Voting

Some people think individual votes don't matter in an election.

Thoughts?

They almost never matter to the outcome of an election, particularly in the biggest ones.

Doesn't matter how I vote, Rep, Dem, Ind or write in "Chuck Norris", California is a staunch Blue state that's not even close to turning purple.

Originally posted by Bardock42
They almost never matter to the outcome of an election, particularly in the biggest ones.

So voting doesn't matter, thats a shock.

Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
So voting doesn't matter, thats a shock.

What are you asking. The population being allowed to vote matters, campaigning and/or convincing to vote a certain way matters, actually voting yourself doesn't really matter.

There are grassroots local and regional candidates and issues where I feel it's much more important. The ones where you see the real-time results on the news as polls close, and the margin is in the dozens or hundreds, and a few bus loads of people could swing it.

That said, I've lived in battleground states before, so there may be an exception there. Realistically, though, national elections don't matter for many. The electoral college is, imo, very outdated.

Here is a list of close elections (state and national, in Canada , Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US, some going as far back as 1832) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_close_election_results

In only 21 of them one person's vote mattered....