Last Day to Register
In case the small army of volunteers wandering about the city haven't made it out to your dank cave, today is the last day to register or update your voting records if you want to participate in the Pennsylvania presidential primary on April 22nd. This might not be terribly exciting for the Republicans, but Democrats should be peeing their pants in anticipation of the chance to cast a vote in a contested primary for the first time since Jesus created dinosaurs.
Try not to let the fact that the Democratic nomination is going to be decided by the superdelegates dampen your spirits, guys.
I find it absurdly fascinating that, in a close contest, where every single vote should theoretically be invaluable, the Democratic party has found a way to make individual voters irrelevant.
2 comments:
I followed the link from Dispatches. Looks like a fun blog.
If I may comment on "every vote being invaluable." In reality, the more votes that are cast, the less valuable each one becomes. It's just a simple mathematical function of the ratio of your or my vote to the total votes cast.
It's not a happy thought, but as it works out, the more successful democracy is, the less my participation matters. That's why we're so desperate to teach our kids that voting is their civic duty-hopefully they'll never find out the truth and all decide to stay home!
I have to disagree about the value of each vote being diluted simply by a big turnout, though. Shouldn't the "power" of each vote really be measured by the difference between the two totals?
In a landslide situation, the individual votes count for very little, since a few (or even a lot) more in either direction wouldn't have changed the outcome. Each vote cast is a small percentage of the difference between the totals.
In a close race, though, doesn't each individual vote matter more? If the difference between the winner and the loser is only a few hundred votes, then each vote either way represents a much larger percentage of the difference. Wouldn't that make each vote, and each voter, more powerful?
Thanks for the comment, BTW.
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