You’re missing the point entirely by making this about me and what I decide to do. I’m talking about voter turnout in general as a phenomenon that is explainable through cost-benefit analysis. Increasing the benefit, i.e. having a candidate you like and are excited about, changes the equation.

Say you are a black person in a solid red state in the Deep South.

Say your employer doesn’t offer you paid time off to vote (most don’t).

Say you have family obligations, like picking your child up from school.

Say the Republican party where you live is systematically suppressing black turnout by closing polling places where you live and work so you have to drive farther and wait longer (in some cases up to an hour).

Okay now take all these costs and weigh them vs. the benefit: the .0000000000001% chance that your vote might have an impact in a state that will never go blue.

You can reduce the costs (make voting a national holiday, fix voter suppression, etc.) and increase the benefit (abolishing the electoral college). Since those other things are deep systemic issues that require massive amounts of legislation, the best thing that you can do in the near term is to nominate a candidate that people will turn out for.

That’s Sanders, not Biden or Warren.

And yes I will go to the polls to cast a vote for the “lesser evil”—but literally millions won’t. That’s the whole damn point.