What’s In a Vote?

Your Vote Counts — But Not In the Way You Might Think

We are fast approaching Election Day, when millions of Americans will choose the presidential candidate that they think will do the best job — at keeping another candidate from winning the election. The Electoral College will then vote based on the results in each state, and elect the next President of the United States.

Almost all voters fear the consequences of electing one of the two major party candidates, and many dislike both. Yet most voters believe that they have no choice other than to pick one of two objectionable candidates. The next president, chosen via our democratic voting process, is expected to enter office with the lowest favorability rating in U.S. history.

However, taking Illinois as an example: Four candidates for president will appear on the ballot. Write-in votes will be counted for an additional eighteen candidates. This means that Illinois voters actually have twenty-two possible choices, plus the option of leaving their presidential vote blank. Why do so few plan to take advantage of these choices?

The common wisdom is that any vote for a third-party or independent candidate is a “wasted vote.” The candidate will not win, so the vote doesn’t matter. Worse — that vote could have been used to help (or hurt) a candidate who might actually win.

However, there is a major problem with this argument. Quite a lot of voters have already voted for a losing candidate. Many have done so repeatedly, election after election.

Going back to Illinois: In every presidential election since 1992, Illinois has been a “safe” state for the Democratic candidate. Yet in every one of those six elections, at least 34 percent of Illinois voters selected the Republican candidate. Nationwide, an average 25 percent of all voters in those elections selected a candidate who lost in their state by a margin of more than 10 percent. In the 2012 election, over 31 million voters chose a candidate for president that was virtually guaranteed to lose their state. These voters did not consider their votes to be wasted, or mere “protest votes” against the expected winner. They were all real, meaningful votes — votes for a preferred candidate.

In this election, many Americans plan to use their vote to keep an unacceptable candidate from winning. They are relying on many other voters doing the same thing. However, each person has only one vote. One vote will never decide the election, or even a single state. In the 2000 election, the pivotal state of Florida was famously won by a margin of only 537 votes. If you had voted in Florida, would your vote have mattered more in determining the outcome of the election? Technically, yes — but it would still have represented only 0.2% of the votes needed to change the outcome. Additionally, the situation where a state is won by less than 1,000 votes is historically rare — occurring only 6 times in the last 100 years. Voting strategically is mathematically baseless.

The only way not to waste your vote is to recognize what a vote is, and what makes it meaningful. It’s something we should all know intuitively, but bears repeating. A vote is one person’s preference. Millions of votes get added up, and the candidate most voters prefer is elected. One person’s vote is that person’s chance to have their preference counted. Nothing more, nothing less.

So if you are disappointed by the major party candidates this year, give the other options an honest look. The internet makes it easier than ever before to find out if one of them does deserve your vote. Don’t waste your vote on a candidate you don’t like — vote your conscience.

(source for voting data: www.fec.gov/pubrec/electionresults.shtml)