Spring Break
Are you sure that you really wanna vote?
Bryan Murphy
Issue date: 11/3/08 Section: Election Special
Ah, Election Day, Nov. 4. A Tuesday, the end of the grueling attack-ad crucible, a workday, the single-most important date in democracy for the last 40 years - or something to that effect. So, Huskies, are you going to do it? Will a respectable number of you go to the polls?
I, for one, should certainly hope not. I would hope most of the young scholars herein gathered at this institution of higher learning, these college students with elementary statistics and high-school social studies rattling around in their skulls, would be capable of realizing, well, why the hell should he vote?
What is it that drives people to the polls on the day of presidential elections? Maybe it is the certainty that their ineffectual gesture of political expression will amount to nothing, or perhaps it is the mere love of standing in queues - it is even a simple inability to grasp basic probability theory.
There's the electoral college, of course, which ought to be old hat - by now, most Americans have hopefully made their peace with the fact that their 21st-century world superpower is shackled beneath a series of archaic rules made up for the benefit of white, male farmers. All of those Americans living outside of the few crucial swing states in this election ought to have known ahead of time that their presidential ballot was effectively worthless; that's grade-school stuff.
But wait! What about state, county, and town-level elections - my vote counts in those, does it not? And, of course, there are those who live in "swing" states - they, too, are presumed to be decisive electors.
Sadly, that isn't the case. The victory of Joe Courtney in Storrs' district during the previous election cycle was seen as proof of the potential importance of a single voter - Courtney, after all, won by 83 votes! However, that still means that no matter which way you did or might have voted in that election, your vote still would not have made a difference; if you'd voted for The Other Guy, Joe still would've won by 83 votes.
I, for one, should certainly hope not. I would hope most of the young scholars herein gathered at this institution of higher learning, these college students with elementary statistics and high-school social studies rattling around in their skulls, would be capable of realizing, well, why the hell should he vote?
What is it that drives people to the polls on the day of presidential elections? Maybe it is the certainty that their ineffectual gesture of political expression will amount to nothing, or perhaps it is the mere love of standing in queues - it is even a simple inability to grasp basic probability theory.
There's the electoral college, of course, which ought to be old hat - by now, most Americans have hopefully made their peace with the fact that their 21st-century world superpower is shackled beneath a series of archaic rules made up for the benefit of white, male farmers. All of those Americans living outside of the few crucial swing states in this election ought to have known ahead of time that their presidential ballot was effectively worthless; that's grade-school stuff.
But wait! What about state, county, and town-level elections - my vote counts in those, does it not? And, of course, there are those who live in "swing" states - they, too, are presumed to be decisive electors.
Sadly, that isn't the case. The victory of Joe Courtney in Storrs' district during the previous election cycle was seen as proof of the potential importance of a single voter - Courtney, after all, won by 83 votes! However, that still means that no matter which way you did or might have voted in that election, your vote still would not have made a difference; if you'd voted for The Other Guy, Joe still would've won by 83 votes.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
not true
posted 11/04/08 @ 6:43 AM EST
i know a 1000 people in ny who won't vote because we're a blue state and their vote won't count. what if every republican in ny decided they didnt care if they counted, they wanted to vote? and every democrat decided they didnt care, they were confident it was going to go blue? we'd go red. (Continued…)
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