Does your vote count?

Has it ever counted?

People have become concerned, especially over the past few years, about whether their votes count. Many believe, contrary to insistence by the media and many in government, that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was not the most secure and transparent election in history. With the 2024 election looming, I think this is something worth consideration. But this isn’t specifically about that. This isn’t even about whether your vote is counted; it’s about whether you make your vote count.

You’re probably thinking, “Is he crazy? What in the world is he talking about?” There is a difference between whether your vote is tallied and whether it counts. In a way, I have always known this, or at least I have realized it for a long time; however, it is only recently that the concept really gelled for me. You still may be wondering what I’m going on about. Allow me to explain.

For my entire adult life as a voter, I’ve heard political platitudes proclaiming the virtues of voting for the lesser of two evils, and campaign clichés claiming that we should “vote for this candidate or that other candidate will win and America will be lost!” In addition to these, we are showered with other shibboleths such as “a vote for a third party is a vote for the other candidate,” or “if you vote for a third party, your vote doesn’t count.”

Over the decades, I’ve watched political campaigns devolve into all-out mud-slinging matches and constant caterwauling about the opposition, rather than anything that says anything substantive related to the current state of the country and government’s actual constitutional role in any of it. Candidates no longer campaign on issues and real policy, nor on fulfilling the role for government spelled out in the Constitution. Instead, they pander to special interest groups and single-issue voters, making promises that they know they can’t keep and that they have no intention of keeping even if they are able. From stumbling Biden to catatonic Mitch to faltering Feinstein and beyond, our government is awash with career politicians and invalids making their fortunes, but not by representing you (a public servant’s salary will make no one rich); they do so by maintaining the status quo. All of the bickering, all of the whinging, all of the vows of undoing the other party’s misdeeds are all nothing more than political Kabuki theater, all for you, the voter. There is a reason for this. It draws attention. It’s provocative. It’s motivating. And it makes sure you keep voting for more of the same.

Every election cycle, the masses are manipulated into voting for one of two choices - two choices which the two major parties foist upon the electorate. They do provide the illusion that you take part in the decision-making process, but do you really? Do you have any say in what candidates run in the primaries? Have you seen how brutal primaries can be for someone who won’t toe the party line? This in particular is a rather unsettling issue, but I have seen the local or state branch of the main parties partake in pummeling a candidate running in that party’s primary because he or she was not the party’s preferred prospect. I suspect you have witnessed the same.

The flip side of the party turning on one who has potential to prevail is the view of the voters. After the primaries in 2022, I attended a local precinct political caucus. That year, running against an incumbent Representative we had an excellent alternative whose loss was, to me, quite disappointing. Very viable candidates for other positions also lost their primary races to less-than-desirable incumbents. While discussing these defeats with another attendee, she said something that struck me: “you have to vote for the candidate who can win in the general election.” I was completely taken aback by this statement and left only with more questions (to which I received no satisfactory answer). “How then do you ever get anything to change?” “How, by casting your ballot in such a way, can you elect a person who truly represents you?” This brings us to the main thrust of making your vote count.

If you continue to capitulate to the party’s prodding, if you vote for someone because you are opposed to the other major party candidate, if you vote for someone in a primary because you think that is the only person who can win in the general election, then your vote doesn’t count. You’ve been gulled into helping the party for whom you voted to gain or maintain power. If you think either of the major parties actually care about you or about governing this country in accordance with the Constitution, then you are either naive or ignorant. Neither of the parties care about what role government should actually play, and what powers and authority is actually granted government by the Constitution. The parties bandy the Constitution about between them like a hot potato, as if one or the other uniquely understands and will adhere to and defend it; yet most of what they disgorge upon their disciples has naught to do with the Constitution, much less anything within the confines of government’s jurisdiction (I’d be surprised if anyone could name a single candidate for the past century who truly adhered to, much less even understood, the Constitution). Both parties make campaign promises that fall outside the Constitutional domain of government in order to grow their base. Neither party cares one whit about you; all they care is how they can get you to press the right button or mark the right box when you enter the voting booth.

It is bad enough that the proles are prodded into punching the ballot for one option or the other. How many have been further fooled by the continued cautions that voting for a candidate who does not belong to one of the two parties is, in essence, throwing your vote away, or worse, that it is the same as voting for the other party’s candidate? For how many election cycles have you tolerated and capitulated to these terrible tropes? For how many years have you been exploited by the two major parties to help them maintain their own power?

I submit to you that, if you vote for someone, not because you truly believe that person’s policies will reflect your values, but because you don’t want the other party to win, or because you feel the ballot you are casting is to favor the lesser of two evils, or because you feel like any other vote is throwing your vote away, then your vote doesn’t count! The only way your vote truly counts is if you are making your voice heard. If you vote for anyone other than the candidate who is running on a platform in which you believe, you are not making your voice heard, you are simply echoing a party or that party’s platform. If that is the case, then your vote doesn’t count.

This is a huge problem with partisan politics. The founding fathers foresaw the foul fruits of factionalism. Many decried the prospect of political parties (I wrote about that here: Who doesn’t love a party?). The product of these problems was evident early on in our republic, as Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story lamented in 1834. Parties use the proletariat to perpetuate their own power. It is inevitable. They stoke tribalism in order that they might continue to cajole the commoners into voting along party lines. If ever we are to see change, if it is at all possible to make such change by participating at the polls, the only way to do so is to vote according to our consciences. If you violate your conscience when you punch your ballot, then in my opinion, the answer to the question, “Does your vote count?”, is “no.” Going forward, make your vote count, and encourage others to do the same.