My view on that topic is very unpopular at FR. For most elections and most times, I don’t see much point in voting at all.
Just as a matter of math, your chances of being “the” deciding vote in any given election is vanishingly small. We spend a whole lot of time and angst over our one vote in a sea of 130 million votes cast in any given presidential election. And given the electoral college it really boils down to whether you’re in a battleground state or not. Sorry to say, you could have voted 100 times over in NJ and Felonious Pantsuit was still going to win NJ.
Obviously in elections where fewer votes are cast, the influence of one vote is more important. Primary elections have lower turnout. The impact of one vote is still very small, but higher than one vote in a general election.
Given we have limited time and limited treasure, where can we have the most impact in furthering a Christian mission? In my view partisan politics has an incredibly poor cost/benefit ratio. we’re getting almost no payback for what effort and money we toss at politics. So why continue to throw good money and effort after bad? I think we would be orders of magnitude better off by skipping the politics and doing what we’re supposed to do as Christians instead.
For me, Trump is pretty much the last hope, if it doesn’t pan out, I’m pretty much going to give up on voting.
One reason to vote is for the down-ticket issues; here in NJ my local school taxes cost much more than my income taxes. After the 2000 election was officially decided by 579 votes in Florida, it is hard to say you can’t make a difference. On local matters, a town just to the south of mine had a mayor’s race determined by 8 votes; a town just to the north had a school budget fail by 3 votes. When you’re Irish, 8 votes is ONE HOUSEHOLD - you have to try. The 2016 election saw Hillary lose key states because third parties siphoned off enough liberal votes; Jill Stein was our new Ralph Nader.
I haven’t thrown money at a politician or party in years; I’ll let the NRA determine where my money goes...