Why Your Vote Doesn't Count

There's been a lot of talk lately about who's vote does and does not matter - a good deal of which has been aimed at supporters of third party candidates. Well I've got news for you:

None of your votes matter.

I'm confining my argument to the Presidential election though, to a lesser extent, the math works for other races if not the electoral hang-ups.

First of all, thanks to the Constitution and the Electoral College, technically none of our votes for president count. We're not even allowed to vote for President. This is probably old news to most of you and I'll address the practical rather than technical impediments in a minute.

This cumbersome process stems from the fact that our nation is not a democracy, it is a republic. The Constitution itself came into being only via the ratification of independent states and, until 1913, state legislatures, not citizens, elected senators. The states' legislatures themselves have sole discretion as to how the electors are chosen though, as a practical matter, with two exceptions all states pledge all of their electors to the candidate receiving the most popular votes in their state. The two exceptions are Maine & Nebraska who, in essence, allow each Congressional district to select an elector with the most popular candidate receiving the two at-large 'Senate' electors.

The upshot of this is that if you live in a state that is safely Democrat or Republican, your vote doesn't count - your electors are already chosen.

We'll get back to the swing states in a minute, but let me make the point that, despite the value of your vote before the election, if you are on the losing end after the election, your vote obviously didn't count. There's only one President at a time. For Congressmen, we are a winner-takes-all electoral system so if your gal lost, you are not represented. Sorry Charlie.

Oh yes, I hear it all the time. "If you didn't vote, you can't complain." Try to stop me. And how about something a little meatier than stopping into your local school before work as your legitimate ticket to political debate? How about a little research and thinking for yourself before opening your pie hole? But I digress.

So let's say you live in a swing state and your electors are up for grabs. What are the odds your vote counts? To count - really, really count in a practical matter, not just symbolically, you have to cast the tie-breaker. In the 2008 Presidential election, not counting write-ins, Ohio, THE swing state this year, counted 5,721,468 votes.

What are the odds it would split down the middle? Technically (5721468 C 2860734) / (2^5721468) or, using a Normal approximation, roughly 1 in 3,000, a little better than the odds of dying on a bicycle, but not much. The other 2,999 times you've wasted your vote (and your time).

Oh! But what about Bush v. Gore? OK, if you lived in Florida and if you were one of the roughly 300 voters, you might have counted once the lawsuits were done, but those are fairly long odds and, neither candidate got the majority of the popular vote.

Which is my long way around to rebut the notion that a third party vote is a wasted vote.

In a country with a parliamentary form of government, minor parties have the power to deny formation of coalitions. Here in the US, one of the few means of inserting minority ideas into a ruling party is the threat of a credible third party drawing votes away. Had the Nader votes gone to the Democrats in Florida, Al Gore would have been President, but neither party served to satisfy Nader's constituency.

The most effective example of a third party influencing major party positions is probably the 1928 Socialist Party platform which was eventually adopted in large part through the New Deal and The Great Society, despite the party's presidential candidates topping out at around 6% of the popular vote.

Secondly, third-party votes count for more than elections. In Missouri for example, if a party achieves a 2% threshold, they are guaranteed ballot access for the next election, eliminating the costly and time-consuming process of gathering petition signatures. In addition, The Commission on Presidential Debates, an organization run by the Republican & Democratic parties, requires an expectation via polling that a candidate garner 15% of the popular vote to have their views heard in the televised Presidential debates. So in effect, a third-party vote may be more effective than jumping on the band-wagon and just cheering on the major party candidates.

Despite my libertarian leanings, I vote for the candidate, not the party. I view the parties as fall-back positions, not starting points. If you choose to vote, vote your beliefs and conscience. Your vote will be no more wasted than anyone else's.