Where Fun Comes to Die

Most election years I vote Libertarian, because that’s the sort of cranky weirdo that I am. And if I happen to be living in a swing state, people invariably tell me that I’m throwing my vote away and that I’ll be sorry if the Republicans (who I generally like even less than the Democrats) win. This is pernicious nonsense.

It bothers me when people talk about how close their particular state is when they’re making up their mind about how to vote, as if their individual vote could change the election. It can not. The odds against an election coming down to a single vote, even in a very close race, are astronomical. And even if it did come down to a single vote, our election systems aren’t finely tuned enough to detect the true winner at that margin. There will always be miscountings, smudged ballots, Diebold chicanery, and other such snafus. If an election is truly within a single vote, there’s no way our system is precise enough to say who actually won. 

Voting isn’t about personally making a difference. Your individual vote will not, and can not, make a difference. But your individual vote will state your preferences about who should lead the country and where it should go. Getting the opportunity to express yourself like that is a very precious right.

Here’s an analogy that I think is useful. Let’s say that Congress is considering a new bill to bail out the perverted arts to the tune of $30 billion. And let’s say for the sake of argument that I hate this bill. I write a letter to my Congressman telling him to oppose the bill, I write an angry letter to my local newspaper expressing my opinions, and I put a “Honk if you find Richard Mapplethorpe’s sadomasochistic nudes less compelling than his technically accomplished floral still lives” sign up in my yard. If the bill doesn’t pass, it will be because the bill faced opposition from a sector of society including me. But there’s no plausible set of circumstances under which my individual opposition could be the deciding factor. 

Voting is not a long-shot attempt to personally pick the President. A ballot is not a lottery ticket offering a one-in-a-billion chance to be in charge of the Illuminati’s President-picking department. What it is is a chance to express oneself and have your voice be heard. The only time a vote is ‘wasted’ is when somebody votes for their second-choice candidate out of the bizarre delusion that they need to vote tactically. 

(For the record, this year I am voting Obama.)