Guess who 0.0000008% of the electorate is voting for!

Aunt Kathy says I have forfeited my right to complain until 2012. I couldn't decide where I wanted to register to vote--here in Utah or as a mail-in voter in Colorado--and I realized too late that I had missed the deadline to do either. So feel free to consider my opinions illegitimate until then.

Goodness, I'll be almost 26.

So I've become one of those statistics that pundits talk about, and I am, in almost every respect, your typical apathetic non-voter. I don't like the options I've been given, I don't think it will make a difference if I vote, and I did almost nothing to attempt an informed decision (at least in the local and state elections, where my vote may actually count for something), so I would feel a little stupid voting even if I did think it was worth the trouble.

They say it goes PB + D > C... the (P)robability of my vote having an impact, times the (B)enefit or costs of the outcome, plus my (D)emocratic sensibilities that make voting a matter of civic duty, must add up to a value greater than the (C)ost in time and effort I would have to invest in voting.

Obviously it didn't add up. But I do regret that I disenfranchised myself just by turning a paper in late. I was so upset that I barely missed the opportunity to vote in the 2004 election (I turned 18 in December of that year); I felt the same way about that election as I do about this one, but it's somehow more galling to miss out on the opportunity just because I was lazy and irresponsible. Then again, maybe they require voter registration so that lazy, irresponsible people don't make the decisions that determine the course of the free world.

Wait! I am already registered to vote in Colorado, and apparently I can still call for a mail-in ballot. Which means that my voice may still be heard, and mine may be the single deciding vote that wins the great state of Colorado's three electoral votes for some candidate, when I heave a sigh of resignation and check the box next to his name. Three out of the 538 total. And if by some freak chance he's got between 267 and 269 electoral votes already, then I will have elected the next President of the United States. Unless there's a faithless elector, or polling irregularities, or the Supreme Court gets involved. But yeah, assuming nothing like that happens.

In all honesty, I'm mostly just embarrassed about having been so vocal about politics when I was underage, and now that I can vote, I forgot to do it. It kind of makes me feel like a tool. I guess I could have just not said anything, and everyone would probably assume that I voted. But it's going to be too late for that in a few seconds when I click "Post".

--Kevin