I don't consider myself to owe anything to the parties. They need to earn my vote. If I accept one of the two options no matter how bad I think they both are, that allows for very bad scenarios to be possible and also allows for our political duopoly to continue to dominate.

If I don't vote, and if many others also stay home, both parties would scramble to gain support and third parties that previously had no chance at least have a potential market opportunity to break the two party system.

Am I allowing my voice to go silent and accepting everyone else to pick my president? Sure, and I don't prefer that, though in a representative democracy I also recognize that my vote doesn't matter anyway if I live in a state that swings the other way. As it so happens, I generally vote Democrat and live in a very Republican state.

> If I don't vote, and if many others also stay home, both parties would scramble to gain support and third parties that previously had no chance at least have a potential market opportunity to break the two party system.

That won't work. A non-vote says absolutely nothing about what needs to be done to get that vote. A vast quantity of non-votes are, in fact, not gettable: most non-voters are apathetic and they will never vote, full stop. Many others are, for lack of a better term, snowflakes who will refuse to vote for anyone who does not implement every bullet point of the program that they have in their head, and will therefore never vote, because their standards are impossible to meet.

Basically, most non-voters are either lost causes, really fickle, or have demands that rebuff a larger number of reliable voters and are incompatible with each other -- go and try to figure out who wants what. It's impossible. Parties can't read your mind, if you want better candidates you have to communicate your demands explicitly, and not voting communicates effectively nothing. It's like refusing to choose between spaghetti and curry and secretly hoping they offer you a hamburger instead. They won't. They'll cycle through a dozen other dishes you hate until, perhaps, they randomly stumble upon something you like, (or something you think you like, but ultimately don't.) It's not their fault: you're not telling them what to do! A better methodology is to vote in local races or primaries: that will show up in their statistics, letting them know what it is that you do like.

If you live in a red state but usually vote democrat, a futile vote for a democrat is the only signal they can use to prioritize winning your vote in future. If you can’t make your state winnable, you can’t make your withheld vote mean anything.

Which I fine, I was just genuinely curious. I don’t have a vote in the US so I’m not worried about how I spend mine.

Hmm interesting take. If I understand you correctly, your theory of change is that by not voting in this election (since you see either candidate as similarly good/bad), you might have a long term impact where, in the next election, parties will need to make more of an effort to appeal to their voter bases to increase turnout, resulting in better candidates in the future, correct? Possibly breaking into a multi party system instead of the current dual party system?

Also do you think the next 4 years will be similarly good/bad under either candidate? Or do you think one would bring the country more in line with your preference, but don't want to vote in the hopes of bringing about change to the dual party system, or to make the parties try harder to meet the needs of voters like you in future elections?

Correct, thats generally my hope of how things may change for the better if enough voters feel so poorly represented that they don't vote for President.

> Also do you think the next 4 years will be similarly good/bad under either candidate?

With Biden and Trump, yes I felt both would put us in similarly bad positions going forward. Their policies overlap in some surprising ways, from wanting to lock down our southern border to printing money like it's going out of style. They also differ in some ways, where Biden has seemed to have very little ability to keep the peace globally (I personally don't think many leaders respect or desr who he is today), Trump is a loose canon and I could see him playing a very dangerous game of chicken.

With Harris, I just don't see her as competent at all. At a good time maybe that doesn't matter too much, but there are quite a few situations in the world that require careful, decisive, reasoned responses and I simply don't see her doing that well or even taking it seriously.