Does your Presidential vote count?
By Gilgemesh • Mar 19th, 2008 • Category: Politics, RantsFirst, let me state that I am referring primarily to the presidential race, and more specifically the final election, not the primaries. I have always held firm to the belief, possibly provided by MTV in their rock the vote messaging, that my vote mattered. However, I haven’t really liked any of the major candidates running for President. To me, it always seems like a bit of, picking the lesser of two evils. So I just voted for one of the alternate candidates knowing they’d never get elected. Until recently that is.Because of the import of this years race I figured I would put a bit more thought into what I would do. I mean, we will either have our first female candidate or our first Afro-American candidate. Either of which deserves at least a cursory review of my methods. The first thing I did was research a bit about how a president gets elected. To simplify all of the great information you can find at Does my vote count? Understanding the electoral college by David Walbert, where he goes through this process in great detail, the basics are
- Each state has a group of folks whose votes really do count
- These folks are the electoral college
- Technically, they should vote for the candidate that wins the state, but this is not always the case
From the above linked David Walbert article:
the electors are still not legally bound to vote for any particular candidate. An elector could, in theory, throw his or her vote to any candidate!
Sorry, but that bit sticks out. I would think that the electors should go one of two ways. Either they vote for the guy who wins the state popular vote, or they are divided up proportionally by the percentage of the state a candidate gets in the popular vote. But, this doesn’t seem to be the way things work.So, now that we know how the electoral process works — we vote, they do what they want — I thought we might consider what a couple of other people with the same type of questions I have are saying.
- Jensgems has some very well thought out arguements if you don’t mind a little Texas religeon thrown in
- Lee Cantrell has some points that center around the Primary, but they are pretty good points
- This is an alternate view from someone who likes the electoral college
OK, Where was I. Oh, yes, does my vote count. Well, it appears as if this is still a bit more complicated. It seems that the real answer is that it does so indirectly. Most of the time. And furthermore, it counts for more or less depending on where you live.Also from the above linked David Walbert article:Consider three states: California (the state with the biggest population), North Carolina (a medium-sized state), and Alaska (with one of the smallest populations). This table shows their population and number of electoral votesin 2000. The fourth column shows the number of residents per elector (population divided by electoral votes), and the last column shows the weight of an individual vote in the given state — that is, how the number of residents per elector compares to the national average.
| Population | Electoral votes | Residents per elector | Weight of vote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 33,871,648 | 54 | 627,253 | 0.83 |
| North Carolina | 8,049,313 | 14 | 574,951 | 0.91 |
| Alaska | 626,932 | 3 | 208,977 | 2.50 |
| United States | 281,421,906 | 538 | 523,089 | 1.00 |
Hmm. So now I know that my vote counts for more in Alaska, but only some times, and only if the Electors do their jobs correctly. Whew. This is complicated. Thank god I’m not getting into Chads.Well, I happen to live in PA. I checked the voting record of the electors in this state back to the 1992 election, the first I could vote in. You can do the same thing here. All the votes went to John Kerry in 2004. All the votes went to Al Gore in 2000. In both 1992 and 1996 all the votes went to Clinton. So, for 4 straight elections all of PAs electors voted Democrat. Now, this poses a problem for me. I was already doubting whether my vote would count because the electors can do what ever they like. But now I find out that PA has voted Democrat in every election for my whole adult life.While some people rant about their vote counting based on knowledge of the issues It seems like in my case the opinions don’t matter. I should just have started with the PA always goes Donkey party and I wouldn’t have needed to type all this. Anyway, I’ll be in the bar on election day. Let me know how you feel your vote will go.
Gilgemesh is the person your mother warned you about. And, if she didn't, please email me at the link below, we have much to discuss.
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Of course, PA popular vote has gone to the Democratic candidate in all 4 of those elections so why do you feel your vote didn’t count?
Note – This has been edited for clarity:
Originally my response went something like this.
Because I never voted Democrat. And, since PA is dominated by Democrats, my vote is worthless. Why should I waste my time going to the polls. Votes only count if your state is borderline choosing between the two parties. Since our country is dominated by the 2 party system a vote very rarely matters for a third party. The last third party candidate to get more than a trifling of the electorate was Ross Perot. And he got less than 20%.
Here is my added ranting:
Suppose my vote did count. Perhaps I would be more satisfied in a system closer to what David Walbert says they use in Maine and Nebraska.
This seems to be a more fairly distributed system of using the electoral votes. More closely tied to what the people want while still allowing smaller states the benefits provided by an electoral college. You could choose to live in a Republican or Democratic district of the State you work in. A persons efforts to campaign for their candidate could be more focused at the district level. I don’t feel like I can make an impact on the statewide level, but I may be able to convince my local area to go for a good candidate. The issue of course is that I don’t live in Maine or Nebraska. Probably never will. And it doesn’t seem like the discussions of 2000 went very far towards change. Perhaps it would have gone further if not for the tragedy of September 11th, who knows. What we do know is that the system doesn’t work that way in PA right now.
Another secondary issue, perhaps I need a separate blog entry on this, is that the choices we get to vote for are very limited, 2 parties and 1 or 2 other options who don’t have a chance. Furthermore, it seems like every candidate is corrupt. Or, at least once elected, is shown to be involved in some type of scandal. With each passing day more and more politicians are exposed for their wrongdoing. Our past few presidents have brought us the joys of Watergate, Iran/Contra, Clinton had a number of them (whitewater, Lewinski, Impeachment), and the W list is also quite long. How much faith should I have in this office, let alone the 2 candidates I am forced to choose between. But I digress.
What you fail to point out is that it only takes about 7 million people to elect a president. There are 300 million Americans. Only a third of them are registerd to vote. That leaves 100 million who can vote. Of those, only about 25% vote in the primaries. That leaves 25 million voters actually choosing the candidate. If half of those are people who vote in the Democrat primary, that means that 7 million voters all voting for the same candidate, whomever she is, will put that person on the ballot in November. At that point, she becomes one of only two choices for the other 87 million voters to pick between, and chances are good she will win.
When she started out with the support of only 2.3% of the population supporting her by voting.
Actually, it’s even worse than that. It really only takes half the voting population of New Hamphire to decide the nominee many election cycles. Which comes out to barely 100,000 voters.
If you live in New Hampshire and vote in the primary, believe me. Your vote counts.
RefCal:
I see your point. Especially about the primaries. I feel like in a primary I may at least have some say in which candidate is moved forward for the general election. And it is encouraging to see that in PA there has been a large number of voters either registering Democrate or switching to Democrat so that their votes will matter in the upcoming primary. Especially considering that if you are a registered republican your candidate is already selected.
My disillusionment is centered arond what happens in a general election. In the Census of 2000 the NH population was 1,235,786. In the election of 2004 there were 340,511 cast for John Kerry who won the state and recieved the 4 electoral votes. The republican candidate, Bush, recieved 331,237 votes. There is only a difference of just over 9,000 votes there. In 2000 the difference in the popular vote was even closer, only about 7000, with the republicans carrying the win. In PA the diffeerence was 150,000 in the 2004 election. And even greater in 2000, over 200,000.
I suppose that I feel like, based on the aforementioned figures, in PA my current state of residence, my vote in a general election doesn’t really have any value. Perhaps, in the November general election, I will want the Democratic candidate to win, but they obviously don’t need me to take time out of my life to vote for them.
[...] his latest post, Gilgemesh has voiced his disappointment, not only in the candidates, but at playing in a rigged [...]
OK, a great alternate idea is presented by Fade in his latest post. I humbly suggest taking a look. It provides a great laugh, while making some excellent and valid points about candidate choices. Even if they would never get elected.