By Janet Stoica

Your vote matters, yes it most certainly does.  If you think that your vote doesn’t matter, just review two of the closest presidential elections in recent history. The first was in 2000 when Al Gore narrowly lost the Electoral College vote to George W. Bush. According to National Geographic’s website, the election came down to a recount in Florida, where Bush had won the popular vote by such a small margin that it triggered an automatic recount and a Supreme Court case (Bush v. Gore). In the end, Bush won Florida by 0.009 percent of the votes cast in the state, or 537 votes. Had 600 more pro-Gore voters gone to the polls in Florida that November, there may have been an entirely different president from 2000–2008. More recently, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by securing a close Electoral College win. Although the election did not come down to a handful of votes in one state, Trump’s votes in the Electoral College decided a tight race. Clinton had won the national popular vote by nearly three million votes, but the concentration of Trump voters in key districts in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan helped seal enough electoral votes to win the presidency. With a few states having more Electoral College votes than others, our country’s Presidential candidates now seem to solely concentrate on those states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.

Let’s take a look at the Electoral College. When you vote for a Presidential candidate, you’re really voting for the candidate’s preferred electors. You’re telling your state which candidate you want your state to vote for at the meeting of electors. The states use their popular vote to appoint their electors. Of historical importance, our Constitution’s 14th Amendment provides that officials who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States are disqualified from serving as electors.

There are 538 electors in the Electoral College. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Each state has the same number of electors as it has members in Congress: two senators and one for each member of the House of Representatives. With gerrymandering being frequently cited as deeply undemocratic, it is a way of one political party redistricting certain areas of a state to gain more votes and therefore prompting more visits from each candidate to gain those important Electoral College votes. 

Massachusetts has 11 Electors and Connecticut has 7 Electors. 

Most American citizens over the age of 18 are entitled to vote in federal and state elections, but voting was not always a default right for all Americans. The United States Constitution, as originally written, did not define specifically who could or could not vote—but it did establish how the new country would vote.

Article 1 of the Constitution determined that members of the Senate and House of Representatives would both be elected directly by popular vote. The president, however, would be elected not by direct vote, but rather by the Electoral College The Electoral College assigns a number of representative votes per state, typically based on the state’s population. This indirect election method was seen as a balance between the popular vote and using a state’s representatives in Congress to elect a president.

Because the Constitution did not specifically say who could vote, this question was largely left to the states into the 1800s. In most cases, landowning white men were eligible to vote, while white women, black people, and other disadvantaged groups of the time were excluded from voting (known as disenfranchisement). While no longer explicitly excluded, voter suppression is a problem in many parts of the country. Some politicians try to win reelection by making it harder for certain populations and demographics to vote. These politicians may use strategies such as reducing polling locations in predominantly African American or Latino neighborhoods, or only having polling stations open during business hours, when many disenfranchised populations are working and unable to take time off.

It was not until the 15th Amendment was passed in 1869 that black men were allowed to vote. But even so, many would-be voters faced artificial hurdles like poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures meant to discourage them from exercising their voting right. This would continue until the 24th Amendment in 1964, which eliminated the poll tax, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended Jim Crow laws. (Jim Crow laws were a set of state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the United States from the 1880s to the 1960s.) Women were denied the right to vote until 1920, when the strong efforts of the women’s suffrage movement resulted in the 19th Amendment.

With these amendments removing the previous barriers to voting (particularly sex and race), theoretically all American citizens over the age of 21 could vote by the mid-1960s. Later, in 1971, the American voting age was lowered to 18, building on the idea that if a person was old enough to serve their country in the military, they should be allowed to vote.

After the constitutional amendments and legislation like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the struggle for widespread voting rights evolved from the Founding Fathers’ era to the late 20th century.

Why Your Vote Matters

On Tuesday, November 5, pay attention to the swing states of Pennsylvania (19 Electors), Georgia (16), Wisconsin (10), Michigan, and Arizona (11). Their Electoral College votes will really matter. 

Your vote may not directly elect the president, but if your vote joins enough others in your voting district or county, your vote undoubtedly matters when it comes to electoral results. Most states have a “winner take all” system where the popular vote winner gets the state’s electoral votes. There are also local and state elections to consider. While presidential or other national elections usually get a significant voter turnout, local elections are typically decided by a much smaller group of voters.

A Portland State University study found that fewer than 15 percent of eligible voters were turning out to vote for local offices. Low turnout means that important local issues are determined by a limited group of voters, making a single vote even more statistically meaningful.

If you don’t vote, you really can’t complain about the outcome, can you?