I mean it. My vote for President and Vice President means nothing. Zero, null, phi. It means nothing.
That is because I am a legal resident of Kentucky. There is no chance in a google (that is really a word, sort of a funny thing that means 10 to the 100th power) that Kentucky would vote for President Obama, and that includes using a marionette corpse as the Republican candidate. It will just not happen.
I would like to have a discussion about the Electoral College in the comments. Please consider this piece just a prelude to it.
But I said in the title that my vote means nothing. That does not mean that my other votes are meaningless. In my district we have a really important race that might be of great importance for the House of Representatives. I am going to vote for Ben Chandler, as flawed as he is. His Republican opponent is sort of a nut sack.
There is not any Senatorial race in my adopted state this time. I voted against Rand Paul (what kind of a first name is Rand, anyway) the last cycle. It will be in 2014 before I can vote against damned old McConnell.
We have off year elections for governor here, so that one is not in play, either. We have a Democrat now, so all is well.
We DO get to vote for lots of state and local folks, and I must say that the Kentucky Democratic Party's website does not make research easy. I have to do most of it on my own, looking up who is running from my county (Madison) and seeing if they will be on my ballot, since the county ones are different than the ones inside the county seat, Richmond.
But vote I shall. It is worth the time and the gasoline to get there and vote for Chandler. We can not afford to lose even one House seat, and my vote really has meaning in this one.
I shall also research the folks running for school board, some county officials, some statewide judges (electing judges is a bad idea, in my opinion), and whomever I am qualified to say "Yea" or "Nay" to with my vote. As far as I can tell, Kentucky does not have any ballot initiatives this time, so that is easy.
But it sort of angers me that my vote for President does not matter. No matter how many Democratic voters turn out, Kentucky is much like my native state of Arkansas. It is heavily Democratic at the local level, but turns that shameful shade of red when it comes to voting for our executive. Please do not ask my why, it is just a fact.
Now, what about the Electoral College? It baffles me. No, I am not stupid, but I have been following politics even before I could vote (I had to dodge a saber toothed cat the first time that I voted), and it still seems muddy to me.
I like the original one in the Constitution, where the Senate of each state chose the electors. Those electors could vote however they wanted, and were not bound in any way. Of course that led to a Constitutional crisis, and it was changed. I still do not think that anyone completely understands how it works now.
The primary system, or the caucuses, or whatever else, now determines the candidate from the two entrenched parties (I also have a problem with that). Then they go to the general election and whomever gets 270 electoral vote wins. Oh, the maths do not work out when you divide the number of Representatives and Senators by 2. That would be 535/2, or 267.5. The District of Columbia gets three electors, so the actual maths are 538/2, or 269. So if a candidate gets 270, the game is over.
But what if it is a 269 to 269 tie? The question goes the the House, where each state gets one and only one vote. That vote is determined by their representatives in the House, by majority. So California has as much (or as little) clout as Kentucky has. In that case, Romney would certainly be our next president.
Well, I still say that my vote for Obama is useless. The outcome here would be the same if I did not vote, or even voted for the shameless Romney. But my votes for races that are closer to home DO matter, and you know that I will do my duty Tuesday. I shall try to get my neighbor to come with me, regardless of how he votes. Just voting is the RIGHT thing to do.
Warmest regards,
Doc, aka Dr. David W. Smith
If I were to cherrypick states (regardless of their current red or blue status), I could tell you that