Help debunk, please?

Factual Questions
1

I got this from a guy in my Pol Sci class today, and I wanted to debunk it. He gave it to me because I argued that in an ideal republic or democracy, everyone would realize that their vote was inconsequential, yet still be driven to vote. This would be ideal because the person would be more likely to vote “truthfully,” that is, vote for the person they actually believe in, instead of simply voting party-line, or for the person who they believed to be most likely to win. Only a quick summary, that subject is for GD.

I’m pretty sure we’ve done it before, but I can’t find the thread.

One vote gave America the English language instead of German. (We never even had a vote for a language, right?)

One vote brought Texas into the Union.

One vote saved President Andrew Johnson from impeachment.

One vote gave Rutheford B Hayes the Presidency. (Vote found on floor story, right?)

One vote gave Adolph Hitler leadership of the Nazi Party.

One vote passed the selective service act.

One vote per precinct elected John F. Kennedy President.

In Fullerton, CA, a Deomcratic candidate for the State of CA’s legislature lost by ten votes in a primary election where 32,000 votes were cast.

One vote gave Oliver Cromwell control of England

One vote caused Charles I of England to be executed

One vote elected Marcus Morton Gov of Mass.

One vote changed France from a monarchy to a republic

Alaska-centric:

Jay Hammond won the nomination for Governor over Walter Hinckle in the primary by just 98 votes. (78)

One vote elected Tim Kelley to his Senate seat in District F. (78)

Two votes gave the nomination for State Senate in District J to David McCracken in the primaries. (82)

One vote gave Mary Ratcliff the nomination for State Rep of House Dist. 12 in the primaries (84)

17 out of 14389 elected Rick Uehling Senator from Dist H, seat B (86)

5 votes gave Al Vezey the nomination for State Rep for House Dist 32 in the primary (92)

1.1 votes per precinct elected Tony Knowles as Gov. and Fran Ulmer as Lt. Gov. out of 216668 cast (94)

One vote gave Ann Spohnholz the nom. for State Rep of House Dist. 21 (96)

Come on! This crap can’t all be true!

Besides, don’t you have to win by X%?

Help!

–Tim

2

At this moment yours is the only post on this thread. Let’s see how many dopers mail this snopes link simultaneously
http://www.snopes.com/spoons/fracture/onevote.htm

3

The other way to look at this, (which is, of course pure BS in it’s own right) is that EVERY election is won by one vote… all the rest are just extra padding
:smiley:

4

Your skepticism is well-founded. Just in case you don’t have time to go through the entire Snopes article, here’s a quick summary. Nearly every item on the list is either completely false or doubtful.

Official language: What actually happened was that a group of German immigrants requested that certain government documents be printed in German as well as English. The legislature discussed it but was unable to reach a decision. They held a vote to determine whether to consider the matter again at a later date, and this was the measure that was defeated by one vote. How an additional printing of a few documents got somehow equated to an official language for the entire country, I’ll never know.

Texas: There were two ballots on the issue. The House ballot passed by a considerable margin, while the Senate passed by two votes, not one.

Rutherford B. Hayes: While he won by one electoral vote, he never would have had a chance had several electoral votes (20, IIRC) not been in dispute. What happened was that a 15-person committee eventually voted to decide who to give the votes to, and because a majoriy of the members were from Hayes’ party, he won. The whole process was so incredibly dishonest, however, that the credit for his victory really should go to governmental corruption and the disorganized state of post-Civil War America than those disputed votes.

Adolph Hitler: Wrong, wrong, WRONG. The vote was 533-1. One vote prevented him from getting a unanimous vote, but he didn’t need a unanimous vote, just a majority.

Selective Service: It was already in place well well before World War 2. It was a measure to extend the length of a tour of duty for draftees (from one year to three, IIRC) that passed by a single vote. No vote was ever needed to preserve the system itself. Ironically, in the next major US war (the Vietnam War), they military went back to one-year tours.

Oliver Cromwell/Charles I: Cromwell took over the country the way most other rules of the time did: by conquest. No vote was ever held. It’s also very doubtful that he ever needed any kind of vote to order anyone executed.

John F. Kennedy: The biggest problem with this one is that both his and Richard Nixon’s factions stuffed so many ballots, it’s impossible to determine whether one, ten, or a hundred votes would have made any difference. Anyway, what about the results in the other 49 states? Like the Hayes election, I’d consider this case groundless even if it’s technically true.

Likewise, France pretty much sent the entire ruling class to the guillotine after the revolution, so there really was no way the monarchy could have survived, vote or no…and of course, a fellow by the name of Napoleon made it all moot not long afterward.

As for Andrew Johnson (this one is true), yeah, he survived, but with the writing pretty much on the wall he declined to run for a second term anyway, so it’s debatable whether that one vote really had that big an impact on history.

My point (and Snopes’) is that getting out the vote, while admirable, does not excuse making up or trumping up facts. It shouldn’t take such measures to get out the vote, anyway.

5

The Hayes-Tilden election is worth looking up, if you are discouraged with the state of politics today. It was an extremely filthy campaign, on both sides, and the election was attended by massive fraud. When the electoral college convened the results in 4 states were in dispute. Although he was the definite winner in the popular vote totals, Tilden was one electoral vote short of the required number without the votes from the 4 disputed states. They eventually appointed a commission of 15 to determine the results. 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans were chosen, and there was much debate about who to choose for the 15th. They finally settled on a judge who, though Republican, was felt to be capable of being impartial. At the end of the day, the commission voted 8-7 right along party lines to award the electoral votes of all 4 states to Republican Hayes.

6

Geez, I’m a freaking moron. I send everyone to Snopes but myself.

Consider the case closed, and thanks, guys.

I’ll try not to be so quick to give up next time. :smiley:

–Tim

7

Besides the point that the cases mentioned are not true, there is one other thing which is that they are all votes by rather small groups of people. They are not popular votes by millions. So they might be comparable to your voting at the next meeting of your condo association but nothing like your vote for the next presidential election. It is conceivable that your vote might be the crucial one in deciding to buy new garbage cans in your condo (but not in shooting your loud neigbor).

8

Am I the only one singing Monty Python’s “Oliver Cromwell” song to myself right now?

Probably.

9

Andrew Johnson was impeached. The House passed the Articles of Impeachment by an overwhelming majority. The Senate, however, failed to vote to remove him from office. The Removal issue is the one that failed by one vote. Like Clinton, Johnson does indeed get the big red “IMPEACHED” stamp on his presidency.

10

The MAIN problem with that list of case where one vote made a huge difference (apart from the fact that some are just plain bogus) is that FEW of them have anything to do with ordinary ballots cast by ordinary voters. MOST of the cases cited were votes cast by legislators and/or judges.

Of COURSE my one vote can make a huge difference if I’m a Senator, a COngressman, or a Supreme Court justice! But if I’m an ordinary schmoe (which, come to think of it, I AM) casting a vote for George Bush in November, my one vote means virtually nothing.

What the heck, I’ll do it anyway!

11

[hijack]
Interesting you bring this up. In local elections here, a candidate must win an election by 50% +1 vote.

It’s a real pain in the ass for both the voters and the Municipality, as it forces run-off elections.

But the “benefit” is twofold. In theory somehow, it gives the republican/conservative candidates some advantage. Also, it silences all the math-challenged individuals who are fond of proclaiming that “…more people didn’t vote for the winner…” and other such nonsense, in the usual case of when 3 candidates split the vote 40%/30%/30%.

And - the citizen who pushed this initiave into law hired my wife to help him do it. She’s regretted taking his money ever since.
[/hijack]

12

Johnson did try to run for a second term, as a Democrat, but didn’t get the party’s nomination. On the first ballot at the convention, he was in second place, but he gradually slipped in the subsequent ballots. The convention ultimately nominated Governor Seymour of New York, who lost the general election to Grant.

13

Yeah! Also, if I’m an absolute monarch or a dictator, my one vote really counts for a lot! Hmmmm… maybe that Oliver Cromwell story is true after all… just that one vote was Cromwell’s. :wink:

14

Thanks to DKW for shedding the light on the German language question in America and what that was all about. It always seemed a little specious to me that we came so close at any point in our history to making German an official language. Of course, one of the official languages in Brazil is English, though it’s certainly not spoken by but a small minority and there are no laws requiring signs be posted in English and Portuguese, so sometimes these things don’t mean all that much.

What I understand about the German question was also that the vote came up during the Civil War, when most of the south wasn’t represented in Congress. Since most of the north had plenty of German immigrants fresh off the boat, such a law could easily take root, I’d imagine. If the southern states were voting in Congress at the time, I doubt any such resolution would have been so close. The south never had many immigrants after it was initially colonized, though that’s been changing lately, with many Mexicans, Central Americans and Caribbeans over the past decade.

15

I was sure that the German thing was covered by Cecil, but I can’t find it right off.

16

Good catch, AM/PM. The column has an unusual title, because the question asked about the wrong language.

Cecil Adams on Did Hebrew almost become the official U.S. language?.

17

The Brunching Shuttlecocks have just done an excellent spoof of this.

18

I think I should rescind my arguments that a single vote does not make a difference. :smiley:

–Tim

19

I just wanted to mention that every morning our local TV news morning show has a quick history bit put out by the History Channel called “Time Lab 2000.”

Tuesday morning’s story was about how one vote brought Texas into the Union. It traced it back, however, to several other one vote situations preluding the Texas statehood vote, to where, according to them, one citizen’s vote in an Indiana election made all the difference.

Apparently it was all bunk, and now I’m going to have beat the sh*t out of Sam Waterston (the host) if I ever see him.