Quote:
Originally Posted by woj
without your contribution, it would have been 501, resulting in Gore still not winning... so the fact that you voted made no difference at all, you wasted an hour of your time + $3 in gas... but at least you left with a warm and fuzzy feeling that you participated in democracy, I guess that counts for something... 
...but don't get me wrong, you should all vote... (I'm certainly going to vote even though IL has been D by a wide margin for decades...  ) |
Like you said, the odds of it coming down to 1 vote are nearly impossible. However, 500 votes when 5.835 million were cast is about as close as you can get. That means if just one out of ever 11,650 voters (roughly) decided to blow off the election, or vote a different way, we could have had a different result.
One actual vote likely isn't going to change an election, but every vote does matter when it gets close. If one vote didn't matter during there wouldn't have been teams of lawyers on hand during the recount looking at each individual ballot and arguing whether or not it should be allowed to count.
I would argue that many politicians want people not to vote regardless of what they say. The fewer voters there are the fewer people they have to convince.