worldof20something

Does my vote, the vote of one single person out of hundreds of millions, really count?  This is the question we’ve heard over and over again.  They try to tell us the answer is yes, because a lot of single votes from different representative groups of people add up to big numbers.  But what if my vote really didn’t count because it wasn’t counted?

Last Wednesday, I sealed the envelope of my absentee ballot and inserted it into a slot in my apartment complex’s mailbox.  What if five days wasn’t enough for it to get there in time?  What if it got lost in the mail?  What if someone saw the label on the outside of the envelope that lists my name and party affiliation, and decided to help it get lost?  What if it is still sitting in the mailbox just fifty feet from where I am right now, as votes across the nation are being tallied without it?

I will never know if my vote counted.

And even if your vote was not in the form of an absentee ballot, you will never know if your vote was counted.  There could have been a malfunction with the machine you used so that your information could not be transmitted correctly.  You’ll never know.

Some call it paranoia, but I call it reality.  And in reality, something has got to give!

Imagine this: what would happen if they contacted every voter whose vote was not able to be counted, whether it was because there was a pregnant chad or because the absentee ballot came too late?  There would be a massive uproar of angry citizens who thought they lived in a democracy where there voice was heard.  And then things would change.

Until then, we can just go on crossing our fingers that the one million or so ballots that have to be thrown out belonged to someone else.

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