your vote counts
“Of Course Your Vote Counts” by Stephen Colbert
And here’s the value of that vote. In the most recent presidential election around 105,360,260 people cast ballots. That means each persons vote counted:
.000000949 %
I defy you to find a mathmetician who will tell you that number is less than or equal to 0.
Ok, so we can agree that your vote counts. It counts:
.000000949 %
Swish that around in your mouth for a while. How does it taste? Taste like freedom? Because to me it tastes like jack-off-squat.
This brings up a related, better question than “does your vote count,” namely, does your vote make a difference? To answer that perhaps a more visual comparison would be more illustriative.
Imagine your vote as a deer tick, and the election as the continent of Asia. Do you notice the relative size of these two things? See how the deer tick appears in comparison with the largest continent on earth? This gives you a rough idea of the difference your vote makes vis-a-vis the entire electorate.
But there is good news. Due to the rampant and growing cynicism of people who feel their vote doesn’t make a difference, voter turnout is steadily decreasing. Where this cyciscm comes from escapes me, but what it means that with each electoral cycle the value of one vote increases.
Now, it’s difficult to imagine the day when the candidates running don’t vote so that’s two votes right there. But it’s not difficult to imagine a day when only one other person bothers to vote. And oh, what a valuable vote that would be….
You’re welcome.
Taken from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart presents: America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction, and actually I dictated from the Audiobook. This is a hilarious book, the audiobook is done really well, too.
October 25th, 2004 13:24
Holy crap, Chad. I thought your comment was just CBQ pasting some famous person’s article in the box until I saw your signature. Well written, Chad.
As for me….what he said.
November 27th, 2004 16:45
Ok… Bush sucks… and Kerry is certainly not an option. Here’s the rundown:
Democrats have (over the last 30 years or so) have been synonymous with the “tax and spend” ideology. I’m afraid that Kerry is no different. The “Take more money – Make bigger government – and redistribute that money in a fashion that is good in the eyes of part of an elected group” is getting old. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have the time to review where all the money is going and ensure that it is a good purpose, and that that money is indeed being distributed in the proper manner. What we really need is transparent accounting in the federal government. Then we can judge just how our government is using our money.
Bush is truthfully not too much better. The war in Iraq was unfounded. He does indeed get part of the picture, returning money back the people in the form returned tax moneys, but unfortunately, he has created one of the largest government spending eras in the last century. Anyone with the slightest amount of business logic can see that expenditures exceeding revenues cannot persist forever. But the number one thing that squeezes my nipples is the patriot act. An act that actually reverses the constitution and allows the government unmitigated access to private matters of it’s citizens. It’s like Clipper III on crack. Only it’s much worse because the government can lock you up and throw away the key without having to explain itself or give you a fair hearing. Shitty.
Thus after much debate with my friends and cohorts I will cast my vote for Badnarick. Too bad it will be a wasted vote (in this election). The libertarian party needs one of two things to happen to make a dent. 1) Elected officials fuck it up really really really bad and the nation looks to other alternatives or 2) The party musters up a lot of cash to inform the citizens of their viewpoints (a la Ross Perot before he dropped out of the election).