I'm a literal journalist who has lived through a lot of history. The way you "send a message" is through organizing, protesting, voting in primaries, advocating, donating, not donating, etc. What you do on presidential-election day is CHOOSE WHO WILL BE IN POWER. It's not for messaging.

Not to date mysrlf, but right on.

Even if it *was* somehow for messaging, uh... I'm sure there has to be a better way to send a message than one where--even assuming it works--the soonest there can be a response is *two years later* in midterms (and four years if you're just focused on the presidency). It doesn't scream "urgency."

The anti war movement rejection of democrats in 68 really helped the people of South East Asia in general and the Vietnamese in particular just by refusing to vote for democrats. All thanks to Nixons secret plan for peace with honor. [Turn the page of the book to the Nixon presidency] Wait ...

While this is all true, it overlooks the fact that a more-or-less organized campaign of people *threatening* not to vote *is* a way of sending a message.

Yes and fwiw it seemed at one point that the calvinball account was in agreement on that point (Can't tell anymore because I was blocked by calvinball)

True.