In the northwest corner of Louisiana, a candidate for parish sheriff is demanding a recount after losing by a single vote in an election where more than 43,000 people voted.
The latest batch of tankie propaganda is that it doesn’t matter if you vote because no election is ever decided by a single vote. Ignoring the hilarity of the people using collective action as an argument saying that, this is why it matters. Because local and even state elections often have ridiculously small margins
Voting is the only thing that changes the rules. Protests, donations, volunteering, etc. are all meant to influence voting. Voting is the only thing that works.
No, money can’t buy everything. It can only influence. You are not going to bribe a Republican to raise taxes, or a (real, not fake) Democrat to vote for Trump.
“you’re stupid if you think that will accomplish anything” and “they are the same party” is pretty old hat.
Haven’t seen the argument that individual votes don’t matter so individuals shouldn’t vote until recently. Is kind of a step up since it plays to the smug factor
It’s not a witty response. I honestly don’t give a shit if they don’t vote. If they do vote, it will be for someone like Jill Stein or whatever dumbass the Libertarians are running this year, so fuck them.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time this has happened in recent memory. I think in 2018 there was another race decided by a single vote, and it remained a 1 vote lead after multiple recounts.
When the recount takes place Monday only absentee ballots will be tallied again and checked for errors. But they only account for about 17% of the total vote in the runoff race. Absentee ballots are mailed in and are the only auditable paper trail under Louisiana’s current voting system.
I thought the same thing. I went looking and found a whole trail of articles on it. Louisiana actually tried in years past, but internal state politics and bid rigging killed their efforts.
Remember that Kevin Costner movie “swing vote” where he was courted by the two presidential candidates because he was somehow the deciding vote in an election? I don’t remember how they rigged it that way in the story, or what the outcome was, but the premise of one guy being a deciding vote always stuck with me because it can happen in every election; we just don’t know who that guy is because it’s everyone
If memory serves he was dissolutioned with voting and his daughter tried to convince him to vote. She eventually tried to cast his ballot herself (that she filled out) but ended up damaging the ballot trying to put it into a machine. She told him but he kept it secret throughout the movie.
So because his ballot was damaged they had him recast it so they could count it.
At one point in the movie one of the candidates literally tries to bribe him with a job offer.
And in the end I believe the movie ended with him sitting down in front of the presidential candidates and having them do a debate right there in front of him on national TV. They never said who he votes for. They just leave it there which I think was a more powerful ending than I’d they said who he voted for.
Edit: I remember enjoying that movie but never remembering the title, so thank you.
This would already be a dumb, apathetic take… but you commented it on a story where someone… literally had their individual vote make all the difference. You do realize how incorrect and defeatist you sound, right!?
Eh, completely unpreventable things such as bit flips have caused weird things in an election before, so it's not exactly unreasonable to call for a recount when the margin is so small.
Obviously it's incredibly unlikely to change though, and is a perfect example of why individual votes do matter.
In my area there’s usually only a reason for me to vote when something serious is on the ballot.
This last election seen republicans running completely unopposed in every position. My state usually ends up blue, but if it were up to my district we’d have Hitler cloned and raised on Natty Daddy and Busch Ice on a cattle farm with a Pentecostal Holiness church in his back yard. Donald Trump got 82% of the vote in 2016 and 83% in 2020.
The more people you have voting, the less likely it is for the difference to be exactly 1. In an election with 3 voters winning by 1 isn’t notable; in an election with tens of thousands of votes, it’s pretty unusual.
I think the real tragedy is that 21,500 people voted for something and didn't get it. This is my biggest problem with FPTP voting: The losers get fuck all.
Look up constitutional sheriff movement. I’m not sure if this guy is one of them, but a lot of Republicans seem to want to bring back feudalism, with sheriffs being the highest law in their lands. Little dictators who don’t have to follow the law etc. They’re terrifying, as a non-white person. That’s speaking from the prospective of someone whose skin is the only thing I need to be scared about (ok, maybe non religious takes a distant worry too).
People who aren’t cis males generally have even more to worry about, especially if you check multiple boxes (like say a non white trans woman).
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