Democracy Demands Your Vote
Friday, October 30th, 2026By Bob Gaydos
A few weeks back, I wrote a column about Americans who don’t bother to vote. The ones who think “all politicians are the same.“ The ones who think their vote doesn’t mean anything.
They’re wrong. In the 2024 election, not only did the now griping, feeling-betrayed MAGA cultists get exactly what they voted for, the unhappy “they’re all the same“ camp got exactly what they didn’t bother to vote against. Elections have consequences.
Who knew?
According to the Census Bureau, which has been keeping track of voter participation since 1964, 174 million Americans were registered to vote in 2024. Close to 20 million of those registered voters did not bother to exercise their constitutional right and civic duty to vote in that year’s presidential election.
With Vice President Kamala Harris replacing incumbent President Joe Biden at the last minute as the Democratic Party presidential candidate, Trump carried the popular vote by 2.3 million voters. There are still lingering questions about Elon Musk possibly manipulating votes electronically in some selected states, but that’s a lot. However, America, as we know, doesn’t elect its president by popular vote. Each state gets a certain number of votes based on its population. In 2024, in a half dozen swing states that Trump carried by slim margins, deciding not to vote was crucial.
Those non-voters are living with the consequences of that decision. We all are. Deciding not to do something is still doing something.
With Trump having gone back on all his campaign promises, started a war with no obvious strategy to end it, and having made it more expensive and difficult for every American except millionaires to live day-to-day, Republicans, not having the voter registration numbers or issues to campaign on, have tried every way they could think of to keep certain groups of people from voting. They’ve even tried to redraw congressional districts to help Republican candidates in this year‘s midterm election.
That’s why I say the simplest strategy for anyone who wants to end the madness of the Trump presidency is to vote for every Democrat on the ballot this year. Period.
That’s what I did at a well-organized, efficient early voting opportunity at the county government building in Monticello, N.Y., a couple of days ago. Get in line. Name? Address? I’ve got you here. Here’s your ballot. That’s all that is supposed to be required.
Why row A all the way? Think about it. Where do all these congressional candidates come from? Gubernatorial candidates? State legislature candidates? From the ranks. They start on the town or village board, city council, county legislature, maybe even the school board. In the Trump era of control of the Republican Party, I cannot think of one person in any of those local elected positions in my area, who is a Republican, having had anything to say publicly critical of anything Trump or the out-to-lunch Republican Congress has done. Silence of the lambs.
To get ahead in today’s Republican Party, one has to keep his her mouth shut unless it is to agree with whatever is handed down from the top, however distasteful or even illegal. To speak out is to be ostracized. Goodbye political career, at least in the Republican Party. It is simply a cult. To advance, one must go along.
So if your name is on the ballot running for a political office as a Republican, I cannot trust your independence. I must assume you approve of sticking a dagger in the back of Ukraine and raising the price of gasoline to $5 a gallon and having masked agents hauling people off the street and locking them away in warehouses because of the way they look. If that’s not true, I certainly haven’t heard otherwise. Of course, I did get mailers trying to blame Democrats for these problems that arose with your party in control of the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court. Trump has turned you into a party of cowards and liars.
I’m also thinking, from hundreds if not thousands of reports I’ve read and heard the past two years, that my experience is pretty common around the country. That’s why I say keep it simple. “They” are not all the same. If you don’t like the way things are being run, get out and vote for every Democrat on the ballot.
Democracy is not a spectator sport.









