Next week, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be elected president of the United States. In my view, both outcomes would be a disaster, and I love this country too much to contribute to such a fate. Trump or Harris must win, but I will not help send either one to the White House. I will cast my ballot in this year’s election, but I won’t vote for president.

This isn’t the first time I have found both major-party candidates unacceptable. When it happened in the past I could vote in good conscience for the candidate running on the Libertarian ticket. But that isn’t an option this year; the Libertarian Party has been taken over by a fanatical MAGA insurgency. So my only choice is to blank the presidential race.

Many friends, acquaintances, and readers tell me such a stance is irresponsible.

Their objections are of two types.

First are those who passionately favor one candidate or the other and believe the opposite candidate must be defeated at all costs. Harris supporters urge me to see that the danger in returning Trump to the White House is so great I must vote against him; Trump fans warn that a Harris presidency would be such a calamity that I have an obligation to cast a ballot to prevent it.

To both I can only say: If you think Trump or Harris belongs in the Oval Office, vote accordingly. But to me this is not a lesser-of-two-evils election.

Trump is one of the worst people ever to become president — crude, bigoted, unhinged, paranoid, egomaniacal. He lies, fabricates, and hurls accusations with abandon. He regards any opposition as intolerable, and describes his critics as enemies who should be prosecuted or suppressed.

As president Trump engendered such a carnival of chaos and conspiracy-mongering that many of his top advisers and Cabinet secretaries resigned in disgust. He is the first president in history who not only refused to accept the results of an election he lost but incited a mob to “stop the steal.” I shudder to think of the policies a second Trump presidency would bring, from the deportation of millions of peaceful immigrants to a ruinous trade war to the abandonment of Ukraine. I could never vote for that.

And Harris? She may not be as erratic and vulgar as her opponent, but she is singularly unimpressive, uninformed, and unserious. As vice president, she was distinguished only for what The Atlantic called “top-to-bottom dysfunction” among her staff and the incompetence with which she handled her role as the administration’s point person on the migrant crisis. Her frequent retreat into gibberish and inanities was cringe-inducing even before she became the Democratic nominee.

Harris won’t answer the most basic questions about the policies she would pursue. Asked what she would do differently from President Biden, she replies: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” For four years she has been copilot of the most left-leaning presidential administration ever. Everything we know about her record suggests that in a Harris presidency, policies would be shaped by the worst impulses of the progressive left — anti-Israel hostility, an effort to pack the Supreme Court, transgender extremism, unconstitutional loan forgiveness, increasingly racialized public policy, the illiberal silencing of disfavored opinions. I could never vote for that either.

There is a second type of objection I encounter when I explain why I’m boycotting the presidential race. It is my civic duty to vote, I am told; all presidential candidates are imperfect, and part of being a conscientious citizen is making a choice, even (or especially) when it is difficult to do so.

But that’s absurd. The function of an election is to let citizens pass judgment on the politicians and parties seeking to govern them. Your judgment may be for Trump and the Republicans or for Harris and the Democrats. My judgment is that neither passes the smell test. If everyone who feels the same way joined me in blanking the presidential ballot, what a powerful message it would send.

When manufacturers realize that consumers are shunning what they sell, they work to fix what’s wrong. Granted, politics isn’t commerce. But if the nation’s political leaders saw that millions of citizens were withholding their votes from severely defective candidates and parties, perhaps they too would finally be motivated to offer something better to the American people.

With Trump and Harris heading their respective tickets, disillusionment with our political system may be at a peak. The proper response to that disillusionment is not to tell citizens they must vote, even if it means picking a candidate or party they cannot abide. My fervent hope is that millions of other citizens will, like me, refuse to help elect candidates who are unfit for the job. Not voting is always a legitimate choice. This year it’s the best choice.