I hate being a Libertarian. No, not because of the Libertarian platform. That, I fully support, and is the very reason I am a Libertarian. What I hate is that my vote doesn't count.
That's right, I said it. MY. VOTE. DOESN'T. COUNT. Not only does it not count, but it counts in favor of the guy I LEAST want in office. Think I'm full of it? Read on, my friend.
But, before you do, I implore you to watch some short videos on our voting system, created by C. G. P. Grey:
- Politics in the Animal Kingdom (explanation of our voting system and its flaws)
These short videos are well done and very informative. Best of all, they explain things in plain language, so even some of my not-so-informed friends will understand!
For those of you who refuse to click the link, but for some reason are still reading, here is the problem, in a nutshell:
Our current voting system is called First Past the Post voting, otherwise known as the Popular Vote. The rule is fairly simple, and seems fair: whoever gets the most votes wins. Let's see how fair it is. Let's say we have 5 candidates, in 5 different parties. Here they are, along with the votes received out of 10,000 voters:
- Blue Party: 1,734 votes
- Red Party: 2,138 votes
- Violet Party: 1,993 votes
- Green Party: 2,301 votes
- Pink Party: 1,834 votes
In our wonderful and "fair" system, the Green Party wins with the most votes: 2,301 out of 10,000. However, they only received 23% of the votes, which means 77% of the voters, or 7,699 people out of 10,000, are now under the rule of someone they didn't want in office! That is incredibly NOT fair.
After some time, as the video mentioned above explains, this naturally leads to a 2-party system, with two candidates that the majority of the country does not want in office.
So how, you ask, does me being a Libertarian have to do with this? Better yet, how does my Libertarian vote help the candidate I least want in office? Think of it like this: Let's say the only 2 parties we have now are Republican and Democrat (yeah, hard to imagine, huh?). In this example, the Democrat has the platform I most agree with (even though I really don't agree with most of their policies, The Republican's is even worse), so I would vote Democrat. And, so would most Libertarians, because the Democrat's issues are more in line with the Libertarian ideal.
Let's also assume that in this election, if we were to hold it right now, the Democrat would win by a margin of just 100 votes -- a score of 5050 to 4950. However, at the last moment, a Libertarian enters the race, and he ends up with 1000 votes (850 of them from those who would have otherwise voted Democrat, 150 from those who would have voted Republican). Now, the race ends with the Libertarian receiving 1000 votes, the Democrat with 4200 votes (5050 - 850), and the Republican getting 4800 votes (4950 - 150).
You don't have to be a math whiz to see that due to the entry of the Libertarian party (a party most sympathetic to Democrats in this case), the Republicans ended up winning because the Libertarians "stole" Democrat votes. My vote for the Libertarian ended up hurting the Democratic party and helping the Republicans!
THAT is how my vote not only doesn't count, but really counts for the OTHER party. How much do you want to wager that some of the money the Libertarians received came from the Republicans?
Home of the Free, my ass.
Don't even get me started on gerrymandering and the Electoral College!
Seriously, my friends, I truly hope you will take the time to watch those videos. They are actually quite entertaining, and easy to watch. And they will truly open your eyes to the amazing fiasco that is our voting system. After learning how much control a few people have over the fate of our country, I see nothing short of another revolution fixing this problem. And that won't happen in a country this size. We're too unorganized, and our collective attention span is t-- oh, look, another cute baby video on YouTube!
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