Two out of three registered voters don’t matter in our presidential elections!
During every presidential election year our nation’s registered voters go to the polls to pick their favorite candidate to fill the job. Well, most of them do. Every year there are a fair number of registered voters who do not vote.
For example, in 2016, almost 31% of the registered voters did not cast a ballot. In 2012, more than 40% of the voters who did not turn out!
35.5%, on average, of the registered voters did not vote in the previous six presidential elections.
Another problem, which sadly goes unnoticed, is vote suppression. Be sure you read that correctly: vote suppression – not voter suppression. If you vote for a candidate who does not win the most votes in your state, your vote does NOT count! That other candidate carries the state and all of your state’s electoral votes are cast for him/her. Voter suppression is a real concern but vote suppression cuts deeper and happens in every state as well as in Washington, D.C.
Here’s an interesting example: most of the voters in New York voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. That means that when Trump voted for himself, his vote did not count! Nor did the votes any of his family cast for him in New York.
Another example is when Al Gore cast his ballot in Tennessee for himself in 2000, his vote was also set aside since Bush carried that state that year.
How big is this problem? Let’s look at our previous six elections.
So, on average, about 45% of the votes cast did not matter in these presidential elections. If you couple that with the percentages of the registered voters who did not vote, the results look like this:
In other words, almost two out of every three registered voters do not count in our presidential elections! It happens every time and goes unnoticed by our political parties and news media.
Note: This is NOT a problem with the Electoral College. It stems totally from the fact that we employ a winner-takes-all approach as we translate our popular votes into the Electoral College. The voice of America (our votes) is consistently being silenced due to this problem.
Equal Voice Voting would still count the ballots that are currently swept aside. There’s also a high probability that voter turnout would increase if citizens knew their votes mattered. The number of votes that matter could easily be doubled or tripled compared to what we experience today.
Questions: Wouldn’t you rather be assured your vote mattered in presidential elections? Isn’t it important for our democracy that all votes matter?
Equal Voice Voting can make it happen in your state. Contact your state legislators and let them know you support Equal Voice Voting!