Why Vote?

When 92 million people cast ballots, a single vote seem pretty small.
Still, there are plenty of reason for voting.

One is to consider the whole ballot. There may be millions voting for president, but how many people will vote in your local elections being held the same day? Yours could easily be the deciding vote in the race for your school board or legislature: two offices that may have a greater impact on your taxes, drive to work, and other aspects of your daily life than who winds up in Washington.
Besides, remember the 2000 presidential race did come down to just 537 votes in Florida -- that’s just one vote in every 12 precincts.

In our history, some major decisions were decided by a single vote, such as the election in 1839 of Marcus Morton as Massachusetts governor and again in 1842, ratification of the purchase of Alaska, the Electoral College decision for president in 1824 for John Quincy Adams, the Election Commission in 1876 for President Rutherford B. Hayes, and passage of the right for women to vote in 1920.

Another reason typically cited for not voting is how frustrating politicians can be. Often it seems like the ones with the best ideas never win. Of course, if people don’t vote for their favorite candidates, they’ll never win. Duh.

Even if you’re a faithful voter, your candidates will lose sometimes unless you’re always in sync with the majority, in which case you should put your talent to work in marketing.

Perhaps your reason for not voting is something like “it doesn’t matter who wins since they’re all crooks and idiots.” Besides disproving that by running yourself, keep in mind that the well-publicized cases of dishonest public officials involves a minute number of those actually serving.

The crime rate among politicians is a fraction of that for the general population. If it matched the overall incarceration rate, then five members of Congress would leave each two-year term to go behind bars instead of one or two.

Frequently, voters become annoyed with politicians who don’t behave in office as expected, drawing the “idiot” label. While a few may indeed by numbskulls, usually it’s actually a case of a policy issue being more complex than it appears from a distance. The more informed the voter is about a candidate and the issues, the less likely he or she is to be surprised. That’s what this site is for.