"Protest Vote" — nothing for anyone, except one least-bad 1

Every row blank but one, and that one gets a single star. Displeasure, on the record — with a preference of last resort.

← One of thirteen voting styles. Every style is legal and counted; this page is what this one means, when it fits, and what it trades away.

What this ballot says

"I'm unhappy with this whole field — and if you make me pick, Blake is the least bad." The near-empty ballot is the protest; the single 1 is the safety valve that keeps the protest from being silence.

When it fits

• You genuinely rate the whole field near zero and want the count to hear that — low scores from voters like you visibly drag down every candidate's average.
• You refuse to pretend enthusiasm, but you still have a worst-case you'd like to avoid — the 1 handles that without endorsing anyone.

The trade-off, honestly

The protest is real but quiet. In the scoring round this ballot spends one point of the twenty-five it could carry, so it barely moves who the finalists are. Its strength arrives later: in any Blake-versus-anyone runoff, the 1-over-0 gap is a full vote for Blake — runoff votes don't care how big the gap is, only which way it points. And if Blake isn't in the final, the ballot is Equal Support between two 0s — an abstention you chose. A protest ballot counts; it just counts the way a whisper counts.

This exact style in a real election

In the runnable style-gallery election, the protest row is 0,0,0,0,0,1 — one star for Frank, nothing for anyone else. Frank made the final, so this near-silent ballot cast a full runoff vote for him (he lost the runoff 4–2, but the vote was heard). The dedicated small demo of a protest ballot deciding a race outright: reader page · 03b_c3_b3_1_style-protest-vote.yaml.

Related

• Not Much of a Backup — the neighboring style: a real favorite plus a grudging 1
• Traditional — one mark of enthusiasm instead of one mark of reluctance