I do hope, however, to explain to these strategic voters why many other Americans think that voting means more than just the least bad option on the ballot. Call us “conscience voters.” To us, voting is not merely about 1/130-millionth of deciding who should preside over 1/3 of the federal government from 2017 to 2021. To us, the act of voting is also a civic duty that tells people what we think America means, what we want to teach our kids about moral leadership, what face we want America to present to the world, and what sort of candidates we want more of in coming years.
Two Kinds of Voting, Two Kinds of Disruption, and Two Kinds of Unrighteousness
Ben Sasse
40995

You’d be surprised how many strategic voters know and understand this, all too well. However, knowing how broken the system is, and how it will never bring forth anyone they’d willingly support, they then decide to note vote, or to vote for, as you said, the lesser of two evils. They accept the current broken schema of the system and work within it, basically.