Mr McBeast says you should pus the Red Button, Never the Blue Button.
I don't think the answer is obvious. You'd want to do a poll to see what other people think, or be part of the "Blue Button" movement to ensure 51%, rather than treat this as personal choice which could be a big mistake. Or (defending the blue button choice) you don't want to live in a world where half of the people could be wiped out for pressing the wrong button.
I'm don't worry about solving such problems. Real life versions of Prisoner's Life dilemmas are never so clear cut. There are limitations, subtle effects, etc.
Thus it is with most electoral voting. I recognize the Reason editors choice (never voting) as reasonable but I have a somewhat different take.
In addition to "the result" which one has only an astronomically small (at least 1 in a 10 million or maybe 1 in a quadrillion) chance of affecting, there are "subtle" effects (which may be very personally meaningful):
1) A greater or lesser margin of victory has significance which communicates to politicians and voters.
2) Similarly, a greater proportion of 3rd party voters (with no appreciable chance to win) or non-voters has significance.
3) Changes or rates of change of party choice has significance.
4) Whoever wins is likely to be bought by some part of the ruling class. In no case is there going to be an end to excess profits or needless wars or general enshitification.
5) Talking about your choice could have some influence on others.
6) Talking about your choice makes you a greater or lesser part of the virtual club of people you know.
7) Expressing your real feelings makes you feel good.
8) Early collapse may be better than later collapse, etc.* There might be more survivors from an earlier collapse, etc
9) Movement building solidarity if you are part of a movement.
10) Voting against your usual party communicates dissatisfaction. If it leads to a loss, that is a form of "discipline" which might force the party to be better, or go down the tubes and be replaced by a better one. (Or worse, etc)
I've decided that in view of everything else, #7 is central and most important. There's never a good enough reason not to vote for the candidate you like more than others, or dislike least. And IMO that's the way voting should be. It's both saying what you feel, and communicating it, even if not through the singular "choice" of an allegedly "winner take all" system.
So the Reason editor should vote for (I'd assume) the Libertarian candidate, unless they though the Libertarian party was taking a bad turn recently, then they'd abstain.
They shouldn't not vote just because the Libertarian candidate won't likely win. (Unless the cost of voting were a significant factor.). That's giving up an opportunity to say what you feel and be a comrade with your closest movement.
Also, the chance that you could still be persuaded is another power you have. So it's never useful so say what you would never or always do. So "I'll always vote for the Democrat" means the Democratic party has no need to improve and will just get worse as it surely gets bribed mostly that way. "I'll never vote for the Democrat" also means the Democratic party has no need to improve. Better to make it conditional and say something like "I'll vote for a Democrat when they oppose the genocide in Gaza (or perhaps even just call it genocide)."
*Collapse could mean many things. Such as ecological collapse or dissolution of the USA. In general we want to put catastrophes as far off into the future as possible, but we have no way of knowing whether that will actually be the best for most people (or animals, ET's, etc)
