So explain why you think voting third-party in California have any consequences for the real world to live with. You want to blame people like me, answer the bloody question! Exactly how many more Californian votes do you calculate Hillary needed in order to overcome her opponent's advantage among red-state voters?
I know this isn't to me, but my post triggered the exchange.
I should have clarified in my first post that "every" referred to all those living in a State where the outcome could have possibly gone either way. For those in a state like CA, it is more complicated, but it isn't as simple as claiming no possible effect on the outcome.
First, the only reason your action had no effect is that most liberals in CA didn't not act as you did and voted for Hillary, even if they thought she was very far from ideal. IOW, had more people did exactly as you did, then Trump would have won CA, which could easily had made the difference if just 100,000 people in Michigan had not acted as you did. It isn't just the actual but potential consequences of an action that determine its morality. In general, the "what if everyone acted that way?" argument is a valid consideration for how one should act. Imagine some asshole closes his eyes and runs a red light, but no one is hurt because everyone else at that intersection keeps their eyes open and avoids a collision. Now imagine another asshole does the same thing a block away, but 2 other people also did it and a deadly wreck is caused. Is the first guy any less of an immoral asshole than the others?
Now, a counter to this is that you knew for certain that most other libs in CA wouldn't act like you, so you knew there would be no effect. But you cannot know that. You knew most others did not want Trump and preferred Hillary, but could not know how many would act like you because they assumed, like you, that their action would have no impact. In fact, that is almost certainly how Trump won WI, MI, and PA, and thus the election. His margins there were so small that it is almost certain that the outcome was changed by people just like you who assumed other voters in their State would elect Hillary, so they decided either not to vote, vote 3rd party, or even vote Trump as some sort of protest against the Dems or so they could pretend they are not responsible for anything that happened as a result.
Finally, there is the issue of whether your choice even in CA did have an impact. Well, it did impact the popular vote, and if just a fraction of all the left-leaners in Blue states who didn't vote Hillary had done so, she would have won the popular vote by 10 million instead of 2. That could have shifted what happened with the electoral votes, and even if not, might have tempered Trump's actions in office. Also, there are the many CA liberals who not only didn't vote Hillary but publicly attacked her during the general and advocated for liberals everywhere not to vote for her in the general. This is true of individual average people advancing that stance on twitter, as well as famous idiots like Colin Kaepernick and Susan Sarandon, and leftist political organizations such as BLM.