I’ve always hated this idea that your vote is “sacred” and that you should “vote your conscience.”
Nonsense. It’s only ever been transactional and strategic. Nobody cares about your lofty ideals; only 1 of 2 candidates will be elected, and abstaining is also making a choice. Sitting out an election is your right—but there’s nothing valorous about not being able to make up your mind in a simple binary.
In most elections the only options are bad and worse. When worse is much worse, writing in your ideal candidate is especially foolish. Nobody will get your point and you make it more likely that worse gets elected.
Public life would be better if fewer people thought about politics and elections as battles between good and evil and more people thought in terms of making incremental improvements by choosing less-bad alternatives. This is unlikely to happen unless the stakes are lowered by reducing the size and power of government.