Primary election

I did not vote in the Alabama primary election June 1, 2010. Shame on me, right.

The idea that a single vote "counts" is rather self-important. Even with the Republican primary for US Congressional District 5 tally within 200 votes, one vote would not have made a difference.

However, consider the recount that one candidate is paying about 1/5 of $1M to execute. Last I heard he was losing ground. So far though, if the same amount of votes were errors in his favor, the outcome of the primary still would not change. It does beg to question the accuracy of voting all across the country.

If everyone who felt as I did, that their vote didn't "count" had gone to vote, the turnout would have been overwhelming. Would the election have been more expensive?

More importantly, would the outcome have been better? That would be hard to guess. Hindsight is often 20/20 but a lot more voters would have been less informed about the candidates. Possibly the most convincing, high budget campaign would win instead of a candidate whose record speaks for itself. It too often does anyway.

The candidates themselves paint a broad picture of a platform and let the audiences fill in the blanks of what it means to them. This way they sway a lot more voters, having different views of what the candidate stands for.

They also know their audiences and change the rhetoric even if ever so slightly to ring bells on specific talking points for a specific audience, even if it is just as non-specific as their platform as discussed elsewhere.

So as the majority sits back and says, "I didn't vote for him" while the elected candidate makes whatever level of disaster, we're left wondering if it could have been better if everyone had voted whether fully informed or not.