Anyway, that's what an Indiana TV PSA tells us; back before the Late Civil Unpleasantness, a Hoosier up in one of the far-North counties entered a single write-in vote that tipped the balance in an election (not for his guy, who only got the one vote); and the Representative that won was the single vote that sent the U, S, into the Mexican war, or, as the PSA puts it, in a nice cheery tone, "military action that greatly expanded the borders of the United States," hurrah!
Okay, this is my country and I'm glad that history worked out like it did but jeepers, tellin' me my one vote could pull the trigger on a fresh wave of imperialist war-mongering is not the best possible way to motivate me. Holy crap, if I vote for Rupert for Governor, is the fed.gov gonna find another Middle-Eastern meat-grinder to toss soldiers into on some vague nation-building mission for people who are probably not gonna do anything good with the nation we build 'em? Or maybe invade and annex Canada? (No, no, noooo. Not smart to try that. They actually live up there, most of them year-round. No sane nation takes that on.)
Taking the single most destructive thing nation-states do besides taxation and telling me my vote could cause it, even if I don't vote for the guy who gets in and votes for it, does not motivate me to vote; it motivates me to stay home and clean my guns, worrying they'll decide an internal frontier is the handiest kind.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
9 comments:
But Canada's got oil. So do Mexico and Venezuela.
Jeeper's peepers, but I've been saying all along if we're going to have wars for oil, shouldn't we have some where we could be a little more logistically lazy and pick spots we can walk or drive to? And at the end of the day have some oil?
Got oil in a lot of places already in this country, too; why fight a war when you can just start drilling?
...Why drill when you can reprocess organic waste? But nobody has been able to get a plant up and running for that.
Imagine if the vote for Judge David came down to a few votes, or to one, vote.
Anyway...I've heard a similar one-vote-changes-history story, but it was a chain of events in which one man's vote brought a particular person into a regional/state office, then that person gave the deciding vote on a replacement for a Federal CongressCritter, than that CongressCritter was the deciding vote on...inviting Texas into the Union.
It doesn't pass the smell test, as we can't know if the losers of each of those contests would have voted the other way each time.
Besides, Snopes has collected lots of references to such stories, with corrective details for most of them.
Exercising your right to vote, may be an exercise in futility, but at least it gives me the right to complain, instead of just reacting to the garbage that come out of the bowels of the government.
The problem today, is that a large number of voters, are uninformed as to what they are really voting for. A large number of voters, know more about their favorite football team, than they do about Constitutional American Government.
It'd be a more accurate reflection of the story to say "your one non-vote counts!".
A guy who votes write-in for someone who doesn't get any other votes is, outcome-wise, indistinguishable from one who doesn't vote at all. So in order for his one vote to have made all that much difference, one must assume that (of the major-party candidates running in that election) his preference would have been for the one who lost. Because if he hadn't voted at all, the guy who actually won would still have won.
So it sounds like the message is more like: "Hey, liberals! No matter how disgusted you are with the Democrats generally and your Democrat in particular, you can't afford to vote for the Greens or write in 'Kermit the Frog' this year!" (Substitute "conservatives", "Republicans", "Libertarians", and "John Galt" as appropriate.)
Actually, one's Vote does Count. At least on the Local Level. I've helped shoot down many local Tax Increases, prevented a Hack or two from getting on the City Council, kept the local Library System Up and Running (Yeah Books!) etc.
It's just that my Vote can be diluted on the National Scale.
But there's always the Vote Count of Bush vs Gore that was what, 4,000 or so Votes that swung the Election?
Of course, I take great pleasure in the fact that Ralph Nader took a couple of million Votes AWAY from Al Gore. Kind of explains WHY Algore has gone Enviromentally Wacko. 2 million Votes and the Presidency lost all because he wasn't GREEN enough....
A couple of days after the "Dewey Beats Truman" gaffe, the Trib did a count that demonstrated just one more R vote in each Cook County precinct would have made Tom Dewey president. And the "Eastern Establishment" would have taken charge in 1948, instead of '74.
I will not write a probable alternate history here, but the EA is a primary cause of the mess we are in.
So yes, one more vote in ONE precinct could tip the scales. If you want change, boogie on down to the polls and vote. Even if you only cancel out a vote for the wrong guy.
Stranger
Or a vote for the right guy?
Srsly, food for thought. I'm slightly minded to vote only in the non partisan elections and let the fools pick their master.
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