Washington and Georgia protest votes raise pressure on Biden over Gaza war

The protest vote against President Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza continued in Washington and Georgia this week, where thousands of voters chose no one, sending a message to the president that their votes depend on a ceasefire.

Washington, a reliably blue state, saw support from local elected officials and major unions in its multi-faith push for “uncommitted” delegates. They spent about $20,000 and began organizing on 24 February. More than 56,000 voters selected uncommitted delegates on the ballots counted so far, though more than 200,000 ballots remain uncounted there as of Thursday morning.

Related: Next stop for Democratic ‘uncommitted’ vote campaign for Gaza: Washington

Georgia’s ballot didn’t have an uncommitted option, so organizers there put together a “leave it blank” campaign, calling on voters to cast a ballot, but not fill it out, to send a message to Biden on Gaza. Nearly 6,500 voters there left it blank. And nearly 9,000 voters chose Marianne Williamson, which some protest voters have selected because she supports a ceasefire. Combined, the votes exceed Biden’s margin of victory in the state in 2020, which was about 12,000 votes.

The push to use the presidential primary ballot in this way continued even as Biden has secured the Democratic nomination after winning Georgia and Mississippi on Tuesday. Biden has easily won the nominating contests so far, as an incumbent president, though sizable numbers in his own party continue to press him for his support of military aid for Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza, in which at least 30,000 people have been killed.

The uncommitted movement started in Michigan’s presidential primary, where more than 100,000 Democratic voters chose the protest vote in a state with a large proportion of Muslim and Arab Americans. Next, Super Tuesday saw several states push for uncommitted, with Minnesota seeing the highest percentage of such voters, at 19%. Then came Hawaii, where 29% of voters in a low-turnout primary voted for uncommitted. All three states got enough votes to earn delegates to the Democratic national convention in August.

Like the states that came before them, Washington and Georgia organized quickly and with little money to reach out to voters and spread the message that their vote could be used for “uncommitted delegates” in Washington or left blank in Georgia.

“Every vote should be counted to give a full, accurate picture of what has been accomplished through our Uncommitted WA campaign,” Rami Al-Kabra, lead organizer with Uncommitted WA, said in a statement. “We are thrilled that more than 56,000 Uncommitted Delegates votes have already been counted, but we expect that number to grow over the coming days, as the rest of the mail-in ballots are counted.”

The group behind the campaign, Uncommitted Washington, said it hoped to see 12,000 votes for uncommitted delegates to “send a clear message to President Biden that he must change his policies and strategy.” The ballot option got more than 6,000 votes in 2020.

“Washington proved that being Uncommitted to Biden for as long as the violence in Gaza continues is a popular sentiment among Democrats everywhere, including in one of the bluest states in the nation,” organizer Faheem Khan said in a statement. “Thousands of volunteers across the country helped us achieve these results, all within just a few days’ time.”

The next big state campaign is in Wisconsin, where organizers are calling for voters to select “uninstructed delegation”, an uncommitted option, on their ballots on 2 April.

Organizers in Illinois, led by Muslim Civic Coalition-Activate, are also pushing for a protest vote in the state’s 19 March election, calling on Democratic voters there to leave the president slot blank on their ballots or write in “Gaza”.

Several other states have uncommitted options or ways to leave a ballot blank or write in a candidate, though organized efforts to use these options to call for a ceasefire are not under way in most of the remaining states. As on Super Tuesday, some of these states could have smaller pushes for protest votes, inspired by Michigan’s vote. In states where there aren’t ballot options, such as Arizona, some are organizing to vote instead for Williamson, the self-help author challenging Biden.

Organizers of the uncommitted vote have said they don’t support Trump, but wanted to send Biden a message that their support could hinge on his Gaza actions well in advance of November so that Biden had time to change his policies and bring fellow Democrats back into the fold.

“Washington voters know the power of our vote and we plan to use that right to tell the President that his disregard of Palestinian lives and his inability to lead with the values of his base are at the willful detriment of his re-election campaign, and subsequently the stability of our democracy,” Washington’s uncommitted campaign said in a press release. “We’re showing him exactly how he can win, if he chooses.”