The Simple Art of Showing Up
“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
Thomas Jefferson
I have been spending a lot of time, in recent weeks, texting and phoning voters, hoping to “get out the vote.” As my readers already know, I want them to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but I would even be willing to make the case that people supporting the other candidates should be out there exercising their right to vote as well. I say this because, while I shudder at the idea of living through four more years with a narcissistic demagogue occupying the White House, my belief is that the health of our democracy depends upon vibrant discourse and an engaged citizenry.
I have heard people, on both sides of the political aisle, make the case that one individual vote doesn’t matter very much. Ironically, they do so regardless of whether or not they side with the majority in their particular state. In my years living in “solid blue” New York, I heard liberals claim that failing to go to the polls was no big deal. New York was so clearly going blue anyway, that one missed Democrat vote was not going to affect the outcome. On the other hand, I heard conservatives make the exact same argument. Many of them felt that, since their Republican voices would be drowned out, they may as well sit the whole thing out. When I relocated to Virginia, I celebrated the idea that my vote would be more powerful. As a state that swings like a purple pendulum — blue on even years and red on odd ones, Virginia seemed like a place where my vote could actually have an impact. How disappointed was I to find, then, in 2016, that despite Virginia’s selection of Hilary Clinton, the Electoral College rendered us powerless against the battlegrounds of the Midwest.
Many would say that the Electoral College is the real problem. It is an oft quoted fact that Clinton won the popular vote by more than 3 million votes. How on earth did she end up losing the election? Three million voters may seem like a lot of people until you consider that it represents less than 1% of the 324 million Americans alive in 2016. Even as a percentage of the 120 million, or so, voters who actually voted that year, the difference is really only about 3%. Still small, but not insignificant.
But here is the real truth. We actually can’t blame the Electoral College for how it all came out. Statisticians at 270towin.com evaluated whether it would have come out differently if electoral votes were allocated in a different way. They discovered, for example, that if the electoral votes had been divided based on the results of each congressional district, Trump would have lost 16 of his electoral votes to Clinton — still not enough to change the outcome of the election. If, on the other hand, they divided each state’s electoral votes proportionally to reflect the popular vote within that state, Donald Trump would lose a whopping 39 electoral votes. But, hold on, Clinton only gains 33 electoral votes in this scenario, because 6 electoral votes would end up allocated to the various third-party candidates who were on the ballot. In such an event, neither candidate would have ended up getting to the magic 270 number that guarantees a trip to the White House. Trump would have continued to hold a tiny two vote majority. The decision would then have been made based on a simple majority or would have been referred to Congress. In case you have forgotten, in November of 2016, the majority of both the Senate and the House of Representative was held by the Republican party, so we can all be pretty sure how that decision would have gone. I hate to admit it, because it breaks my true-blue heart, but the reality is that, no matter which way you try to spin it, Donald Trump wins. Every. Single. Time.
What, then, is the takeaway from this analysis? The truth is that every vote does matter and in more ways than you can imagine. In most of the 2016 battleground states, the difference between Trump and Clinton was in the 10s of thousands, a difference that was easily dwarfed by the 100s of thousands of votes that went to third party candidates in those same states. In other words, those third-party votes were not throw-aways, they actually decided the election.
Do we blame it on the third-party voters? I don’t think so. Perhaps, they should have had a better understanding of what the unintended consequences of their actions would be. But they voted their consciences, and that should be, in a non-partisan world, the ideal way to vote. Instead, we should be questioning why, in a world where 232 million Americans were eligible to vote, only 200 million of them were even registered to vote in the first place. And worse still, why did only 58% of those people come out to vote when it mattered? Whether it is apathy, or complacency, or disillusionment, our electorate has operated under the assumption that our votes don’t matter for too long, and it has led to dire consequences.
We need to vote every chance we get. Not just every four years for president, but every time there is a local election in our towns, in our counties and in our states. Because the reality is, that the local level is where we see the creation of laws and policies that affect our everyday lives. What happens to our schools, our roads and our neighborhoods, is decided right down the street. How our electoral votes are allotted, how our congressional districts are shaped, whether industries and businesses in our midst are supported, how our police behave, who serves on the local courts, where our disputes and criminal cases will be decided, all of that is dependent on what happens in our state capitals. Ultimately, what allowed for the rise of Donald Trump was the results of decades of low voter turnout. Since the 1960s we have not managed to get higher than 57% of our eligible voting population to turn out for a presidential election. And our off-year elections are even worse, hitting an all-time low of 36% in 2014.
We live in a nation, which, despite its numerous flaws and failings, offers its residents incredible opportunities and protections. In return, it asks us to engage in an act that, for many around the world, would be an unheard-of privilege. We are asked simply to show up and vote. As Susan B. Anthony once said, “Someone struggled for your right to vote. Use it.”
Originally published at http://rebeccafullerdotblog.wordpress.com on October 27, 2020.