Ever since the Supreme Court voted along partisan lines to stop counting votes and let the candidate who didn't win the most votes be the president, which led to the Iraq war, which I don't think anyone believes Al Gore would have started, I've wondered what it would be like to live in a democracy where every voter has a voice.

It's especially meaningful to me living in California because my vote doesn't matter. The candidates don't come here and don't advertise here. Yet if California were a nation, we would have the 5th largest economy in the world.

So the candidates are driven by industries like coal and farming, which the swing states try to keep alive with subsidies. We are conceding wind and solar to China and Europe, which would employ millions of people in jobs far safer and lucrative than coal mining, because of the sway swing states have.

I think that's why the economy does better under democratic administrations, because to them the industries in states like Washington, New York and California do matter. Those states are not swing states, however, so they don't influence who gets to be president. You could imagine a scenario where 3,000,000 more votes were cast for the losing candidate, which is pretty much the same as throwing those votes into the river. The votes floating in the river were from voters who represent the future of the world's economy — renewable energy — but the votes that mattered were from coal.

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2020 USA election

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