I’m bone-weary this election cycle. I’m sick and tired of rhetoric, empty promises, flashy campaign slogans and two-party political dominance. I’m tired of division. It feels like we’re being offered an indigestible buffet of things mostly not very good for us.

On one hand, we have a candidate we’ve already seen in the Oval Office, who is so unfathomably ridiculous in word and deed, most of us are numbed to his outrageous, unethical, dishonest and unpredictable behavior. Just a decade ago, such public displays would have been considered appalling and shameful. I feel myself responding these days with, “There he goes again.” I don’t like being this fatigued. And I don’t like him. I don’t want him in the White House again.

On the other hand, we have a stable, intelligent, successful woman, who has strategically chosen a good guy as her running mate to gain a broad range of voter confidence from as many as possible. She is respectful, accomplished, has a reasonable track record, and above all, isn’t unpredictable, senile or volatile. My problem is, she represents the status quo. I don’t believe wholesale “vote blue” solves our problems. If it did, we should be relatively problem-free by now. I’m plagued by ho-hum thoughts of the Dems’ same-old-same-old platform.

I want change for a change: real, deep, systemic change. I want justice – boilerplate justice. I want poverty to end. I want to see all of us, from the poorest to the wealthiest, benefit from honest policymaking in some way. I want a good future for my grandkids. I want an end to runaway corporate profits and inflationary price gouging. I want laws that protect people and hold corporations and unethical people accountable, from Washington to Wall Street to the grocery store.

The reality is, I can’t have all of that. I probably won’t get any of it. At least not within one presidential term (or maybe not in several). So what to do?

I decided I must vote. Not voting, for me, is like saying, “I just don’t care what happens.” And that’s not true. I’ve never met anyone who can say that honestly. In the absence of pathology, there’s always something to care about. So, if I must vote, then I want my vote to matter. I want it to land somewhere where it might do some good, and more importantly, where it has the least potential for causing or contributing to potential harm.

My vote for Harris and Walz is not a party vote. It’s not a feminist vote. It’s not even a hopeful vote. After all, if we can’t come together as a nation of voters to give the White House a House and Senate that are willing to cooperate and collaborate, we just get more of the same old stuff – old guard politicians have proven that to us for years.

No, this time around, I’m voting for a snowball’s chance in hell. If I don’t vote, that does no good and has the potential to contribute to harm (the GOP candidate won in 2016 mostly because about half the country didn’t bother to vote).

If I vote for a write-in or a candidate from a non-dominant party, that does no good and still has the same potential to contribute to harm as not voting. If I vote Trump-Vance, there’s not a shred of evidence to suggest that vote can possibly result in anything good. I saw what four years of Trump yielded us. So, voting this way would mean I am intentionally voting for harm. That’s just not the cloth I’m cut from.

By voting Harris-Walz, at least there’s a snowball’s chance that could matter. It may not matter much given our broken system – but if they win, it matters that it feels like a vote with the least potential to cause harm.