The US is just months away from the 2024 election, and the prospect of a second Trump presidency grows each day as he evades repercussions for the expansive list of indictments he’s accrued. With this reality looming, many Democratic party loyalists are panicked about the “leave it blank” movement, in which hundreds of thousands of voters have marked “uncommitted” on their primary ballots to protest against US support of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Some worry that a protest vote at the ballot box is an automatic vote for Trump. They’re sure that even during times of mass dissent, harm reduction is the only moral voting strategy. They’re afraid that this election will mean the end of democracy, or that the re-election of Trump will guarantee unprecedented disharmony.

Others believe that the protest vote is an empty threat, that sensible voters will ultimately choose the “lesser of two evils” and vote for the Democratic nominee in November anyway.

But the protest vote is none of these things. It is also not a myth; a vote against down-ballot candidates who would otherwise capture uncommitted voters; Millennial frivolity; an abstract phenomenon; new. The protest vote is a moral and........

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