Your Vote Doesn't Count. Make Your Vote Count.
We need to be open about how broken our system is so we can fix it.
Hello and happy new year!
Yesterday’s issue of a popular Democratic-leaning newsletter that some of you subscribe to went out under the title “Every vote counts.” The author, Robert Hubbell, scolds Democratic consultants and journalists—David Plouffe and Chris Hayes are his examples—for telling their audiences that just a small number of voters in a few swing states (seven, he says they said) will choose our next president.
I’ve no desire to pick on Hubbell. He is, as he graciously describes Hayes, “smart, fair, and temperate” and “dedicat[ed] to democracy.” I write to you about his argument because it exemplifies a self-defeating way of thinking that is much too common among smart, fair, temperate Democrats.
When TV pundits and personalities say that voters in a few swing states will choose our next president, they’re simply speaking the truth about how our system works. Voters in non-swing states aren’t literally, mathematically, irrelevant to the outcome of the election. But where you live determines how much your vote matters, and the disparity in voting power based on where you live is dramatic and often decisive. This isn’t the kind of truth we may enjoy hearing and thinking about. It’s a grim truth about a structural defect in our Constitution, the defect that gave us disastrous popular-vote-losing, far-right presidents in 2000 and 2016, and nearly did so again in 2020. But it’s the truth nonetheless, and it defines the 2024 contest for president.
So why shouldn’t people talk about it? Because, in a word, it’s a downer. Talking about the excessive power of swing state voters, the argument goes, could dishearten Democrats in blue states, leading them to sit out the election, throwing those states to Republicans too. Or forlorn Democrats in non-swing states might skip voting in elections for other offices that are competitive, throwing non-presidential races to Republicans. Or Dems in places where there aren’t any competitive general elections at all (there are a lot of these places), bummed out by what they heard on TV, might act super glum when they talk to their friends and connections in swing states, causing them to stay home, too. Vicarious disenfranchisement via buzzkill.
Please don’t support denialism for reasons like these! Swing state voters decide who becomes president, and it’s important to vote, wherever you live. There’s no contradiction between those ideas. People are capable of absorbing both. We need people to absorb both.
Supporters of democracy and freedom are losing in American politics. We are losing because of structural bias in our election system, especially through the Electoral College, the generator of swing states.
To stop losing and start making sustained progress towards a better world, we must remove the bias. To remove the bias, we need to create a popular movement among people who support democracy and freedom. To create that movement, those people need to be aware that the bias exists and how powerful it is.
Thanks for reading. More on how to remove the bias coming up.
✌️
David