So you think your vote does not count?

In 2008 Barack Obama won by almost 9.5 million votes. It is easy to think that your one vote would not have made any difference in that election, and really you are correct. Your one single vote against Obama would have just meant Obama won by 9,499,999 votes. Not even a moral victory there.

But the power of the voter to influence the direction of our government, and hence the direction of our country is not in the single vote, it is the combination of single votes into a block. It is my single vote and your single vote and your neighbor’s single vote.

According to the census bureau, in 2008 there were 229 million people eligible to vote but only 131 million voted. That’s 98 million voters who failed to vote! About 1/3 of the country is registered as Republican. So if we assume 1/3 of the people who were eligible and did not vote were Republicans that would be over 32 million non-voting Republicans….. we only needed 30 % of those 32 million voters to defeat Obama. 

And if it was a close election, it gets even more evident how every vote is important. In 1962, President Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by 112,000 votes; the University of Tennessee gets more people than that for a football game. Think how different the world would be if Nixon had won in 1960. 

Votes for Senators and Congressman can be even more important. In 2008, Al Franken won his Senate seat in Minnesota by 231 votes. Why is that important? That Senate seat gave the Democrats a filibuster proof majority and they used that majority to pass “The Affordable Care Act” aka: Obamacare. Without that seat the Republicans would have blocked Obamacare with a filibuster. 231 republicans in Minnesota who thought their vote did not count made possible the federal government taking over 20% of the US economy and changing health insurance as we know it.  

In 2008 President Obama won by almost 9.5 million votes, but he did not win because 9.5 million more people voted for Obama than McCain. President Obama won because 9.5 million republicans failed to vote because they thought their vote did not count. 

When in reality, the only time your vote truly does not count, is when you don’t cast it.