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The following accounts demonstrate
the value of voting in a democratic society. One vote matters,
no matter who casts it or for whom it is cast.
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| The
Farmer and the Pig |
Once
upon a time, in the little state of Rhode Island, they were electing
a state legislature. There was a thrifty Federalist farmer who
started for the polls late in the afternoon and, on the way, heard
the squealing of a pig. He looked around to see the pig with its
head caught in the mesh of an old wire fence. Hogs often will
kill and eat a trapped pig. So the farmer stopped to rescue the
porker and was too late at the polls. Now, wait a minute. The
Federalist farmer was too late to vote, and, the election was
decided by a one-vote margin in favor of the Democrats.
If the farmer had been at the voting
place in time, the Democrat would not have been elected. One
vote.
At the following session of the legislature
(these were the days when the legislatures elected our Senators)
a Democrat was sent to the Senate from Rhode Island by a one-vote
margin in the legislature. Try to keep up with this. The legislator
was elected by one vote and his one vote elected a Senator. And
in the United States Senate the vote that we should go to war
with England was carried by the one Democrat margin. So the Revolutionary
War was fought because, a Rhode Island pig got caught in a fence.
One vote.
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| Just
ten minutes out of the way... |
Dr. George Benson
of Harding College traced this sequence: One morning in 1844 a
grain miller in De Kalb County, Indiana, was walking toward his
mill. It was election day, but he had work to do and did not intend
to vote. Before he reached the mill, however, he was stopped by
friends who persuaded him to go to the polls. As it happened the
candidate for whom he voted won a seat in the state legislature,
by a margin of one vote.
When the Indiana Legislature convened, the man elected from De
Kalb cast the deciding vote that sent Edward Allen Hannegan to
the United States Senate.
Then, in the United States Senate the question of statehood for
the great state of Texas came up, the result was a tie vote. But
Senator Hannegan, presiding as President pro tempore, cast the
deciding vote from the chair.
So the Lone Star state of Texas was admitted to the Union because
a miller in De Kalb County, Indiana, went ten minutes out of his
way to cast his one vote, just one
vote. |
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Presidents |
Thomas Jefferson
was elected President by one
vote in the Electoral College.
So was John Quincy Adams.
And so was Rutherford B. Hayes, elected President, by one
vote. |
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Statehood |
One
vote gave statehood to California, Idaho,
Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
All those people, in all those states are Americans because
of somebody's one vote. |
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Draft
Act of WWII |
And closer
to home the Draft Act of World War II, passed in the House
of Representatives, by just one
vote.
One vote and
America's involvment in WWII could have been nonexistant.
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Kentucky |
Kentucky came into
the Union as a slave state, by the casting of one
majority vote in the Constitutional Convention.
Had it not been for the one vote,
Kentucky would have entered the Union a free state. If it had,
Missouri, largely settled by Kentuckians, would have done likewise.
In that event there probably never would have been a war between
the states. |
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City
Council Election |
In St. Johns, Michigan,
the race for City Council (two seats, four candidates) was a one-vote
wonder. The top three candidates were separated by one
vote each.
Election results showed Bates with 27%, Hanover with 27% and Huard
with 27%.
Mark Bates had one more vote than Heather Hanover, who had one
more vote than Roland Huard. |
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