Chrissy Williams
Your vote is of no consequence.
Of this, I am convinced. California will go to Obama, I have full confidence. So why waste your time? It is precious. You are just one person and your vote will not make a difference. At least, not in this (or any other) presidential election.
We all want to think our vote counts. I am sorry to say that yours doesn’t. We have been convinced that as citizens we can participate in a political process called democracy that allows the majority to elect who it sees fit to lead, but the process is seriously flawed.
Some would say it is our duty as American citizens to vote for what we feel is right. But why even participate in a broken system, where your vote makes no difference, no matter who you are or how many of you don’t do it?
The Electoral College is the flaw in this process. It is a defect of true democracy, rendering her a cripple when every vote is not counted individually, which they aren’t.
When people cast their ballots on Election Day, often they believe they are directly voting for a presidential candidate. They are actually voting for electors from their party who pledge to vote for whomever the majority of people in that state select. In theory, this sounds like it should work, but there are imbalances.
First, there is the “winner takes all” shortcoming. No matter what margin the candidate won the majority by – be it 51 percent of the vote or 99 – they take all of the electoral votes for that state. There is no separating the electoral votes to more accurately match up with the popular vote of the population.
“Winner takes all” shoots equal representation in the foot when all of the electors vote as a block, no matter what percentage of people voted for a particular candidate.
Second, American opinion is unbalanced by the disproportionate voting power of the states. Have you ever noticed that candidates often skip over the largest states, and focus almost solely on the smaller ones? This is because smaller states have more electoral votes per person than larger states do.
According to the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau population count, Vermont had 623,050 people and had three electoral votes. New York, on the other hand, had a population of 19,234,630 people and has 31 electoral votes.
This means that Vermont has one electoral vote for every 207,683 people, while New York has an electoral vote for every 620,472 people.
This being weighed out, the votes of citizens from the less-populated states technically count more than the votes of citizens of larger states. According to this notion, with California being the largest state in the United States, our votes matter the least of any other state.
The American Bar Association once called the Electoral College “archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect and dangerous.” It is a process that is unnecessary and undemocratic and should be done away with if democracy is ever to function the way it is intended. This is not to say your voice isn’t heard in local elections, where a single vote can be of much more importance in the end result than it ever would in a presidential election.
As for the presidential horse-and-pony show, doesn’t it make more sense to count each individual vote and then determine the winner by whoever gets the majority? If we counted votes like this, Al Gore and John Kerry would have won in 2000 and 2004. It would have been fair – but that is not how the system works, and unfortunately the Electoral College is constitutional.
We already know California is a blue, democratic state. We already know whom our electors will select. It wouldn’t matter if all 23,000 students of Pierce College neglected to vote on Nov. 4. It wouldn’t matter if all 23,000 students voted for John McCain. California would still go to Barack Obama.
Consider all of this when election time rolls around – is voting the best way to spend your precious time? Because until the Electoral College is abolished, your vote – especially if you are a Californian – is of no consequence.
Chrissy Williams ()