The Voter and The Gambler

Once upon a time, the media and political clowns had the decency to cut us some slack during midterm election. They brought a small circus to town instead of the full circus. Even that modest decency is gone. Now the full circus is brought to town even for midterm elections.

If you listen to the ringleaders, you'll walk away thinking that this election is the most important election of your lifetime and that your vote matters. Both are lies. No election is important and no vote matters. By the time the election rolls around, the game has been rigged. The only options on the ballots are what was approved by the rulers. Voting is very much like playing the lottery.

Like a ballot, a lottery ticket promises the chance of winning big. Anybody who is remotely decent at math will read the odds and realize your chance of being struck by lightning twice on the same sunny day are much higher than winning big at the lottery. Fortunately for the states that run the lotteries, the state education system has all but guaranteed that the vast majority of people lack even those minimal math skills. When you point out the odds to somebody who plays the lottery, they'll often rebut with, "If you don't play, you can't win!" But even if you do play, you can't win. The same is true for voting.

The reason you can't win a lottery is because it's rigged. This isn't even a secret. Lottery tickets explicitly state what the odds of winning are on the ticket. Minnesota's lottery very explicitly details the odds on its website. Consider the following from the website:

If, for example, there are five top prizes out of 1,000,000 tickets, the odds of winning one of these prizes is 1,000,000 divided by 5, or 1 in 200,000.

You would need to buy 200,000 tickets to have a realistic chance of winning one of those five one in 1,000,000 prizes. But even if you did buy 200,000 tickets, you wouldn't be guaranteed to win.

Like lotteries, elections are rigged. When people say elections are rigged, they usually means through the manipulation of voting machines, malicious counting of ballots, or large lots of fraudulent votes being counted. While all of those are possible ways to rig an election, the rigging starts before any ballot is printed. Most elections have qualifications that must be met in order to get your name on the ballot. The qualifications might be getting a specific number of signatures or an endorsement from a political party (but only a recognized political party!). If too many candidates unpopular with the people in power meet the qualifications to appear on the ballot, the qualifications are typically changed to ensure they can't qualify next election.

Once a candidate qualifies to appear on the ballot, the campaigning begins. Campaigning primarily comes down to spending money. The campaign with the most money to spend on propaganda typically wins. If the election is partisan, the Republican or Democrat endorsed candidate typically wins because those parties can throw stupid amounts of money at an election (and campaign finance laws are often rigged against every other party).

Speaking of candidates, ballots always force voters into a single decision: who will occupy a position. Missing are options such as leaving the position vacant for an election cycle or abolishing the position altogether. Regardless of the opinions of voters, the position will continue to exist and someone will occupy it. By the time the voter gets to cast his or her ballot, their choices have already been narrowed down to state approved options. The election is rigged from the start just like the lottery.

Then there's the issue with the importance of a vote. Like lottery tickets, a vote only has value if it's a winning vote. A single vote has no value unless an election is decided by a single vote. The odds of an election being decided by a single vote are akin to the odds of winning the lottery: infinitesimal. If an election is decided by two or more votes, your vote is worthless. It didn't decide anything.

There are people who have played the lottery for most of their lives and haven't won anything at all. The same is true for voters in this country. This country turned 250-years-old this year. In 250 years, voters have won little of value. Since the founding of this country, the trend has been for the state to claim more power for itself at the expense of its subjects. While a few minor victories have been won by the subjects, they were seldom won at the polls. The minor victors that were won at the polls were as rare as lottery jackpots. And all of those victories were temporary. Eventually the state clawed back whatever power was taken from it at the polls. This is why the dollar has been on a continuous decline, the national debt has been on a continuous (and very steep) incline. This is why a large percentage of the income you earn is stolen before you even get your paycheck. This is why you have to pay tax not only on your income but on your capital gains, purchases, and property.

When your friends, campaign propaganda, and the media tell you that this is the most important election of your lifetime and your vote matters, keep in mind that neither is true. If you want to vote or play the lottery, don't let me stop you. But keep a realistic perspective.