I wonder how many million non-voters will look at the results today and reassure themselves, “I knew my vote wouldn’t make a difference.” They are right. Individually nobody’s vote makes a difference. However, voter turnout was about 5 million short of the hoped for 120 million. Five million additional voters could certainly have made a difference.
While we ponder the apathetic, we can say goodbye to the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, goodbye to women’s personal rights, goodbye to more of our privacy rights and due process, and goodbye to healthcare for the teachers in my district whose entire salary does not cover the group medical coverage they are offered. We can say hello to greater instability in the mideast, increasing threats from terrorists and most sadly, deeper and wider division between those in power and the disenfranchised. Who can guess what will happen as this large percentage of the U.S. population becomes increasingly alienated, angry and hopeless.