COLUMN: Your vote doesn’t matter, and it’s all your fault
Let me explain.
Everyone is skeptical about the idea of voting mattering.
You’re just one out of a thousand or a million voters. But it isn’t the fact that your vote doesn’t count statistically that should bother you; your vote doesn’t count systematically.
To those of you who don’t know them, let me introduce you to my two friends; Gerry Mandering, and Electoral College.
Gerrymandering is the drawing of voting districts in order to make that district non-competitive.
Good job Gerry, this country hates competition, that’s why we’re communists.
Without competition, you get a lot better results. Just ask Stalin, he agrees.
The truth is, legislators don’t like competition. In most states, districts are drawn so that they are either a sanctuary for Democrats or Republicans.
This way neither of them face a tough election. This applies to both state legislators and congressional districts for the House of Representatives.
Isn’t it great that both parties are finally working together on something?
Districts will be drawn to capture the most of either party voters. This results in some really cool shapes.
The first case of gerrymandering produced a district that looked like a salamander, hence the name. Other districts are drawn like spiders, with thin arms stretching out to capture certain types of voters.
One district is even located entirely inside another, like a donut and a donut hole. I like to call them “Homer’s” districts.
That’s most states, but thank God we live in Utah where that doesn’t happen. Here we don’t make strong Democrat or Republican districts – that wouldn’t be fair. In Utah, we do away with all that mess and just make really strong Republican districts.
That’s why all three congressional districts include a pie piece of the Salt Lake area, because by dividing up that pocket of Democrats, it makes it difficult for them to win.
You might say though, what about Rep. Jim Matheson? He’s a Democrat. You bet he is and what’s more, he’s a thorn in the Republicans’ sides. In fact, they tried to change his district so he couldn’t win, but he still did, forcing Republicans to essentially admit defeat.
Now for my other friend electoral college, he’s been around for a long time and did have an initial purpose, but as times have changed, he is no longer needed.
What the electoral college basically means to you is that whoever the majority of your state thinks should be president, gets essentially every one of that state’s votes.
Sort of a winner-takes-all approach.
That means the minority vote, whether it’s 49.999 percent or 4.9 percent of the overall state vote doesn’t matter. This is a good system, because things just works better when you ignore minorities and don’t let them count for anything; democracy works best when only some people matter. I think that’s been proven.
You might think I’m only griping about the electoral college because I’m still mad about Bush beating Gore. That’s not so.
I like the idea that the person who gets the most votes loses – it keeps their ego in check.
One reason the electoral college sucks is because only voters in a handful of states can even hope that their vote makes a difference.
In Utah or in Massachusetts, for example, everyone knows which party’s candidate is going to win. In fact, in Utah your vote for president doesn’t matter whichever way you vote.
But the real reason that the electoral college screws voters is that when the votes of a certain state don’t matter to the president, the state doesn’t matter so much to the president.
Not to say that President Bush or Clinton hate Utah, but neither of them as president have any incentive to reach out and really do something to help Utah, or a Democrat state like Massachusetts, for example.
What all this means to voters is simple. Don’t vote, it doesn’t matter; in fact it’s a waste of time.
What’s really wicked about all this isn’t that individual voters don’t matter, but that groups of voters don’t matter. Groups and types of voters are systematically inferior.
The reason all this is your fault is because you don’t care, in fact if you have made it this far in the column you probably are a freak.
You are one of the few people who cares about what’s going on.
A few states have actually changed the electoral college so that it isn’t a winner-take-all system, and this needs to be done nationwide, or gasp, we could eliminate the electoral college and elect the president by popular vote.
I realize this would have the horrible effect of voting mattering wherever you live, and also this would result in the election of presidents that the people want, but I think that’s a cost worth bearing.
Furthermore, districts need to be based on geography and population, not where the voters for a certain party are, and the only way to do this is to take the power of district-drawing away from the legislators and give it to some sort of independent council.
Gov. Schwarzenegger for California proposed this could be done by a panel of retired judges.
Easier said than done.
Doing this wouldn’t be like taking candy from a baby, it would be like taking candy from a diabetic – a really strong diabetic person. A move like this would require massive popular support.
That’s where you come in. Oh wait, that’s where you haven’t come in.
That’s the reason this is your fault: you don’t bother to be informed, you’re too busy, in fact, you’ve got some real important stuff to do that really matters.
So, the reason voting doesn’t matter is because it doesn’t matter to you, at least not enough to do something about it. Unless you are willing to step up and say democracy isn’t about holding onto power, it’s about checking power, unless you say I want my vote to count, it won’t. Unless you challenge the current system, it won’t change.
Despite all I just said dig this. I was one of those guys who stood at tables yelling at people to come and register to vote, I’m going to be one of those guys who sits around the polling places and helps other people vote, and I’m one of those guys who is still going to vote no matter how ridiculous it may seem.
Maybe if enough people are as silly as me this thing we call democracy will somehow work out.
Bret James is a senior in political science. Comments or questions can be sent to brjames@cc.usu.edu