Your philosophy mimics mine except that I will not vote for any Democrat either.srothstein wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:05 pm TAM,
I have several rules for how I vote. On general principles, my first rule is to not vote in any race where there is only one person running. Something about having an uncontested race bothers me and this way at least it will not be a unanimous decision. I then vote for the specific people who I have decided I like in office. We have too many elected offices and I do not have time to study the candidates for every race on the ballot, as much as I know I should. If I do not have a person i want in office, I believe that I can judge them by the party they choose to associate with. My party preferences for Texas elections are Libertarian, then Republican, then Democrat. In a few cases, there are people I know I want out of office and I don't care who replaces them. In those cases, I use my party preference and make sure to skip the party that person is in. There are certain parties I will never vote for, including the Green party, the Socialist (by name not action) party, and the Communist party.
When I lived in other states, with different parties getting on the ballot (like the Constitutional Party), I place them in various spots in my preference list.
While I always recommend voting for a person, I honestly think no one can study every race any more. And then we have the problems you mentioned of how to vote if the issues I am concerned about are not part of the candidates public platform or answers. My system may not work for everyone, but so far I am satisfied with it.
To those that say I'm wasting a vote by voting Libertarian, well tell the Republican's to put up better candidates and to quit being democrat light. Getting blanket votes because they are the larger of the parties that are not Democrat is one of the reasons why we have the political mess we do.