A Political Paradox

In most of the United States, if your vote matters, then it doesn't matter.

Huh?

Let me explain. We're all familiar with the increasingly polarized nature of our national politics. More and more, the country is divided into "Red" and "Blue" states. I happen to live in one of the Bluest of the Blue States: Massachusetts has a lot of fervent liberals and a powerful Boston-based Democratic political machine. The result is that Massachusetts reliably votes Democrat in Presidential elections, typically by a large margin.

Which means that if a national election is close enough in Massachusetts for a few hundred votes to tip it one way or another . . . then the Democrats have obviously gotten completely shellacked in the rest of the country and the results in Massachusetts don't really matter. Whereas if the national contest is neck-and-neck, this Blue bastion is certainly "safe" for the Dems and a vote won't have much influence.

The only place votes matter are in the "swing states," which are not secure strongholds for either party. The swing states get a lot of attention and wooing from the candidates. 

And that leads to a second political paradox: loyal voters get no reward. If you're a Massachusetts Democrat, the national party's not going to put much effort into securing your vote. You're in the bag. And if you're a Massachusetts Republican, the party has pretty much written you off. The same is true of voters in all the other solidly Red and Blue states. You're either taken for granted or disregarded as a lost cause.

If you really want more of a voice, you should try to make your state into a swing state. Vote for the minority party and try to shake things up. Which is more important to you: a symbolic but pointless display of loyalty, or a chance to eliminate the paradox and make your vote matter?

Important Note: no, alternative voting systems won't change this. Stop talking about alternative voting systems. Geeks love to talk about alternative voting systems and the subject just makes me tired.

 

Comments

[Alexander Jablokov]

I had lunch with an engineer friend a couple of weeks ago and he spent a lot of it telling me about an alternative voting system he had devised...of course, that meant that he wasn't telling me about his infallible way of verifying identity online that would clean up all those nasty online problems. Engineers. I was one. Someone else has to help them pick the problem they need to solve, or you get a well-designed solution to the wrong problem.