Dear Editor:
The electoral system in the United States, as it actually exists, will offer 145 million or so voters exactly three options:
1. I prefer Donald Trump be president, rather than Hillary Clinton.
2. I prefer Hillary Clinton be president, rather than Donald Trump.
3. I defer to the judgment of my fellow citizens.
Some of you who have read the above are now thinking "But I have lots of options, I can vote for Gary Johnson, I can vote for Jill Stein. I can write in whomever I wish, Bernie, David Duke, or if I wish, Daffy Duck." I don't have to vote at all. Some people label these other options as a "protest vote." There is a problem with this reasoning.
The United States electoral system is binary (two parties). No third party in our history has ever "won," indeed it can be argued that no third party has ever even affected an outcome of an election. (Yeah, yeah, I know, Ross Perot got us Clinton in 1992. Nope, he siphoned off votes roughly equally from each side; The US was tired of Republicans being in power.)
The fact of the matter is (will be), is that either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is going to be voted in as president of the United States on Nov. 8, 2016. There are no other options. Voting for someone other than the Republican or Democratic candidate has the mathematical effect of giving your vote to the person whom you would not vote for if you were to select the "D" or the "R". Not voting has less of an effect, however removes one vote from the person whom you would vote for were you to do so.
There is no such thing as a protest vote. No one hears the protest. No one gets any message. Discarding your vote changes no outcome, and causes no one to reflect. This can be argued as "voting your conscience," but this logic is exactly backwards. Your conscience keeps you from doing "feel good" things that hurt others. Wasting your vote hurts the candidate (or party) that you would choose, were you to pick one of the two.
Citizens who vote for third-party candidates, write-in candidates or no one are not voting their conscience; they are voting their ego. They are unable to accept that a system they find personally disheartening actually applies to them.