An Historic day: for the first time in my life my vote might count
Today is an historic day in many ways. For many it's the first time they were eligible to vote in a general election, and for some it's the first time they actually voted, and, thankfully, many more are voting the first time they become eligible. (And apparently there's also something special about the candidates, but whatever).
For me, it's not the first time I was eligible to vote, nor the first time I voted. I've lived through 10 general elections since I became eligible to vote. But this is the first time in my life that my vote has had the even the slightest chance of counting.
I don't mean this is the first time my vote has been counted. Like you, I have no idea whether my vote was ever counted. Who knows whether the machine you feed your ballot into counted your vote or shredded it, or whether some other malfeasance added your vote to the election official or voting machine manufacturer's favored candidate instead of the one you voted for. In a system of zero transparency, you are forced to have faith in people that, history shows, you have absolutely no reason to trust. But that's not my point.
I mean that this is the first time in my life that I live in a location where the result of the election is in the slightest doubt. On every previous election, my choice was between adding one more vote to the huge majority that one candidate would win by, or reducing that huge majority by one. There was not the slightest chance of any other result. Every foregone conclusion turned out to be absolutely right. Not in a single election, could I look back and say that my could have made a difference. Never was the 'foregone conclusion' upset.
But today I happen to live in a “battleground state” ... one that only became a battleground state because of Obama's historically different campaign ... but there's a possibility that my vote will make a difference. In some not-quite-impossible scenario, one vote might turn the state's result and the state's electoral college votes might turn the result of the election.
What a great feeling. For the first time in my life I might actually have a hand in the “government by the people”.
But why shouldn't it always be that way. We believe in equality. We believe every one is entitled to equal vote, don't we? So why do we tolerate a democratic system that means that millions of votes “don't count”. Why should geographic accidents be able to turn the result of the election on a few votes, while ten of millions of voters might as well not both to vote?
The most obvious idiocy of our democratic process is the electoral college. There is absolute no rational reason whatsoever for such an anachronism. It is an accident of history that has evolved to to be an obstruction in the democratic process.
Surely, in the country that likes to think of itself as the greatest democracy on in the history of mankind, it's time to have a system where the candidate who wins is the one who gets the most votes!