Editorial

Why your vote counts

Thomas Jefferson was elected president by just one vote in the electoral college. So was John Quincy Adams. Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president by just one vote; his election was contested and referred to the electoral commission. Again he won by a single vote. The man who cast that deciding vote for Hayes was a lawyer from Indiana who was elected to Congress by just a 1 vote margin. That one vote was cast by a client of his who, though desperately ill, insisted on being taken to the polls to cast that one vote.

Just one vote

Don't think that your vote doesn't count, because one vote in…

*1645 gave Oliver Cromwell control of England.
*1649 caused Charles I of England to be executed.
*1776 gave America English instead of German as its national language.
*1839 elected Marcus Morton governor of MA.
*1845 made Texas a state.
*1868 saved President Andrew Johnson from being impeached (and that by a Maine senator).
*1876 made France a Republic.
*1923 made Hitler the Nazi's leader.
*1939 passed the Selective Service Act.
*1960 one voter per precinct elected John F. Kennedy president of the U. S.

And locally, one vote a decade ago would have passed a school budget that failed by tie votes in BOTH Gray and New Gloucester!

Facts (except GNG vote) compiled by Bangor High School students