As we do every year, my wife and I arrived at our polling place about five minutes after it opened this morning. It’s located in the basement of St. Anthony’s Church. Usually I dress up to go to vote. Not a business suit or anything, but at least a button down shirt and slacks. Today I arrived wearing jeans, a work shirt and boots. I was there to do a potentially grim but important job. I was there to work.

As we pulled up, I saw a van from one of the local news stations parked around the corner, no doubt getting ready to nab some B roll footage for their election day coverage. That gave me an unpleasant mental nudge about the horrendous job the vast majority of the press has done in terms of even attempting to fake impartiality this year. The sight brought back memories of the revelations from leaked documents about how many high profile journalists were all but on Hillary Clinton’s payroll the entire time. It’s been an orchestrated effort to stop Donald Trump ever since he began to look as if there was even a sliver of a chance he might win.

We entered and found a line of people waiting to vote just after six in the morning. That’s unusual. We’re usually either the first two to vote or in the first five. Behind the table where you sign in there was a small stand bearing the great seal of the State of New York. That reminded me yet again that I live in a state where liberals have passed one of the most egregious gun control laws in the nation. There are still efforts underway to challenge the Safe Act, and with luck they may be heard by the Supreme Court some day. As I was musing on social media last night, the case of District of Columbia v. Heller was decided by a five to four margin. Hillary Clinton has said she “disagrees” with that decision. If elected President, she will nominate and install judges who agree with her and the four liberal justices who came within a single vote of crushing the Second Amendment in Heller.

I got to the front of the line and found three new volunteers working there whose faces I did not recall from previous elections. They didn’t know me. I didn’t know them. But when I said my name, the woman who had asked for it dutifully opened up her book, found the correct page and told me to sign. I did so and she closed the book again with barely a glance. I was not asked for any identification. I could have been anyone. A person in the country illegally or even a charlatan posing as one of my neighbors who had died. Things were operating precisely as Hillary Clinton and the Democrats like it.

Having received my ballot I went to fill it out. I voted in every race, but I only filled in the Republican circle on two of them. The rest I marked under the New York State Conservative Party. This is partly because I’m not entirely thrilled with how the GOP has behaved this year, but mostly because I like having the voice of the Conservative Party around and they are automatically on the ballot every year if they attract a sufficient number of votes. (The two exceptions I mentioned above were races where the Conservative Party had not endorsed anyone.)

That means that I voted for Donald Trump and Mike Pence as President and Vice President respectively. Mr. Trump wasn’t my first choice in the primary nor was he even my choice when our state’s turn came to vote near the end. (For the record I went with Ted Cruz.) But that’s all water under the bridge now. I voted for Donald Trump not because I’m his biggest fan, but because he is the only remaining blocker standing in the path of Hillary Clinton’s open field run to the end zone. This is critically important to keep in mind when you make your own trip to the voting booth today.

Yes, I voted for Donald Trump. And you should too. Victory is far from assured and, in fact, I believe that it will come as a tremendous surprise and highlight some serious errors in polling methodology if he manages to pull out a win. And I’m fully aware that some of you who hold conservative values near and dear still don’t want to do this. There are so many temptations out there to distract you. Siren songs from the “cool kids” like most of the staff at National Review are telling you that it won’t matter. That four or eight years of a Hillary Clinton presidency won’t be that bad. And if you choose to throw your vote away on Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin (or, God forbid, you actually get in bed with the enemy and vote for Hillary Clinton) that you will somehow be taking a “principled stand.”

This is and has always been a ruse designed to assuage hurt feelings. What you will be doing is draining the baseline of votes that any Republican candidate needs as a starting point before seeking to gather sufficient support from the middle to overcome the Democrats’ national demographic advantage. This is just basic math and as you stand alone in that voting booth you will already know it in your heart. You can repeat the mantras of the #NeverTrump crowd for the rest of your life, but you will, in fact, have been helping to elect Hillary Clinton.

I went to my polling place today and chose not to do that. I made an active, conscious decision to do my part to stop a Hillary Clinton presidency. We may not succeed and the next four years may see a series of liberal, socialist maneuvers which will further erode the causes we mutually believe in. But if that’s the case, I will watch the carnage unfold, secure in the knowledge that I did what little I was able to do to stop it.

Will you be able to say the same?