More than just a vote

I will be voting later today. As you should be able to tell from my previous post, but most certainly if you follow us on Twitter, you know that I will not be voting for Donald Trump.

Not only will I not be voting for the GOP nominee, I have drafted a letter that I will be sending today to each of my representatives individually. That includes the head of the RNC, my Senators, my House Representative, as well as my state representatives, making it abundantly clear that the embrace of Trump by the GOP is abhorrent to me.

I think a letter is necessary considering how far from basic Republican - and frankly, American - principles Trump has taken his campaign.

I will be sharing three versions of this letter on this website, in part in case any of you care of use the language to begin a similar communication. The reason for the three versions is in part because I was really torn which direction was the right one. Which sent the most direct message. But also in part because different circumstances apply. If you live in safely blue or red state, maybe you don't have to consider the more nuclear of options. But if you live in a swing state, you might have to make the hard choice of considering something almost as abhorrent as voting for Trump.

Note that I did not write a version for people who live in states like Utah where Evan McMullin has a legitimate chance to beat at least one, if not both, major party nominees because I believe a letter from them is not as necessary, but also that such a letter would be so drastically different that something I wrote would not be helpful.

Rather, I am writing something for the following situations: vote for Evan despite the fact that he is not likely to garner significant votes in that state, write in for someone else (such as John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz) or even vote for Hillary Clinton. While that last option seems nuclear, consider that a number of experienced Republicans - including the last two Republican presidents - will be doing just that. And from my perspective, there is a good argument to be made that the only thing that really would get the GOP's attention is as many votes for the person they despise as possible.

Either way, again, this election is too important to just vote. The GOP has allowed someone who is antithetical to so many basic tenants of simply, basic American civics to become the nominee. It has to stop. It just has to.

And either it will, or the GOP will learn that national parties can in fact die. I hope not, but I will not stand next to someone who is bigoted, racist, sexist, or as unAmerican as Donald J. Trump.