[ece]

I'm not shaming the fact that they voted, I'm shaming who they voted for. You aren't a responsible voter if you're not up to accepting responsibility for your vote. If you voted for Trump, hope he's making you happy. If you voted for Jill Stein or Ralph Nader in 2016 or 2000 in WI, MI, PA, or FL, you are very much responsible for Bush and Trump respectively in the electoral and government system we have since your candidate was a spoiler.

These 3rd party voters could have abstained or voted for another 3rd party or went Republican, but they didn't. They could have traded their vote to someone in a safe state (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/opinion/anti-trump-republ...), if Hillary was their 2nd preference. If not, go ahead, vote for 3rd party candidate who could be a spoiler and has no chance of winning.

[yellowapple]

You aren't a responsible voter if you pretend that voting for a "lesser of two evils" over a candidate who actually represents your beliefs is ever anything better than a wasted vote.

[ece]

This is the very definition of idealism and being naive about how much your vote matters, when you should give a thought to your 2nd preference and be pragmatic if you are in a non-safe state for your 2nd preference. Do vote trading with someone in a safe state, and your candidate will still get the same percentage of nationwide votes, and your 2nd preference will win.

Again, I am not saying that don't vote for 3rd party candidates anywhere.

There is no equivalence between Trump and Hillary, and if Voting for Hillary in a non-safe or safe state would have been a wasted vote, pity the 65 million who voted for her.

[yellowapple]

"This is the very definition of idealism and being naive about how much your vote matters,"

I was a California resident at the time. My vote was about as close to irrelevant as one can get; California's electoral votes haven't turned red since Reagan.

Even if I had moved to Nevada by then (that is: a few months before I actually did), I would have had zero regrets voting for Johnson. Neither Trump nor Clinton deserved my vote, simple as that.

"There is no equivalence between Trump and Hillary"

There is plenty of equivalence between two corrupt and most-likely-actually-criminal sociopaths. There's also plenty of equivalence between two presidential campaigns that went out of the way to present a "if you're not with me, then you're against me" mentality and alienate every supporter of the other candidate.

Importantly, and more specifically, both candidates' campaigns utterly alienated me as a voter simply because I did not precisely align with their "one true policy" or whatever. Neither candidate gave me any reason to vote for them, and every reason to not vote for them.

"2nd preference"

I had no second preference. If I did have a second preference, it might as well have been Mickey Mouse.

"vote trading"

Oh yeah, and make my vote even more worthless than it already is.

(Of course, vote trading as a California resident would've been an upgrade no matter what, but now that I live in Nevada, it'd be entirely irrational to want to dilute the power of my individual vote any further than it already is).

[ece]

I am not sure how to help with your perceptions of campaigns and candidates, but their likely policies and cabinet appointments were there for anyone to see. Trump institutionalizing xenophobia is a degree of difference that is hard for me to see past.