Not who to vote for, but how.
The President of the United States is the only elected office in the country that is not elected by a direct vote of the people. If you’re confused, you’re not alone. This is where the Electoral College comes in.
You see, our founding fathers did not trust the people (read, rich white, male, property owners) to elect the right person to lead the country, so they invented the Electoral College which would consist of a group of rich white, male, property owners who would be appointed by the state legislatures to cast votes for president–presumably–based on the votes cast by the people.
So, when you cast your vote for president, you are actually sending a message to a bunch of electors in your state asking them to, “Please honor my choice for president.” Every state has its own system for choosing electors, so if you want to know how your state does it, you can look it up.
THE POINT IS that every state except Nebraska and Maine have a winner-take-all system whereby the winner of the popular vote gets every single electoral vote allocated to that state. There is no apportionment of electoral votes (except in Nebraska and Maine). Why is that important? In a contest where a candidate may only win a state by a few votes, all of the electoral college votes go to the winner. Second place? Zip. Nada. Zero.
I think it is easy to see that if the electoral college votes were apportioned, a candidate who could pick up some votes in state he or she didn’t win, could translate that to a victory after all the votes were counted. But that’s not the way it works.
MY SUGGESTION. If you live in a battleground state, where the race is tight, VOTE. It will mean the difference between a total win or a total loss. Don’t waste your vote on a third party candidate (it really does matter), and for God’s sake, DON’T STAY HOME!
SUGGESTION NUMBER 2. Okay, let’s say that you can’t stand Trump, but Biden isn’t your guy either, and you’ve decided you just can’t vote for either. Let’s also say that you don’t like the way Trump has handled the environment, climate, economy, coronavirus response, JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS (especially), VOTE FOR A DEMOCRATIC SENATOR to at least be able to block any more whack-job, right wing, anti-people, pro-corporation judges to the federal courts–especially to the Supreme Court.
DON’T SIT ON YOUR VOTE!
In case you were wondering . . .