Got into a debate with a friend yesterday about why I choose to exercise my constitutional right NOT to vote. It ended with me offering to wager him anything that Obama wins DC. Literally anything (he would not take the bet since the chances are over 99%). Any how, here is economist on why there are better uses for my time:
Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.) What are the odds of that? Well, let's suppose you live in Florida and that Florida's 6 million voters are statistically evenly divided—meaning that each of them has (as far as you know) exactly a 50/50 chance of voting for either Bush or Kerry—the statistical equivalent of a coin toss. Then the probability you'll break a tie is equal to the probability that exactly 3 million out of 6 million tosses will turn up heads. That's about 1 in 3,100—roughly the same as the probability you'll be murdered by your mother.
And that's surely a gross overestimate of your influence, because it assumes there's no bias at all in your neighbors' preferences. Even a slight change in that assumption leads to a dramatic change in the conclusion.
For those of us who live in New York State, the situation is far worse. Last time around, about 6.5 million votes were cast for major party candidates in New York state and 63 percent of them went to Al Gore. Assuming an electorate of similar size with a similar bias, my chance of casting the deciding vote in New York is about one in 10 to the 200,708th power. I have a better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot 7,400 times in a row than of affecting the election's outcome. Which makes it pretty hard to see why I should vote.
Let me add here that DC went 90-10 to Kerry in 2004, making the odds of one vote changing anything essentially incalculable to any meaningful degree.The traditional reply begins with the phrase "But if everyone thought like that ... ." To which the correct rejoinder is: So what? Everyone doesn't think like that. They continue to vote by the millions and tens of millions.
So a few loyal readers have wondered what I had to say about this huge dagger of a loss from Sunday (I attended and drank free Snyder Subsidized beer, so it was kind of a wash in my book). Instead of pointing to the obvious problems (three fumbles, one at the end of a first half drive that was returned for a fucking TD effectively spotting our guests 10 points) or more intangible problems (CP is on that); I have elected to do what I get paid to do – come up with bomb ass creative solutions.
All we need is a bad ass motivational speaker (ala Matt Foley). If we can pay some dude to remind our players that they are one turnover away from living in a van down by the river, the relative lack of effort displayed Sunday will become a distant memory.
Dad, I wish you could just shut your big yapper! Brian, from what I've heard, you're using your paper, not for writing, but for rolling doobies!! You're gonna be doing a lot of doobie-rolling when you're living in a van down by the river!
