Because we end up having the same conversation every two years or so, I just wanted to put some of my favorite resources, quotes, and frameworks in one place. Here are five notes on voting. Feel free to jump to what is most relevant to you:

1. The Short Version: Voting Matters, And What We Do Beyond Voting Matters Even More
2. Making the Case: Perspectives on Voting
3. Useful Voting Resources
4. Taking Action Beyond Voting
5. To Throw a Wrench in the Blood Machine

The Short Version: Voting Matters, And What We Do Beyond Voting Matters Even More

Maybe this “both/and” framing would have been controversial at some point in the past, but I think it’s a fairly lukewarm take today. I believe both of these points:

• Voting is worth doing. People engaging with the democratic process (not just for president, once every four years, but for state/local races, city councils, school boards, etc.), is a good thing, and while no politician or party will save us, elections are power bottlenecks in which a relatively small amount of effort can make real, material differences in people’s lives.
• Voting is not enough. Voting is just one tool in what must be a much larger movement-building toolbox. If want to see real victories around climate, health care, economic issues, war, and other big issues, we have to understand “democracy” as something that involves more than just voting once in a while – it’s about organizing, narrative-shifting, and longer-term movement-building.

I wrote a bit more about all this (from a 2026 perspective) in this newsletter post, and the next section is full of people smarter than me talking about it.

Making the Case: Perspectives on Voting

When I say “making the case,” here, I’m mean specifically for people who (like me) tend to be more cynical about politicians and political parties, who tend to have politics that are further to the left than what most Dems are offering, and are possibly grappling with the questions like why should I vote when the whole system is corrupt?

First and foremost, let’s affirm: that is a valid question. People who say “just shut up and vote” are not helping. Rather than try to answer that question myself, though, I’ll share a few quotes that have helped guide my thinking:

Look: this idea of like, ‘both parties have screwed me over.’ …They’re not your friends. Even ‘allies’ takes it too far. They’re tools. And your job is to figure out what tool, in this particular moment, reduces the most harm against you and your fellow citizens. That’s it. That’s the question. And that’s a much easier question to answer when you accept that your politics is not just your vote. Your vote is a tool. Voting is civic hygiene; it’s brushing your teeth. It’s not enough. It’s a baseline. We think of these elections like it’s the Super Bowl or something. It’s not. It’s a singular tool… go vote, and then go do something else.
– Ta-Nehisi Coates (interviewed by Hasan Minhaj, August 2026)

There is no way to purchase innocence in the heart of empire by simply doing or not doing this one thing on the civic social to-do list. In the same way that showing up on Election Day and getting your sticker doesn’t mean you’ve now paid your dues to the human race, not showing up doesn’t mean you now get a sticker that says “I’m not complicit in this country’s harms.” We’re all complicit, either way. We’re all on this train... I also see electoral participation, even when it’s a begrudging, frustrated act, which I think it often is, as a way of showing people who are living under very direct threats right now that I am invested in their well-being and survival.
– Kelly Hayes, from Activists Are Preparing to Defend Elections This November (October 2026)

I just think we have to be sharper about what we can do, what we do have the power to do, and not in the magical thinking of moving strategies with the movement we wish we had or the movement we used to have or with strategies that we wish were possible in a pre-figurative world that does not yet exist. We have to build that world and we have to build the base, the strategic alliance that will bring that into existence. I think we have to be a little self-critical that we just haven’t done it yet.
– Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, interviewed in Activists Are Preparing to Defend Elections This November (October 2026)

When we engage in electoral politics, it can’t be just because a particular individual is running for office. It is to enlarge the terrain of mass struggle, to guarantee a space for the trade union movement to win victories, for the women’s movement to win victories, for people of color to win victories, for working and poor people to win victories…
– Angela Davis, Electing Harris will open space for more radical struggles (September 2024)

Our strategy is a block-and-build strategy: We need to block the authoritarians, and then we need to build movements outside of the Democratic Party in order to demand that these pieces of rhetoric turn into concrete action… Electoral politics is just one piece of the fight. That allows us to reset the balance of power and decide who we’re going to be organizing with, and also organizing against, in order to demonstrate over four years what we can win. And then we do it all over again. Elections aren’t the prize. Governing is the prize. And governing happens every single day.
– Maurice Mitchell, A Generational Fight (August 2024) – plus more on “block and build” as a strategy here

Defeating fascism at the polls is important not only because there are an array of issues that there’s a great divergence between the Democrats and Republicans on, but also in order to have the oxygen in order to continue the protests in solidarity with Palestine. If we have an authoritarian regime in power, we’re going to have very much difficulty doing that.
– Barbara Ransby, A Generational Fight (August 2024)

It means acknowledging that politicians will never create or facilitate the change the world needs– the People will. We know that to facilitate this change, it is easier to mobilize with one party over the other but that our resistance does not begin or end at the ballot box.
– NDN Collective’s “Vote Like a Radical” statement/video (November 2024)

Political parties are not teams: they are arenas of struggle. The Democratic and Republican Parties are often misunderstood as two distinct teams. It’s more accurate to see them as battlegrounds, where various factions continuously compete for influence and dominance.
– Waleed Shahid, Democrats, Parties, and Palestine: Five Stages of Political Grief (June 2024)

Note how [Douglass] clearly explains that neither party is a friend of justice while recognizing the need to ally tactically with one. Tactical thinking as Douglass practiced it is something of a lost art. We tend to think in stark binaries – either elections are everything or they are nothing. We have a history of leaders who insist at every turn that we support the Democrats out of fear of the right (thereby sabotaging the growth of a strong radical alternative). And there’s an opposing current that insists on “voting my heart,” (thereby putting their own sense of identity above all else). Neither position has ever appealed to me. I’ve always argued for building an autonomous radical movement able to affect the course of history. But if conditions require tactically supporting a tepid enemy to stave off an immediately menacing one then hey, I can do that too. Tactics.
– Ricardo Levins Morales, Tactical choices in tough times (November 2022)

Most of us who are organizers in whatever area, or focus, or issue you are particularly focused on, we work all of the time, whether there is an election or not. The work continues. I think a smart organizer will definitely pay attention to elections on both the local or state or, on the national level, to figure out if there are pressure points and openings that exist to be able to move your issue. You’re not going to ignore that. Politics are politics, and that means that electoral politics are part of the larger politics that we engage in in the world and in the country, so I definitely use elections to either figure out who I don’t want to have in office anymore, who needs to go, so it’s a measure of accountability of some sort, or it’s a way to figure out how to use the fact that there is an election to raise a certain issue. So you have to have a strategic vision and it is important to use all the tools in a tool kit if you are somebody who makes stuff, if you are somebody who tries to build a different world, if you are interested in transformation and justice, and you have to play in all arenas that exist while also pushing for people to be more expansive about what they want and what to ask for and demand from that particular system.
– Mariame Kaba, interviewed in The Work Continues (November 2016)

And those quotes are just from the last few election cycles. I find them convincing. If you don’t, that’s fine.

An under-discussed aspect of voting discourse is how it’s challenging to universalize the call-to-action: voting is important rings hollow if you’re, for example: a trans person in a deep red state in which the dem candidate is using transphobic talking points, and is likely going to lose anyway. I’m not going to shout at that person that they absolutely must vote or they’re enabling fascism; in that case, the fascism has already been enabled, and resistance has to take on other forms.

But for a lot of us, in a lot of places, voting does matter. We get out of it what we can get out of it, while remaining clear-eyed about what we can’t.

Change comes from mass movements, and voting is a small but meaningful piece of what must be a larger movement-building strategy. No candidate will give us the world we want, and both major parties are invested in capitalism and empire—but there are also meaningful differences between them. Those differences both impact people’s lives now and create organizing opportunities for the future.

In other words: We don’t have to love dems to want to crush republicans. We can be cynical, know that voting is like 1% of the work that needs to be done, and have zero faith in the opposition… while also contributing to a big, public humiliation of fascists like Trump, Musk, Miller, and all the rest. That matters.

Useful Voting Resources

For those of us who do plan on voting (especially if it’s our first time, or our first time in a while), I wanted to share a few resources. A challenge here, though, is that what is most useful to me here in Minnesota may not be what is most useful to you, wherever you’re reading this. Still, a few general points:

• HOW/WHERE/WHEN TO VOTE: Wherever you live in the US, a potential first step is Vote411.org. A project of the League of Women Voters, it’s set up to be a “one-stop-shop” for election related information. Check your registration, early voting deadlines, what’s on your ballot, and more.
  • Other resources: Vote.org, Vote Save America, etc.
• EARLY VOTING IS MY FAVORITE WAY TO VOTE: Again, this may look different depending on where you live, but here in Minneapolis (just as an example), our early in-person voting center is open about a month-and-a-half before election day. In my experience, it’s always been super chill and the staff is friendly and helpful. Again, that may not be possible where you live; it may take a bit of research to see your options for early voting vs. vote-by-mail vs. a mail dropbox vs. in-person election day voting, etc. Find what works for you.
• VOTER GUIDES AND ENDORSEMENTS: Yet another point this is going to vary from place to place. But while we may know whom we want to vote for for the “big” races, not all of us are hyper-online political weirdos, and we may need some help or advice for the down-ballot races (you can, of course, just leave them blank if you choose, but the smaller/local races are often the most important ones!) When I’m feeling overwhelmed or lost, I look at endorsements.
  • Again, this is very Minnesota-specific, but I share these links as EXAMPLES of what I’m talking about here. You may need to find your own guiding stars.
    • TakeAction MN’s candidate endorsements (the idea being: is there a local organization, union, or other source that you trust? See who they’re supporting.)
    • We also have a “cheat code” here in the Twin Cities in the form of local writer Naomi Kritzer’s blog, where she does deep dives into all the local races. For years now, it’s been one of the most useful tools for people navigating local elections.

Taking Action Beyond Voting

These links are full of resources related to “finding our political homes,” which is a process much bigger than a single vote.

• Resources for Getting Involved Beyond Election Day. This piece is from 2022, updated in 2024, but most of the readings are still relevant.
• What’s next? Things to do after a big march. I wrote this after the first No Kings march, but it’s easy to swap out “march” for “vote” in this context.
• My Activism and Organizing Resource Hub sharing recommended readings and resources, especially for people just diving in for the first time.

Here’s a diagram I made that captures some of how I feel about all this. Whatever your position is on voting, I think it’s worth thinking about what is mobilizing vs. demobilizing.

To Throw a Wrench in the Blood Machine

I wrote this poem in 2020 for a Voices for Racial Justice-organized online Get-Out-The-Vote event. The poem went viral in 2022, and continued to be shared in 2024 and beyond. If you’ve seen it online, however, it’s usually just the small excerpt voting as fire extinguisher. I’ve written elsewhere about how I really prefer the poem as a whole, because each section isn’t meant to be an independent piece—it’s a poem that is grappling with an idea from multiple angles, trying to make a larger point.

And as uncomfortable as I’ve been with that excerpt being shared all over, I do stand by that larger point:

I know metaphors aren’t everyone’s thing. So at the risk of “explaining the joke,” so to speak, let me just say that the big takeaway from this poem is that voting is NOT the only answer, NOT our only power, NOT the end-all-be-all of civic engagement. It’s a tool in the toolbox. And it’s a tool that the vast majority of real-life organizers I’ve known, the people doing the on-the-ground work year-round, have been pretty clear about the importance of.

I want to reaffirm that point. To me, the argument isn’t some abstract or intellectual debate to have on social media. My perspective is influenced and shaped by activists, people I know and have worked with in real life, who have their hands dirty with the work of building a better world. None of them say that voting is the only way we can make a difference; almost all of them say that it’s worth doing anyway. If only because it’s relatively easy (for a lot of us, at least). If only done tactically or defensively. If only to create a bit of breathing room that wouldn’t be there otherwise.

We already know that status-quo loving liberals aren’t going to save us. But for organizers, having a status-quo loving liberal in office is materially different than having an open fascist- especially when it comes to trans rights, reproductive justice, climate, and other issues where there is real daylight between the two otherwise-aligned capitalist parties. Elections aren’t just about choosing your allies; they can also be about choosing your opponents. It’s that point about defensive organizing vs. offensive organizing.

Here’s the poem itself: