I've Earned It

I have been thinking a lot lately about whether or not a vote actually counts. Statistically speaking, you would suppose that it does. However, I'm really not sure anymore. I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist (I have never owned or made a tinfoil hat) but there are some things that don't add up to me.

Like the straw poll results.

When you look at the head to head stats, it would appear that Ron Paul won against each other individual many times more than he lost (winning more than twice what he lost to Romney, and winning more than eight times more than he lost to McCain and Huckabee):

Ron Paul v. Mitt Romney W47-L20-T0
Ron Paul v. John McCain W60-L7-T0
Ron Paul v. Mike Huckabee W58-L7-T1

That seems to imply Ron Paul would do well nationally. Also consider this-out of 71 straw poll results that I got a hold of, Ron Paul had 43 first place finishes (roughly 60%), 8 second place finishes (11%), 10 third place finishes(14%), 5 fourth place finishes (7%), 1 fifth place finish (1%), and 4 sixth place finishes (5%). So in well over half of the straw polls Ron Paul finished FIRST. Interesting. So you would think that there are a substantial amount of people out there who are voting for him. Again, interesting.

Consider the debate polls. Out of all of the debate polls, Ron Paul lost only two of the polls open to the public, one of which he lost to Mitt Romney by 1%. Or consider Ron Paul's record breaking political donations. On November 5th, 2007 Ron Paul recieved over $4.2 MILLION in a single day thanks to a grass roots action plan that was entirely created and run by his supporters. These were private donations, not from lobbyists or coroprations, and he raised more in a single day than some candidates raised in the entire quarter! While that was astounding in and of itself, Ron Paul supporters once again pulled together on December 16th to donate $6.04 MILLION IN A SINGLE DAY from private citizens-that would be THE largest one day political donation EVER.

So where are all the Ron Paul votes going?

Some people might say that the media has a blackout against Ron Paul, citing for instance when ABC "fixed" their online poll results after Ron Paul clearly won, or when MSNBC just point blank removed their poll after the results showed that Ron Paul was the winner, or when FOX News committed the ultimate one-up in snubbary and refused to allow Ron Paul (who got 10% of the Iowa vote) into their debate inviting instead Guliani (who only got 3% of the same vote). The good news is, that was a big enough crime against justice that it was recognized-on January 5, following Fox News' continued refusal to allow a fair debate format, the New Hampshire Republican Party withdrew their sponsorship.

I'm beginning to suspect that my vote may disappear into blackened nothingness...or maybe that's just the tinfoil hat speaking. Either way, I still dutifully sent in my vote for Ron Paul--if for no other reason than to earn the right to bitch about whoever is next elected to screw up our country.