Tom Morello Clarifies He Does Vote, Just Not For “Corporate Democrats”

Last weekend, former Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello h eld his star-studded one-day Power To The People festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. The whole event was framed as a left-wing political gathering, and Morello joined Bruce Springsteen for a set of protest songs. Before the show, Morello did a Rolling Stone interview, and he went viral for saying that he "certainly did not" vote for Kamala Harris.

In a clip from his talk with Rolling Stone , Morello said, "There is a righteous fury at the corporate-controlled, money-controlled electoral system we have that is absolutely illegitimate. And people cannot choke down voting for a candidate, I understand it, cannot choke down voting for a candidate that's responsible for what happened in Gaza. They can't do it." Morello counted himself in that number, saying, "I just couldn't do it" and that he can't remember the last time he voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. He also noted that he lives in California, "a state where it may not have moved the meter."

Tom Morello ( @tmorello ) says he didn't vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. "I saw how the corporate Democrat sausage is made. It is worse than you think. And there is a righteous fury at the corporate-controlled, money-controlled electoral system we have that is absolutely… pic.twitter.com/lLQ9JGqqcS

Makes sense to me! I did vote for Harris, and for tons of other shitty corporate Dems, but I generally don't feel great about it. It would be nice if the less outwardly evil of our two major parties would nominate someone who I might be excited to vote for. But you know how it is. Anytime a left-wing person talks about being disappointed with their lesser-of-two-evil options, people get all up in arms about the idea that we owe the Democratic Party our fealty.

Apparently, some people took Morello's comments as an admission that he doesn't vote at all . Morello would like to correct the record here. On Monday, he shared a video message, noting that he does in fact vote in every election and that the festival raised money for voter-registration efforts. He also says that he has the "luxury," as a Californian, of "voting my conscience for president for third-party candidates that better align with my ideas of justice and equality." Here's what he says:

Some people out there seem to be confused, but I always vote in every local and every national election for every office and every ballot initiative since I was 18 years old. Some of my greatest civil rights heroes have fought and died so that we can all vote and I honor their memory in the ballot box every single time.

To some of us, especially those of us like myself who have been scheduling secretaries for US senators, it often seems like a morally reprehensible choice between compromised corporate Democrats and fascist-minded Republicans. Where I live in California, I have the luxury of voting my conscience for president for third-party candidates that better align with my ideas of justice and equality.

But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there's but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch. So vote your ass off, but don't just exercise your right to vote. Exercise your right to fight for, organize for, struggle for, and manifest the kind of world you'd like to really see without compromise and without apologies before, during, and after election day. And let's stop the fascists every which way we can. Power the people.

Tom Morello has never claimed any allegiance to the Democratic Party, and Rage Against The Machine played protests against both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 2008.

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