A Facebook poster replied to my comment noting that “it’s not just about showing up to vote” and pointing out things like gerrymandering, vote suppression, SuperPACs and more. Maybe it’s not just about showing up, but showing up is the most important thing. Here’s why.
I voted in a primary today and asked about stats. There are just under 2,000 registered voters in my precinct and they are expecting 20% of them to vote, or about 400 in total. Someone who gets 201 votes is guaranteed to win the precinct. In order to swing the precinct, a motivated activist needs to get 20 out of a total of 16,000 registered non-voters to show up to overcome a 10% marginal deficit. Incredibly, it’s even possible to overcome a 100% deficit by activating only 400 people out of 16,000 registered non-voters.
Same election if 80% showed up to vote, anyone who gets 8,001 votes wins. A deficit as small as 10% cannot be overcome by activating non voters because there are a total of only 400 of them and it would require 800 votes. There is of course zero possibility of overcoming any higher deficit like the 100% mentioned in the first scenario. No amount of activists or Super PAC money can swing the district by activating registered non-voters unless the margin is less than 400 people.
To swing the election requires persuading a lot of people to change their minds. That’s a much higher bar to clear and it needs to be cleared for a much greater population of people to be effective. This doesn’t eliminate the effects of gerrymandering, voter suppression, Super PACs and the rest, but it reduces them and makes it harder to arbitrarily swing the election to represent something other than the will of the voters.
I accept the argument that it’s not just about showing up to vote, but showing up greatly reduces volatility of results and eliminates several ways to game the process. (Feel free to restate reduced volatility in leadership as improved stability if that seems better.) Showing up turns out to be the single most important thing any one individual can do, and especially so in the face of gerrymandering, Super PACs, voter suppression, and all the other dirty tricks used to sway elections.
So go vote, yeah? Every time.
