why does my vote matter?
Many people have said that the reason they do not vote is because they believe that that their vote does not have any affect on the overall election; one vote won't change the outcome. Here are a few cases where as little as one vote decided the fate of an election. In 2012, Kevin Entze ran in a state House race and lost the primary by one vote out of 11,700 votes casted. In 2016, a House seat in New Mexico was determined by 2 out of 14,000 votes. In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump became the first
president to win the election by electoral votes but lost the popular vote. That means that even though Hilary Clinton had more votes cast for her by the American people, more electoral voters choose Donald Trump. In six states the winner was decided by less than 2 percent of the voters. Three big states that effectively decided the outcome of the election were Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, all purple, or swing states. These three states were won by Trump in razor-thin margins, and when added up, about 107,000 votes gave him the win of the popular vote, snagging him the electoral vote as well. That may seem like a big number but in all these votes accounted for about .09% of all votes cast in the election. In many cases, very few amounts of votes have accounted for a candidate winning or losing an elections, meaning that every vote matters, no matter how small it might seem.