Lewis: Sorry, your vote doesn’t matter
Over the next eight months, we will be inundated with a deluge of campaign advertisements, opinion editorials, and other fodder about who should be our next president. Unfortunately, for those of us here in Colorado, and 43 other states for that matter, it is all a waste. The outcome is already a given, and your vote will not make any difference.
The 2024 presidential election is likely to come down to the vote outcome in only four states: Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada. A couple of others like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina might become a factor, but it is doubtful. We have gotten to a point where most of our votes are essentially meaningless.
The U.S. population is roughly 332 million, so effectively 27 million people (the population in those four states), or roughly 8% of the population have total control over who will be our next president. The numbers shrink even further as you factor in that only about 66% of the population is likely to vote, and only 25% of voters remain “undecided.” So, the real number of people that will elect our next president is closer to 4.5 million.
That is just not fair. Our antiquated 18th-century voting system desperately needs an update. While the Electoral College has never been ideal, as more and more states have evolved to either being solid “blue” or “red,” this problem has continued to grow. While the country debates over the next president, for most of us, the debate is moot and irrelevant.
While it might seem surprising given the United States is a relatively young country, we have the oldest Constitution in the world. We have come to look at our Constitution as a fixed document like the Bible, but I do not believe that is at all what our founders intended. In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.”
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It is clear to me that our founders intended for the Constitution to be a living document, one that changes to reflect the will and needs of the people at the time. The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, was 10 amendments to the Constitution. Since then, the Constitution has been amended only 17 times. It would be interesting to think what the Founding Fathers would say if they saw the technology we have today and found out we were still using the voting system from the 1700s. I think they would just laugh and think we were fools.
While we have embraced technology in most aspects of our lives, when it comes to voting we seem to embrace an Amish attitude. Many have to physically go to a polling place to vote, and paper ballots are still the standard. Ironically, we readily trust technology with our money (e.g., mobile banking, Venmo, etc.) but not with our vote.
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Even if we are not ready to move out of the 18th century in terms of modernizing the voting process, we still could update the rules. The most logical choice would be to simply move to a national popular vote. If that is too much to swallow in one bite, we could at least eliminate the “winner-take-all” system and implement a proportional system. It seems outrageous that winning a state by one vote entitles the winner to all of the electors in that state.
It is important that everyone can be impactful in the political process, should we choose to do so, by having a system where everyone’s vote matters. Today, we have a system that is so old and broken that less than 8% of the population can have any influence at all. I am sure that this is not what the founders intended.
Mark Lewis, a Colorado native, had a long career in technology, including serving as the CEO of several tech companies. He’s now retired and writes thriller novels. Mark and his wife, Lisa, and their two Australian Shepherds — Kismet and Cowboy, reside in Edwards.
