I think voting matters in all states, given that local politics can have a profound impact on local lives. Even if we think that voting for president is the only voting that matters, I still think that voting matters in almost all states because the sorts of voting restrictions Republicans like are enough to change the vote by enough to matter in a state that allegedly doesn’t matter.
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Well, I think the Columbia thing (from 2008) is the best thing I found and “pivotal” was just for the one state. They got about a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the outcome of the election for a voter in a set of 4 states where a vote was most likely to matter.
eta: and that’s as opposed to more than 1 in 100 billion where your vote is least likely to matter (Washington DC).
It is clear that you think that, but that’s kind of avoiding the question.
The point of contention was whether voting matters more in a swing state. If you are saying it does, it seems you’re going to have to use some numbers in your argument. If you are saying it matters about equally, that isn’t any different from AQ’s conclusion, although you arrived at it very differently.
No, the quote was:
It would be nice if everyone’s vote mattered, not just swing states.
Voting absolutely matters, even in non-swing states thanks to local politics, and even if not for local politics, voting matters enough for rich assholes to stop people from voting in non-swing states enough to make voting matter in those states, too. Unless you can convince me that the actual vote total doesn’t matter (as it doesn’t in, say, Russia), then I’m unconvinced that voting doesn’t matter anywhere where any group is trying to restrict people from voting.
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That quote clearly implies that voting matters more in swing states, doesn’t it? If so, do you agree with that?
“Mattered” sounds perhaps more binary to me than it does to you, and even if voting it swing states matters more than it does in other states thanks to the electoral college vote for the presidency, that does not mean that voting in other states does not matter.
Seems like it matters more than 10000x as much in swing states for Presidential elections.
I still can’t tell where exactly you stand on whether voting in swing states matters more or not. I’m gonna go with no (unless you want to clarify). If that’s the case, as I said, both you and AQ find that to be false, just for very different reasons.
That’s a reasonable take, but like I was saying above you need to use math (which Wookie doesn’t seem to want to consider) to get there.
Say you’re in the swingiest swing state and you have to drive about 10 miles to the polling place. The chances you are the deciding vote in the US election are about the same of dying on that car ride. (in the least swingy state, that would be a 100k+ mi drive)
eta: not just swingy - but place where your vote matters the most/least
No, I’m a Yes.
It’s kind of a paradox. I am fully aware my single vote has almost 0 chance of mattering in my life. But if everyone who believed their single vote wouldn’t matter and went out and voted anyway, it would be a massive shift in our elections. Which is why I am still voting.
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OK, if you’re a yes, how do arrive there without math?
With an elementary analysis. If you want to get more rigorous, there’s arguments that you’re comparing two numbers approaching zero so there’s no real utility to the fact that one number is orders of magnitude higher than the other.
Like should you change your behavior based on these two near-zero numbers? I don’t think so. And I think arguments for why you should vote in swing states are essentially equally valid in safe states. Especially arguments about “if everyone similar to you (did or didn’t vote)” and “they’re spending all this money trying to get you to not vote a certain way”
This is as close to my view as anyone has gotten on this website.
I just get annoyed when people say their vote doesn’t matter in a safe state, whining that a swing state voter’s vote counts. It’s not really logical, but most people accept it as a… what’s that word. First principle? Something maybe like that but different
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This. Don’t think about it. Just vote.
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And don’t complain about not living in a swing state
Yeah, exactly. More than anything I’m uninterested in doing my small part to help create a broader social permission structure for more and more people to sit out by advocating pessimism about the pointlessness of an individual vote. I’d rather do my equally small part to help create a broader social expectation that voting is just something you do each time you get the chance.
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Imagine not voting in the last election in US history, just sitting out this grand historical drama.
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