Or, how my vote for President has been thrown away nine straight times ...
Through a combination of bad luck and the vagaries of the Electoral College, my vote for President has never counted.
I'll explain below the fold ...
In 1980 I was a college student in Massachusetts. I was disenchanted with Carter, but could never have voted for Reagan. (I really thought he might start a war, get me drafted, shot, and killed.) My Dad told me he was voting for Anderson. I thought about it, and thought about it, and finally realized Carter might at least have a chance of beating old Governor Ray-gun.
Didn't matter. Massachusetts went for Reagan. (Yes, Massachusetts went for Reagan.) Things were different back then. So the first of my Presidential votes was thrown away.
In 1984 I was in Maryland. I somehow stumbled onto a Jesse Jackson speech at the University of Maryland. It must have been a complete accident, as Jackson was late for everything and I wasn't even looking for him. But there I was, almost right next to him when he said something I'll always remember. "Everybody says we're behind. Well, let me tell you something -- nobody's voted yet! It's zero to zero!!"
Didn't matter. Maryland went for Reagan. (Every state except Minnesota went for Reagan. Oh, and DC.) The Reagan Revolution was in full swing. And there went vote #2.
1988, still in Maryland. Michael Dukakis, bless his heart, looked just like Snoopy in his tank. Plus, he was going to let all the blacks out of jail to rape and kill us. (Thanks, Lee Atwater! Sorry about the brain tumor. Well, maybe not.)
Maryland went for Bush. Yes, Maryland voted Republican. Things were still different back then. At least Massachusetts went for Dukakis, and he was from there! That doesn't always happen, as we know ... Anyway there was vote #3, down the tubes.
In 1992 I was in South Carolina. Bill Clinton, New Democrat, son of the South, actually won a few states of the old Confederacy. He won Georgia, right next door. But not South Carolina, oh, no. Vote #4, whoosh.
1996, I'm in Georgia! And will be from now on. But Clinton doesn't win Georgia this time around. (He doesn't win South Carolina, either.) So vote #5 is thrown away, just like all the rest.
2000. Don't get me started on this travesty, this disaster, this lost election I regret more than any other. The lives, the prosperity, the international standing, sacrificed to incompetence and cronyism and corruption and greed. Makes the loss of my vote #6 pale to nothing by comparison.
2004, 2008, 2012, votes #7, #8 and #9 all thrown away. Thanks, Georgia! Who knows when Georgia will ever give its electoral votes to a Democrat again. So here I am, 0 for 9 in having my voice counted in the Electoral College.
So ... what to do, if anything? The Electoral College is an anachronism, an artifact of the 18th Century when a group of "wise men" could be entrusted to choose the President of the United States. And yet the Electoral College is serving us well, right now. The Democratic Party has a solid base of support in the Electoral College, and with a few "swing states" a majority has been achieved 4 times out of the last 6. (It was damn close the other 2 times, too.)
The Democratic Party is smart and efficient and can run an astonishingly effective micro-targeting campaign in these swing states. What if all states awarded their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote? Could we really wait to know the result of an election until all those Oregon mailed-in ballots had been counted?
Would we all have to watch campaign ads for the bulk of an election year??