Why Chances Are Good Your Vote in the 2012 Presidential Elec

[Riddick]

Excerpted from an article by Jim Brown at gcnlive.com:

The current presidential election is certainly one of the most important elections in modern history.

But if you live in strong red states or blue states, your vote is looked upon as irrelevant to the process. Your say on who will win American Idol has more influence than who will be the next president of the United States.

The South as a whole has been written off as one big “red state,” which means, for all practical purposes, the vote of a citizen there does not count. The same can be said of the majority of states in the U.S. You might as well write in “none of the above” or leave a hanging chad. Why?

Look no further than the Electoral College. We are about to elect our country’s and the world’s most powerful leader, but the system we have in place causes us to abdicate our right to have our vote count. The next president will more than likely be decided in just a hand full of states.
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Under the present system, the Electoral College rules require that all the state’s electoral votes go to the winner, no matter how close the election might have been... In fact, it is mathematically possible for one of the candidates to get 49% of the popular vote and 100% of electoral votes. Go figure.
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In a state like Texas, where the republican nominee will easily win, or a state like New York, where President Obama is a cinch, why even vote for president?... When it comes to other statewide races on the ballot, like Governor or U.S. Senator, we use the popular vote, which is what you would expect in a democracy. So why, in the presidential election do we have an electoral system that allows voters in the majority of the states to be disenfranchised?
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The system in place was confected in the early days of the republic by our founders, where electors were supposed to be independent agents exercising their best judgment in choosing a presidential candidate from a list of several contenders. Why? Because the Framers of the Constitution, our Founding Fathers, the champions of democracy, did not trust the voters to make an intelligent choice.

Check out these quotes from the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

“The extent of the country renders a popular vote impossible, that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the candidates.” Delegate George Mason, July 17, 1787.

“A popular election in this case is radically vicious. The ignorance of the people would put it in the power of some one set of men and throughout the Union, and acting in concert, to delude them into any appointment.” Delegate Elbridge Gerry. July 25, 1787.

“The people are uninformed, and would be misled by a few designing men.” Delegate Samuel Johnson, July 19, 1787.

So what this all comes down to is that the Founding Fathers were trying their best to insulate the selection of the president from the “whims” of the public.
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From the perspective of both major party candidates, issues in red and blue states will be irrelevant in their coming campaigns. There is simply no political capital to gain by visiting these states, or speaking about their state and regional issues.
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By being so out of the mix, just what else are red and blue states missing? ... In politically irrelevant states, voters are left out of the national political bombardment that is taking place in the likes of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, where those voters are taught that the republican nominee is a Bush clone and that Obama will continue to socialize the country. Besides those political commercials paid for by state and local candidates, all we will get are ads about bladder control and erectile dysfunction.

There are a number of reforms being considered for future elections. A proportional electoral vote by congressional districts is as compromise solution that makes sense. In the meantime, don’t forget to go vote for a number of candidates and propositions on the ballot when the national election rolls around... Your vote might make the difference in many of these local and state races.

But in this election, depending on where you live, your vote for president really could be irrelevant.