Friday, October 19, 2012

Make Your Vote Count


Guess what, Washingtonians...

No matter who YOU vote for, all 12 of Washington's electoral votes will go to Obama, as they have every time since Reagan left office.

So as long as your vote won't change the outcome of THIS election, why not vote for MORE CHOICE in future elections? It doesn't even matter if you like Gary Johnson, or the Libertarian party. If any third party makes a significant showing in the election, it's going to make an impact on future elections.

So you dispute the inevitability of the outcome. Certainly that is the weakest point in my argument. But look at it this way. In the 20th and 21st century (at least; that's as far as I checked) Washington's electoral votes have never mattered. In other words, the overall outcome has never been so close that Washington's votes, having gone the other way, would have changed the outcome of the election. That means that no Washingtonian vote for president has ever counted for anything. In 2000 (Bush vs Gore) it almost counted. If Gore had won another small swing state (most notably New Hampshire where Bush won by 1.27% but also Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee where Bush won by 3-4%) but not a large one like Florida (because their 25 electoral votes would have created a majority that our 11 could not have overcome) you could say our electoral votes had counted because it would have made a difference. But alas, Bush won and our votes for Gore didn't make a difference. Bottom line if YOUR vote changes the outcome in Washington (i.e. your candidate wins by 1 vote) AND our electoral votes change the outcome overall (i.e. yo0r candidate wins by fewer than 24 electoral votes) then I'm wrong and your vote counts. The odds against that happening are extremely high though.