Feeling Good About Your Vote

A One-Vote Oddity

What if?

 

The Vanderbilt University Virtual School Website tells of an election occurring in 1950 that was decided by one vote. A state senator from Garrett County, Maryland was elected by one vote. The winner had 3,080, the loser, 3,079. I don’t know the name of either. I don’t know if one had a distinguished career as a public servant or if the other came back and later won a race for public office.

I just know that, according to the website, one man lost an election because another man had 3,080 to his 3,079 votes. I wonder what became of him—the loser that is. Did he move on to other things? Was the defeat so crushing that he retired from public life altogether? Was the state of Maryland better off without him in their senate chambers?

If he had won and his “stage” had been bigger, might he have become a U.S.Representative or Senator, or vice president or even President? The questions are endless aren’t they? The questions could go in any direction, positive or negative, endlessly. That is part of the fun and the frustration of playing “what if”? We don’t know, but we can play the speculation game forever.

What we do know is this: every election is an opportunity to cast a vote in an election that could be as close as that election in Maryland for the state senate in 1950. Two questions:

 

1) How would you feel if the man or woman sitting in office was not the man or woman you thought was best—but there they sit, by a one vote margin?

 

2) How would you feel if the man or woman you thought was best won, and the margin was one vote—your vote.

 

There is only one way to “feel” right about the election either way—go vote. Then you can say, you did your part to make your city, county, state or country better. That’s the privilege of living in a democratic republic. Don’t take it for granted