The states that don't matter in America

The US states of Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, all held their presidential primaries on Tuesday. Some of those states aren’t as meaningless as others. Every political pundit is already in a frenzy of counting numbers for incumbent President Obama, or presumed Republican candidate Mitt Romney. [caption id=“attachment_288669” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“AP”] [/caption] As everyone discovered in the 2000 presidential election, US commanders in chief are not elected by the people, but rather by an “electoral college” determined by the votes of the people. In 2000, the balance tipped to George W Bush when the Supreme Court effectively awarded the entire state of Florida to him instead of Al Gore. Gore had more votes nationally but Bush had more electoral college votes. Everyone outside the US, and several inside, scratched their heads as they took a long look at a system in place for centuries. Now, that numbers game is even more hyperactive. Daily polls are conducted that change and measure the potential tally for each side. The website realclearpolitics is best for watching the map, and its past shadings. The crucial states to winning are the “toss ups”, the states where independent voters could flip back and forth before deciding at the ballot box. So those states matter, and politicians are visiting them, repeatedly. The rest, are write offs. And that is disenfranchising voters. Even the most strident Democrats or Republicans don’t really, deep down, want to deny the entire other side the right to vote. But that’s what happens in a winner takes all system. California, for decades, has swung Democrat. So even if you’re a Republican and consider Obama a evil Maoist/Communist/Socialist/Progressive/“libtard”, there’s nothing you can do to defeat him in California. The electoral college votes are already in Obama’s corner and presumed. Likewise, Texas is as red (Republican) as they come and is already lost as falling into the Romney camp. All those other voters, the opponents of the majority, are effectively disenfranchised. Only in swing states do the voters matter. It must be a tad insulting for non-swing states to be ignored from political visits because all attention is on Pennsylvania or Ohio or Nevada. All votes matter, as proved by the election Al Gore won, but lost, in 2000. There are enough millions of voters in the US that this may not be a huge factor in turnout. But for solidly predictable states such as Idaho, or New York, are voters starting to switch off from the presidential choice because they cannot influence the outcome? The electoral college system is not going anywhere. It would make far more sense to have a simple election based on majority winner of all votes cast, forcing both parties to compete to convince each and every single voter. But that’s not going to happen. It is the peculiarity of American politics that everyone can see the problems - the disenfranchisement, the influence of money, the nastiness- but nobody has the will to do anything about it. Only when voters on both sides of the political spectrum unite together to change the system for the better, will there be any real “hope” of “change” in America.