The collective ability of a population to vote for how they want their society to be
run, is basically the definition of a “democracy”.
But the United States isn’t a democracy, not really.
It’s actually a federal presidential constitutional republic, where individual votes actually
hold different amounts of power based on where they’re located, and in some cases, may
not be worth anything at all.
So, does your vote actually matter?
Well, it depends.
First of all, the biggest question is: what are you voting for?
In the presidential election you might think you’re voting for president, but you aren’t.
Instead, election day is more like a big opinion poll of the American people which is then
sometimes used by an entirely different group of people to choose the president.
And those voters are the ones that matter.
The basic way the electoral college works is that every state gets a certain number
of electors based on that state’s number of representatives in Congress, which is generally
pegged to its population.
Within all but two states, whichever candidate wins the popular vote receives all the state’s
electoral votes.
But although some states have laws that say electors are required to vote the way the
public tells them to, there is no federal law that requires it.
An elector who votes against the popular vote is called “faithless”, and in the history
of United States elections, faithless electors have voted against the public choice 157 times.
Since the electoral college is technically based on population, which varies year-to-year,
each electoral vote holds different amounts of power.
In a state like California with nearly 40 million residents and 55 electoral votes,
each electoral vote can be said to represent roughly 725,000 voters.
However, in Wyoming, with a total population of 586,000 and 3 electoral votes, each vote
represents nearly 200,000 voters.
That means one voter in Wyoming is worth three-and-a-half times a California voter.
This system is problematic, as it can lead to elections where most of the country votes
for one candidate, but the other one wins by electoral votes, a situation that has occurred
FOUR times in the last 57 elections.
That basically means that, on average, every 56 years, we can expect the loser to become
president, which last happened in the year 2000.
But don’t get too discouraged, because your vote does count in other ways.
Every single state has dozens of important propositions and state government proposals,
congressional and local elections, and other public matters.
The 2016 election has seen issues like marijuana legalization and the death penalty, where
the only vote that matters is that of state residents.
The US election process is imperfect, and in some ways, arguably undemocratic.
But if you don’t like the current system and want to change it, the local level is
the only place to get started.
Fix the voting problem, by voting!
Of course for a lot of people, this isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Polling places are known to have long lines, forcing people to wait hours just to cast
a vote that, as it turns out, may not even count.
So why can’t Americans just vote online?
Check out this video from DNews.
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