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My vote literally doesn't matter

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:boggled:

For me, the opening sentence of this article sums it up nicely:

Every four years, the world looks with bafflement at the United States as the country goes through its curious process of electing its President.
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I remember creating a thread not long ago about the Electoral College, and I think this forum was evenly divided (though slightly in favor). The search feature only brings up one I made four years ago. The EC is a stupid, ****ed up, anti-democratic institution, but... I don't see why people bring up Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas. What's the appeal of being a Democrat in California or a Republican in Texas? Your candidate wins, but your vote still hardly matters. What's crazy is that people in non-competitive states are mostly ignored while people in critical swing states are relentlessly hassled. The anti-democratic, anti-one person, one vote creates arbitrary political incentives to pander to certain constituencies based on nothing more than a competitive race within some random area. Fifty-one simultaneous elections, and some elections are more important than others, and many of the non-competitive ones exert disproportionate influence. It's all messed up.
 
It probably made sense when there was a lot less central organization. Now that we are completely interconnected some of the traditional roles of states and borders make a lot less sense.
 
Nyarlathotep said:
Yeah, a whopping five elctoral votes.
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Yeah, and you get to decide whether the electoral college looks like this:
mccainit8.png



Or more like this:
obamago2.png
 
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Rika said:
Actually, this problem occurs frequentyl in WA. If you don't live in the Greater Seattle Metro area, your vote means verrrry little.
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This and the OP are stunningly ignorant of how elections work. Your vote carries no more or less weight than any other vote within the state. Where you live within the state has no bearing whatsoever on the price of bread.
 
varwoche said:
This and the OP are stunningly ignorant of how elections work. Your vote carries no more or less weight than any other vote within the state. Where you live within the state has no bearing whatsoever on the price of bread.
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I think she was saying that she is a Republican and in a tiny minority in the state of Washington. What that has to do with living in the east portion of the state is I think just her way of justifying her political position. I could be wrong though.
 
Nyarlathotep said:
Yeah, a whopping five elctoral votes.
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If Al Gore could have found one more electoral vote somewhere, we wouldn't have had 8 years of George W. Bush.

(Actually, one vote would have sent it to the House of Representatives, so Al might have needed 2 votes.)

This year, Michigan is no longer a "swing state". McCain gave up on it. So, my vote doesn't matter either. Before 2000, this line of reasoning led me to say we ought to abandon the electoral college, and use the popular vote. After seeing the recount mess in Florida, I'm not so sure. If there were a razor thin election, can you imagine having to recount every vote from all 50 states?

ETA: History lesson. My memory was slightly off. Bush got 271 votes out of 538. One less would have been enough. Two more for Gore would have sent it to the House, maybe. I say maybe because one might suspect that Gore got the remaining 267 votes, but that would be wrong. A faithless elector( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector ) withheld her vote, making the final official tally 271 to 266. One suspects she would have cast her vote for Gore if hers had been a tiebreaking vote, but that can't be proven.
 
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OK, raise your hand if you have ever voted in an election where your candidate won by a single vote.





No hands?

Then guess what? None of us have ever cast a vote that made a difference. They have all been equally meaningless.

The paradox of Democracy.

Still, if 600 people had voted for Gore rather than staying home or voting for Nader in 2000, we might be approaching the end of the second Gore term right now.
 
varwoche said:
WA state voters can almost raise their collective hands after the historic 2004 election for governor. (A razor thin margin due to gay libertarians of course. ;))
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Oh but the margin wasn't by one vote so it doesn't matter :rolleyes:

I have reason to believe that my vote for Gregoire was one that was missed during the initial count. That was the first time I've ever voted, and ever since then I'm committed to exercising my right to vote at every opportunity.
 
gdnp said:
OK, raise your hand if you have ever voted in an election where your candidate won by a single vote.
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No, but I LOST an election once by one vote. Granted, it was a very local thing, with about 300 total votes cast, but still, each one of 'em was important.
 
Peephole said:
Yeah, and you get to decide whether the electoral college looks like this:
[qimg]http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/3475/mccainit8.png[/qimg]


Or more like this:
[qimg]http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/7936/obamago2.png[/qimg]
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Thanks you for those two wonderful maps.

Nyal, please get yer arse out there and vote. There is more on the ballot than Obama and Bush. Fer fox ache, man, don't be so defeatist. :(
 
gdnp said:
OK, raise your hand if you have ever voted in an election where your candidate won by a single vote.
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My mother voted in an election which came down to 2 or 3 votes. I can't remember the exact figures and its not on line.

I guess the point is that you don't know that your vote won't be the deciding vote.
 
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The closest election ever for a Congressional seat was won by four votes. (If memory serves correctly. I believe it was a seat in Indiana in the 1980's.)
 
gtc said:
My mother voted in an election which came down to 2 or 3 votes. I can't remember the exact figures and its not on line.

I guess the point is that you don't know that your vote won't be the deciding vote.
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You don't, just as you don't know that that lottery ticket might not win. You do know that the probability of your vote mattering is vanishingly small, especially if you don't live in a swing state or a swing district.

My congressman Scott "I make Ron Paul look like a socialist" Garrett will probably win again comfortably because of the way the district was gerrymandered to favor Republicans. I'll vote against him again, even though I feel like I'm tilting at windmills...
 
Nyarlathotep said:
My guess is it is for the same reason, a high concentrarion of population in one area, and you live elsewhere. No?

To me, I can't think of a better argument for some sort of proportional allocation of electoral votes.
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But then people would whine about the will the majority of voters was being frustrated by a few hicks in rural districts.
Sorry, but population patterns are just something you have to live with.
BTW, I think we also seeing some resentment toward Vegas here that is very common in the rest of Nevada, a little like a great many people in New York State resent how NYC dominates the rest of the state. Not quite to the same extent that Vegas does Nevada but the resentment is still there.
 
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