elder. Not voting at least sends my dissociation and discontentment to it all".
But decades of "not voting" have only told the politicians ONE message: the young voting bloc don't matter, because they don't vote, and our resources are better spent to favor the older bloc.
It's a circular logic, a self fulfilling prophecy, a local suboptimum with steep gradients.
Do I like it? Absolutely not. Do I expect to feel this way again in future elections? Also no, I honestly don't know how both parties allowed such bad candidates to be considered the best we have to offer as a country.
That said, I view not voting more akin to jury nullification than driving a car off a cliff. Not acting is different than doing something insane. I'm not sure how well known jury nullification is outside the US (or even in the US), but effectively it boils down to a juror voting not guilty despite the evidence, usually because they either disagree with the law or don't think the person on trial should be punished.
Jury nullification have a lot of uncomfortable implications to the legal system and that's one of the reasons it's not shared to potential juries, but implicit asked. The systematic implication can be pararelled to politician's in the long run deciding nonvoters concern can be ignored.
Jury nullification comparisons comes with a bit of a blind faith in the other juries (because in this situation you're not replaced, the resting juries just have more votes) are sane.
That said I know you're not advocating for nonvoting as a viable long term strategy but just for this one occasion. I'm not faulting that and can understand it. Advocating for it to others is a bit more problematic and the point I'm contending on in a public forum, in case many agrees to that stance.
On a jury the expectstion is that you will vote based solely on the logic of the facts and legal interpretations presented. Jury nullification is a choice to go against this, going outside what the system wants you to believe is your duty because you disagree with that premise.
Here, not voting is going against this unwritten rule that we must pick between the two options and that is our civic duty to vote for one or the other no matter what. Sitting out for a specific election is ignoring what the system wants us to do when we disagree with the assumption that we must choose between the two options given.
Is there a minimum turnout needed? I'm pretty sure there isn't. All the diehards will always vote for the Dems or Reps. And everyone else is not voting, not voting for an alternate candidate.
Sounds like the fewer swing voters there are, the better.
Sure, maybe if participation dropped suddenly to 20% there would be comments and reactions, but anything over 40% would barely get a few curious articles and no real difference.