The Guardian: How Uncommitted Rocked Biden over Gaza
People in Michigan, and across the country, had been protesting for months over the Gaza war and the US government’s role in it, marching in the streets, showing up at the president’s public events, and pressuring their elected officials to support a ceasefire.
But it didn’t seem as though Joe Biden was listening to a groundswell of Democrats who opposed the war and US media coverage of the protests, and of the war itself, seems to be waning, too.
The burgeoning anti-war movement needed another way to get the president’s attention. It landed on a strategy: telling Democratic voters to cast ballots for “uncommitted”, essentially no one, as a protest against the war in Gaza and to demand a ceasefire…
Already, organizers had been hearing from people who were going to stay home or choose a third party because of their opposition to the war. Uncommitted gave them a way to make their voices heard well before the contest focused in on Biden v Trump – and it gave Biden a chance to act…
In some places, separate groups have called on voters to write “ceasefire” on their ballots, though those write-in votes are not always counted, making it difficult to assess how many people have followed suit.
In Washington state on 12 March, about 79,000 turned out for “uncommitted delegates,” and there are still about 89,000 ballots left to count, so the number could increase. The Washington group’s goal was 12,000 votes for uncommitted, roughly double the amount of uncommitted voters in 2020.
“The Michigan campaign was an inspiration for us over here in Washington, it’s like maybe there is a way for us who are unhappy with what the President is doing to register our discontent with his policies,” said Rami Al-Kabra, an organizer of Washington’s campaign and a city council member in Bothell, Washington.
Washington’s campaign got endorsements from major unions and elected officials, too, as the state’s progressive voters came together to hit the phones for uncommitted. Al-Kabra said he’d heard from voters who had thrown their ballots away because they felt they had no choice in the election; they subsequently requested new ones after learning they could choose uncommitted.
