I Ohio Voted.
I’m an independent. In the past I have voted third party when I could and the candidate seemed reasonable, to try to bring in more variance to our options. Now, I feel like that won’t really help anything until we get ranked choice voting or similar. In the past, I’ve also voted simply to get rid of incumbents. But I’m starting to move more definitely toward voting to even out the power between the two parties we seem to be stuck with.
This year, I voted party line Democrat. Ohio is strongly Republican at the state level. Locally, it’s Democrat, but I think we need that bit of power to combat the statewide opposing party. And even though Democrats control two of three branches at the national level, their control of the Senate is almost non-existent, and the third branch, the Supreme Court, is kind-of the most powerful. Anything the other two branches do can potentially be brought before and controlled by the court. With a strong majority Republican there for the foreseeable future, I will likely be voting Democrat at the federal level for quite some time. Also, the Republicans have movements toward some worrying things like Trump, voter disenfranchisement, locking people up, think like us or against us, destroy the government, and strong anti-abortion laws.