How important is a single vote?
To make the math easy, let’s look at 100 people being eligible to decide an issue.
All 100 people are eligible to vote. If each person registers AND votes, then 51 votes decide the election.
If only 60 people register to vote (even though 100 people are eligible) AND ALL 60 vote, just 31 votes win the election.
If 60 people register to vote, but only half (30) of them vote … then it takes just 16 votes to win the election. Because many people did not vote, a small group of active voters -- just 16 people -- controlled the outcome.
Approximately 72 percent of the 407,550 registered Johnson County voters voted in the November 8, 2016 presidential election. So 28 percent chose not to vote. However voter turnout for the August 2016 primary election was 20 percent. So 80% did not cast their vote. And voter turnout for local city and school board elections averages around 10 percent.
When you choose NOT to vote, you give more clout to every vote that is recorded. Listen to these wise words from
Theodore Roosevelt video.