Burning the Midnight Oil for the Progressive Change Coalition

To the right is the breakdown of the country that the big Red and Blue electoral college maps on election day will hide. In "Revolving Red", totaling 130 electoral votes, are the states that could conceivably decide the election. In "Bolted On Blue," totaling 408 electoral votes, are the states that cannot conceivably decide the election.

That is, this is not a partisan divide, its "decisive state" divide.

Now, that doesn't mean that Michigan couldn't possible swing "Republican Red" if there is some calamitous event hit the incumbent ... but realistically, if it does, the incumbent has already lost. Ditto Indiana swinging "Democratic Blue" ... if the incumbent picks up Indiana again, then the challenger has imploded so badly that the game is lost.

While all attention focuses on the "Swing" states ... I want to look at the majority of the country.

My thesis is simple. Its likely that your vote in a "Bolted In Blue" doesn't matter. Which frees you to vote as you damn well please. In particular, if you vote 3rd party, your vote is a much bigger share of their pool of votes than the respective winning or losing Corpo-Party of your state.It may encourage a volunteer to volunteer against next time. It might encourage someone to run on that 3rd party ticket next time that will boost its appeal. It might make it easier to get onto the ballot next time, reducing time and effort sunk into fighting grossly undemocratic discriminatory ballot access laws to be devoted to campaigning.

And if that 3rd party is associated with some issue, doing better than expected might increase the nervousness of the Corporo-Parties regarding that issue, and afflicting the comfortable entrenched status quo interests is a virtue second only to comforting the afflicted.

Now, I'm not saying you should. That would be electioneering. But I am saying that the entire "zOMG if you don't vote for X, Y MIGHT WIN" is an argument that, logically, under our system of electing the President, only matters for residents of Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania{+}, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Florida ~ and I've been pretty generous here, it may well not matter much for some of those states.

{+ Yeah, I know PA is supposed to be out of reach, but I don't trust the vote thieves enough to count it won based on a mere 10 point lead.}